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Roberta Jamieson

Canadian lawyer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ7351509
Source-derived summary

Roberta L. Jamieson, OC is a Canadian lawyer and First Nations activist. She was the first Indigenous woman ever to earn a law degree in Canada, the first non-Parliamentarian to be appointed an ex officio member of a House of Commons committee, and the first woman appointed as Ontario Ombudsman.

History

Jamieson is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. She was educated at McGill University and the University of Western Ontario, graduating with a law degree in 1976. She worked primarily as a policy advisor in government bodies, including as a commissioner on the Indian Commission of Ontario from 1985 to 1989 and as Ontario's provincial ombudsman from 1989 to 1999.

Jamieson was the first non-Parliamentarian to be appointed an ex officio member of a special House of Commons committee on Indian self-government.

Jamieson has also been recognized for her work in developing and promoting alternative dispute resolution methods. She received the Goodman Fellowship from the University of Toronto in 1991, and the international Association for Conflict Resolution's Mary Parker Follet Award in 1992. She was awarded 13 April 1994 the Order of Canada and invested on 1 March 1995 as a Member of the Order of Canada.

She was a candidate for the leadership of the Assembly of First Nations at their 2003 leadership convention, losing to Phil Fontaine but finishing ahead of incumbent chief Matthew Coon Come.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Roberta Jamieson” as canadian lawyer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Roberta, Jamieson and Canadian.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1985, 1989, 1999—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Roberta, Jamieson and Canadian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Roberta Jamieson”, the useful work is to connect “canadian lawyer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7351509. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1985, 1989 and 1999.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Roberta Jamieson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Roberta Jamieson primary sources, Roberta Jamieson archive and Roberta research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Roberta Jamieson”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Roberta Jamieson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.