Julia Coates was born in Pryor, Oklahoma, and raised in California’s Redwood country. She is the daughter of Glen Coates and the late Janis Coates Rea. Julia has a PhD from the University of New Mexico, and for over six years was the Project Director and lead instructor for the award-winning Cherokee Nation History Course, which brought her into personal contact with most of the employees of the Cherokees Nation, along with thousands of Cherokees in northeastern Oklahoma communities and throughout the country.

Julia has fifteen years of experience in Indian Affairs. Her years of work on treaty rights issues, and extensive research and policy analysis will be invaluable to the daily process of decision making on the Tribal Council. As a delegate to the 1999 Cherokee Nation Constitutional Convention Julia was instrumental in organizing a coalition to gain Tribal Council representation for At Large Cherokees.

As a professor of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis, she has been conducting interviews and research with At Large Cherokee citizens for over eight years. Julia has assisted in establishing ten organizations of Cherokees in California and New Mexico. She presently divides her residence between Tahlequah, Oklahoma and Woodland, California