Biography

Kamala Todd is a Metis-Cree community planner, educator, curator and filmmaker who was born and raised in the beautiful lands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Skwxwú7mesh-speaking people (also known as Vancouver). She has a master's degree in geography (UBC) and is the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous arts and culture planner. She was the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous Arts and Culture Planner (2000-2006), where she created Storyscapes, a community arts and storytelling project to help bring greater recognition for the many diverse stories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh and urban Indigenous people in Vancouver. This included a partnership with NFB to create Our City Our Voices, an oral history video project recording Indigenous stories with youth and elders, as well as residents in the Downtown Eastside. This also included the Coast Salish public art project in "Stanley Park", that resulted in Susan Point's People Among the People archways. Kamala was a consultant centrally involved in the Vancouver Dialogues Project, which brought together First Nations, urban Indigenous, and immigrant communities to build circles of dialogue and cultural-sharing. Kamala’s film credits include Indigenous Plant Diva, Cedar and Bamboo, RELAW: Living Indigenous Laws, and Sharing our Stories: the Vancouver Dialogues Project. She writes and directs for children’s television, including the Indigenous science series Coyote's Crazy Smart Science Show and the Cree language series Nehiyawetan, both on APTN. She created a video series about Indigenous law for UVic’s Indigenous Law Research Unit. She is the author of “This Many-storied Land”, in In This Together: Fifteen Stories of Truth and Reconciliation (2016) and Truth-Telling: Indigenous perspectives on Working with Municipal Governments (2017) for the Vancouver Park Board. Kamala is the proud mother of two amazing boys. She lives with her family on the beautiful Sunshine Coast.