Patricia (Patty) Ann Loew was born in 1952 to an Ojibwe/French-Canadian mother and a German/Irish father, and grew up in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin housing project. She attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse with a scholarship from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and graduated in 1974, with a B.S. in mass communication. After working at radio and television stations in La Crosse, she was hired in 1976 as a Wisconsin State Capitol reporter and weekend anchor at WKOW-TV, an ABC affiliate, in Madison, Wisconsin. Other broadcast journalism work included Spokane, Washington (KHQ-TV, PM Magazine, 1979-1981); and Portland, Oregon (KATU-TV, Faces and Places, 1981-1985), where she also studied Japanese at Portland State University and was involved in the Portland-Sapporo sister city program. In 1985, she was re-hired at WKOW-TV and later entered graduate school at UW-Madison, where she received M.A. (1992) and Ph.D. (1998) degrees in mass communication.
While working in broadcast journalism in both commercial (WKOW-TV, 1985-1994) and public television (Wisconsin Public Television (WHA, 1994-2011)), Loew worked as a lecturer and fellow in the Journalism and History departments at UW-Madison from 1989 to 1998. In addition to the many segments she produced for public television, Loew also worked on documentary and media projects with tribal youth and other students whom she taught in her university classes, often producing, writing, and hosting the subsequent programs. She served as a professor on the faculty of the Department of Life Sciences Communication (1998-2017), and the Department of Civil Society and Community Research (2016-2017) at UW-Madison. Loew is a frequent public speaker and moderator at conferences and events. She also holds honorary degrees from Edgewood College and Northland College. She is currently a professor at Northwestern University in the Medill School of Journalism, and serves as the director of the Northwestern University Center for Native American and Indigenous Research.
Loew is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. She has also served on the board of directors of various organizations, including the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) and UNITY: Journalists of Color. She has written three books: Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal (State Historical Society Press, 2001; second edition, 2013); Native People of Wisconsin (State Historical Society Press, 2003; second edition 2016); and Seventh Generation Earth Ethics (State Historical Society Press, 2014). She also wrote a Teachers' Guide to Native People of Wisconsin (second edition, 2016). Loew is married to David Braga, a video producer. The two have occasionally collaborated on media projects.
