Nova Peris

Nova Maree Peris OAM (born 25 February 1971) is an Australian former sportswoman and politician. She won a gold medal with the Australian women's field hockey team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. She was the first Aboriginal Australian to win a gold medal.^[1] She also won two gold medals in track and field at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. In 1997, she was named Young Australian of the Year.

Some time after her sporting career ended, Peris entered politics. She is a member of the Labor Party. She served as a Senator for the Northern Territory from 2013 to 2016.^[2] She was the first Indigenous Australian woman elected to federal parliament.^[3]

Peris was born in Darwin, Northern Territory. Her mother, Joan, was a member of the Stolen Generations. Joan was taken away from her mother and raised in a Catholic mission on Melville Island.

Peris and Sean Kneebone had a daughter, Jessica, born in 1990. She was married to Kneebone from 1995 to 2001. In 2002, she married sprinter Daniel Batman. The couple had two children, and split in 2010. Batman died in a car crash in June 2012.^[4] She married Scott Appleton in August 2012.