Patty Loew, Ph.D. - Indian Nations of Wisconsin: History of Endurance and Renewal

Patty Loew, Ph.D., is professor emerita in the Medill School of Journalism and inaugural director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University (retired). She also is professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension. A citizen of Mashkiiziibii, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Loew is the author of four award-winning books and dozens of documentaries for commercial and public television. Loew has written extensively about treaty rights, sovereignty, and the role of Native media in communicating Indigenous world views.

Loew produced many documentaries for public and commercial television, including the award-winning Way of the Warrior, which aired nationally on PBS in 2007 and 2011. Her documentaries have explored cultural expression through sports such as baseball (Tinkers to Evers to Chief) and lacrosse (Sacred Stick), as well as contemporary resistance to environmental threats (Protect Our Future).

Between 1975 and 2011, she anchored newscasts on WXOW TV in La Crosse and WKOW TV in Madison, did travel reporting at KHQ TV in Spokane, WA and KATU TV in Portland, OR, and hosted news and public affairs programs, including WeekEnd and In Wisconsin, for PBS Wisconsin.

Loew, a 2019 inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of Wisconsin’s 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Heritage Award, has written extensively about Ojibwe treaty rights, sovereignty and the role of Native media in communicating indigenous world views. She is a former member of the national board of directors for both UNITY: Journalists of Color and the Native American Journalists Association.

She is the author of Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal, soon to be in its third edition, which won the Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Book Award; Native People of Wisconsin, used by 25,000 Wisconsin school children as a social studies text; and Teachers Guide to Native People of Wisconsin. In 2025, her book, Seventh Generation Earth Ethics, was released in paperback.

Prior to her position at Northwestern, Loew was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is Professor Emerita, UW-Extension, and is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Civil Society and Community Studies in the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology. In 2011, Dr. Loew received the Distinguished Alumni Award from UW-La Crosse and in 2010, Outstanding Woman of Color awards from both UW-Madison and the University of Wisconsin system.

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Patty Loew - Medill - Northwestern University