Australian indigenous athlete and former politician who was named Young Australian of the Year in 1997. She is a descendant of the Yawuru and Gidja people from East and West Kimberley (in Western Australia) and the Muran people from West Arnhem Land (in the Northern Territory).
As part of the Australian women’s hockey (Hockeyroos) team at the 1996 Olympic Games, she was the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic gold medal. She later switched sports to sprinting and went to the 1998 Commonwealth Games, winning the 200m sprint with a time of 22.77 seconds and sharing in Australia’s 4 × 100 metres relay win. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000 she made the Olympic semi-finals in her individual event and ran in the Australian 4 × 400 metres relay team, which made the final, finishing fifth.
On 7 September 2013 Peris became Australia’s first Indigenous woman elected to federal parliament, when she was elected to the Senate at the federal election. Prime Minister Julia Gillard had named her as a “captain’s pick”, installing her as the preselected Labor candidate over incumbent Labor senator Trish Crossin.
Nova Peris’s Senate term ended at the double dissolution of 9 May 2016, and she thus retired from the Senate.
Peris met Sean Kneebone when she was 17 and they had a daughter in 1990. They married in 1995, after which she adopted the surname Peris-Kneebone. Following their divorce in 2001, she returned to using her maiden name, and in March 2002 married Daniel Batman; they separated in 2010. Batman died in a car crash in June 2012. Peris married Scott Appleton on 12 August 2012. She has three children: Jessica (with Kneebone), and Destiny and Jack (with Batman), and became a grandmother at the age of 40.
Peris’ autobiography, “Nova: My Story” was released on 4 April 2003.
Link to Wikipedia biography