Nayuka Gorrie

Nayuka Gorrie was born in 1990 as Natalie Gorrie, born at the Mercy Hospital in East Melbourne. Their mother was a 19-year-old university student at the time. They are an Aboriginal person of Gunai (mother), Gunditjmara (paternal grandmother), Wiradjuri, and Yorta Yorta (both paternal grandfather) descent. whose father John Gorrie grew up at Lake Tyers Mission and was the first Aboriginal person to receive a Public Service Medal. Gorrie moved around as a child. They have said that they were a nerd growing up, loved reading, and their favourite films were Matilda and The Matrix. Their paternal grandfather was CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Services Association Limited in Collingwood, and was friends with maternal grandfather John Gorrie. Nayuka did not grow up with their biological father, and although they spent time with him on occasional visits, the meetings brought on severe anxiety. Gorrie moved to Melbourne aged 21 to attend university. As part of an internship program, they worked during the two long vacations for Australia Post as part of a legal team, in programs that included work place relations, acquisitions and mergers, and competition and consumer law. They also represented Victoria at the Congress Youth Forum of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples. At the age of 22, Gorrie was campaigning globally for Indigenous and environmental rights. They attended the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference an Indigenous representative of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and in May 2013 represented Indigenous youth at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues held in New York City. ==Career==

Published writing Gorrie has written numerous opinion pieces and essays in various publications and website, including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Vice, Junkee, Archer magazine, The Lifted Brow, NITV, Kill Your Darlings, and The Sydney Morning Herald. Going Postal (2018), Growing Up Queer in Australia (2020) Animals make us human (2020), and Nothing to hide : voices of trans and gender diverse Australia (2022). In August 2017, Gorrie wrote an opinion piece on the NITV website called "Being black and queer in Australia right now" in the lead-up to the same-sex marriage postal survey in Australia. They have also published opinion pieces on the Australia Day debate, They also write satire, such as a 2017 piece called "A week in review: The diary of a reformed racist on Reconciliation Week". they were writing a book of essays exploring contemporary colonialism. They also co-wrote several episodes of the second series of Get Krack!n. Gorrie wrote for season two of the SBS drama The Heights, aired in 2020. It featured artists in a range of disciplines, and included Carly Sheppard, Neil Morris, Meriki Onus, Dtarneen Onus Williams, Alice Skye, Paul Gorrie, and Sojugang! ==Media and festival appearances==

In 2017, Gorrie gave an address at the Disrupted Festival of Ideas in Perth, entitled "What We Mean When We Talk About 'Ending White Supremacy. In May 2018 they appeared at the Melbourne Writers Festival along with Nakkiah Lui in a presentation called "How I Survived", in which they related how they managed to break into television comedy writing as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and supported each other in the process. In September 2019, Gorrie was one of a discussion panel at an event called "Recognition, Justice and Hope for Our Youth" at the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University in Melbourne. Economist Jon Altman moderated, while the other two on the panel were Muriel Bamblett, child welfare advocate and former chair of SNAICC; and Justin Mohamed, Victorian Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People. Others on the panel were Ashton Applewhite, Mona Eltahawy, Hana Assafiri, and Jess Hill. The program received a number of complaints and the episode was later removed from ABC iview streaming service. They appeared at the festival, their opening address titled "Things My Mother Never Told Me", which dealt with the ongoing impacts of the Stolen Generations, which includes the loss of language. In March 2024, Gorrie moderated a session at Blak & Bright festival, featuring LGBTQIA+ writers Laniyuk, Kirli Saunders, and Stone Motherless Cold. In May 2024, they appeared at an event called "Let It Bring Hope" at the Melbourne Writers Festival, paired with Palestinian poet Sara Saleh, in which they read their works of care and solidarity. ==Recognition==

• 2018: Recipient, Wheeler Centre "The Next Chapter" recipient), used to write a book of essays • 2020: Named by Women's Agenda as one of "10 Indigenous women blazing a trail in Australia today" ==Personal life==

Gorrie is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. They learnt as an adolescent that they have Scheuermann's disease, which affects the spine. In 2017, Gorrie was living in Brisbane, In August 2019, Gorrie announced they were pregnant. In November of that year, they gave birth to premature twins, who spent three months in a neonatal intensive care unit before being able to come home, just as the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia was starting. The family moved from Brunswick to a town in South Gippsland at the end of 2020. ==References==