Ms. Tracy Coates, LL.B (Osgoode Hall Law School), M.E.S. (Master of Environmental Studies degree in International Dispute Resolution, York University), h.B.A. (Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in Comparative Behaviour Studies and Social Development, Carleton University). Ms. Coates has extensive experience in social development work within the non-governmental sector and has long been an advocate for Indigenous rights, climate justice and the environment. Ms. Coates currently sits on the national voluntary Board of Directors of two organizations: Learning for a Sustainable Future; and the Canadian Environmental Network, where she has also been a National Council Aboriginal Representative since 2006. Ms. Coates is a Member of the Executive Committee of the Aboriginal Law Section of the Ontario Bar Association and also holds memberships with the Canadian Bar Association and the Indigenous Bar Association. Ms. Coates was called to the Bar in June 2009 after completing an Articling placement with Amnesty International Canada.

Some of Ms. Coates’s other recent accomplishments include founding the Visiting Indigenous Elder Speaker Series at Osgoode Hall Law School, being the founding Chairperson of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, participating in land claim negotiations for a Native Title Representative Body in Western Australia, and being a Community Legal Education Program Fellow with the NGO Bridges Across Borders. During her time with Bridges Across Borders she wrote and edited “street law” teaching and learning manuals, an introductory guide to the ECCC Khmer Rouge Tribunals in Cambodia, and assisted with the development of Clinical Legal Education Programs in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, an was part of a team teaching CLE workshops to Professors at the Vietnam National University (Hanoi).

Ms. Coates’s most recent research work has focused on dispute resolution and international negotiations between non-state stakeholders and state governments. Focusing primarily on historical and modern negotiations between Indigenous peoples and colonial governments, this research has also included non-state stakeholder participation in the UN system, the impacts of Climate Change on Indigenous and economically disadvantaged peoples, and opportunities for economic development from Indigenous-led climate change initiatives. She eventually plans to pursue a PhD in the area of Indigenous People’s participation in international multilateral agreements.