Her father is Indigenous, from the Ngarigo community, and her mother is of English descent.
She is one of many prominent Indigenous female athletes including Lydia Williams and Kyah Simon for the Matildas and Ashleigh Gardner for the cricket national team.
The wave of Indigenous talent couldn’t come soon enough – in the latest available data, only 23% of Indigenous women were considered regularly ‘physically active’, as opposed to 66% of non-Indigenous women.
For a long time, many sports lacked well-known Indigenous female role models. But there are now a growing number of females for Indigenous youth. The most well-known name of them all, Australia couldn’t hope for a better role model than Barty.
The world number one has focused on strengthening the identity, values and sense of wider community of Indigenous Australians since gaining the spotlight. Her career rise has been meteoric, to say the least.
Perhaps tellingly, Barty was one of the very few to have a renowned female Indigenous role model growing up.
Barty pulled off her first grand slam singles win of her career last year at the French Open over…
