Linda Jean Burney (born 25 April 1957) is an Australian politician and is an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives, representing Barton since the 2016 federal election. She is Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Albanese ministry, and the first woman who identifies as Aboriginal to serve in that position. Burney was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing Canterbury for Labor from 2003 to 2016. She was the New South Wales Deputy Leader of the Opposition and was also Shadow Minister for Education and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. In the Keneally ministry, she was the Minister for the State Plan and Minister for Community Services. During 2008 and 2009, Burney was National President of the Labor Party. Burney was the first person who identifies as Aboriginal to serve in the New South Wales Parliament in 2003, and also the first Aboriginal identifying woman to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives in 2016. After the election of a federal Labor government in the 2022 election on 21 May 2022, Burney was appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians. Early life and education Burney was born on 25 April 1957 in Whitton, a small town in south-west New South Wales near Leeton, and grew up there. She is of Wiradjuri and Scottish descent. She said in her inaugural speech to NSW Parliament that she did not grow up knowing her Aboriginal family, and only met her father, Nonny Ingram, in 1984. She subsequently met ten brothers and sisters. She was raised by her elderly aunt and uncle, siblings Nina and Billy Laing, who "gave [her] the ground on which [she] stood" and taught her "the values of honesty, loyalty and respect". Burney attended the local primary school in Whitton. She did her first four years of secondary school at Leeton High School and final two at Penrith High School. She was one of the first Aboriginal students to graduate from the Mitchell College of Advanced Education (now known as Charles Sturt University,) where she obtained a Diploma of Teaching in 1978. She received an Honorary Doctorate in Education from Charles Sturt University in 2002. Career in education She began her career teaching at Lethbridge Park public school in western Sydney from 1979 to 1981, after which she worked at the Aboriginal Education Unit (Policy) of the NSW Department of Education from 1981 to