About me
Marie Elena (Tracey) O’Donnell is member of Red Rock Indian Band. She has practiced law in Ontario for 30 years. Her practice is focused entirely on providing legal services to First Nations, their members and their organizations – both on- and off-reserve. Tracey has worked with First Nations across Canada to support community and capacity development. She argued on behalf of the LEAF, Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Disabled Women’s Network of Canada, in the first Indian residential school case that reached the Supreme Court of Canada - Blackwater v. Plint. Tracey was an elected Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario, formerly the Law Society of Upper Canada, from 2003 to 2007 – the first Indigenous woman elected since the Law Society was founded in 1797. Tracey supported the negotiations of the Anishinabek Nation Education Agreement with Canada – the largest self-government in Canada due to the number of First Nations that signed the agreement and the Master Education Agreement under which the Anishinabek First Nations and the Province of Ontario established a new partnership to support Anishinabek student success and well-being both on- and off-reserve. Tracey is currently supporting negotiations of the Anishinabek Child, Youth, and Family Well-Being self-government agreement with Canada and Ontario. Tracey has volunteered on a variety of community-based committees and Boards of Directors. She is a faculty member at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in the Indigenous Leadership Program. Tracey earned her Honours B.A. in Political Science from Laurentian University in Sudbury, and her L.L.B./J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in Toronto. Tracey is the proud mother of three children, aged 17, 21 and 25.
