Tracy Lindberg
Biography:
Professor Tracey Lindberg is Cree and Métis from northern Alberta. She is an associate professor in the Centre for World Indigenous Knowledge and Research (CWIKR), the Director, Indigenous Education at Athabasca University and an associate professor in the Common Law Section of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.
A graduate of the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, she is the first Aboriginal woman in Canada to complete her graduate law (LLM) degree at Harvard University. She is thought to be the first Aboriginal woman to receive a doctorate in law from a Canadian University as well, having received the Governor General’s Award in 2007 upon convocation for her dissertation Critical Indigenous Legal Theory – joining a long list of distinguished recipients of GG Awards including Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Kim Campbell, Robert Bourassa and Gabrielle Roy.
Her supervisor, Constance Backhouse said it best when she noted, “Tracey Lindberg’s research is revolutionary. It tips much of our customary analysis on its head. She has begun the immense task of educating non-Aboriginal lawyers and scholars about Aboriginal legal traditions. It will be sobering for all of us to realize how deeply our laws and practices violate traditional Aboriginal ways of being.”
An award winning scholar, Professor Lindberg writes and publishes in areas related to Indigenous law, Indigenous governance, Indigenous women and Indigenous education. One of her most recent publications is a co-edited book, Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colony (with Robert J Miller, Larissa Behrendt, Tracey Lindberg and Jacinta Ruru (Oxford University Press, October 2010).)
She is also an accomplished writer of fiction (her debut novel is being published by Harper Collins in 2010) and a blues singer, and what you should know about Tracey is that she is next in a long line of argumentative Cree women.
RACE 2010 Conference convenor Dr Malinda S Smith has offered Professor Lindberg the highest praise: "What I have always admired about Tracey as a friend and a scholar is her dignity, her humility and her quiet and indomitable strength, which she attributes to the great indigenous elders, leaders and scholars who have mentored and influenced her, including the late Harold Cardinal, with whom I had the privilege to work with alongside Tracey at Athabasca University, and Elder Maria Campbell, a Métis author, playwright, broadcaster and filmmaker, whom Tracey in her ever inclusive fashion, brought into my life when I sought guidance on how to engender respectful dialogue between immigrants and Indigenous peoples." Professor Lindberg embodies the best aspirations of the R.A.C.E. Network.
