Rhoda Ann Roberts (8 July 1959 – 21 March 2026) was an Australian theatre and arts director, arts executive, television presenter, and actress. She was head of Indigenous programming at the Sydney Opera House from 2012 until 2021. She was also a highly respected Aboriginal elder, being afforded the title "Aunty" (Aunty Rhoda). She introduced the term "Welcome to Country" in the 1980s, giving contemporary expression to an ancient custom, and originated the idea of performing the ceremony before significant cultural events, which gained widespread acceptance in Australia.
Roberts' parents, a mixed-race couple, were politically active, and Roberts was taught Aboriginal culture by her Bundjalung / Widjabul father. Roberts first studied nursing in her home town in Lismore, New South Wales, qualifying as a nurse at Canterbury Hospital in Sydney in 1979, undertaking further studies in England, and working as a nurse in India and other countries. On her return to Sydney, she studied performing arts.
Roberts was a co-founder of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust in 1987. She became the first Indigenous Australian presenter on television in 1989, appearing on the SBS Television show First In Line; she later wrote for, produced, and presented work on television. She was a producer at the Indigenous media agency Vibe Australia from 1992 until 2014. During this time, was a co-founder of the Deadly Awards; founded the Festival of the Dreaming in 1997; and was cultural advisor for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. From 2008 until 2011, she was creative director for the Sydney New Year's Eve celebrations. She also acted in, wrote, and directed numerous stage productions, including a starring role in Belvoir's 1993 production of Louis Nowra's play Radiance. Her final performance, in December 2025, was in her own play, My Cousin Frank, about her cousin, boxer Frank Roberts, who was the first Aboriginal Australian to participate in the Olympics Games.
Early life and education Rhoda Ann Roberts was born in Canterbury Hospital in Sydney on 8 July 1959. She was a Bundjalung woman of the Widjabul/Wiyebal clan on her father's side, and her totem was the lizard. She had a twin sister, Lois Roberts, Includes No Filter podcast, interview by Narelda Jacobs. and two brothers (Phillip and Mark); her parents also raised several cousins with them.
Her paternal grandfather, Frank Roberts, a pastor with the Church of Christ, was active in the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), and ran an Aboriginal settlement called Cubawee at Tuncester, near Lismore, which was bulldozed in 1964. He was educated at the segregated school on the Aboriginal reserve on Cabbage Tree Island.
Her parents were politically active: her father, Frank Roberts Jnr, also grew up on the reserve on Cabbage Tree Island under the Aboriginal Protection Board. He later attended Oral Roberts University, an evangelical university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, US, where he prayed with Martin Luther King Jr. and experienced the birth of the American civil rights movement, before attending the Woolwich Bible College in Sydney. He was a pastor with the Church of Christ, and the first Indigenous person appointed to the Australian Board of Missions, and was a board member of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who campaigned for the yes vote in the 1967 referendum. He was also active in the APA, and joined the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972, where he talked to Gough Whitlam about Indigenous land rights. Roberts's mother, Muriel, was white, well-educated, and worked at David Jones, and was also a dressmaker. They met at church, when Muriel was 26 and Frank 42. Both parents were also interested in the arts.
The family moved to Lismore when the twins were 18 months old, where, unlike Sydney, the local citizens were shocked at the mixed-race children. She attended Lismore Heights Primary and Richmond River High in Lismore. As a teenager she and her family spent some years in Sydney, where she attended Canterbury Girls' School, but they returned to Lismore because her father was homesick. She completed Year 10 in Lismore, becoming one of the first Aboriginal students to do this. The only reason she did not go on to do year 12 was that it was discouraged for Aboriginal students at her school; she later wrote that a careers advisor told her that "as a mission kid, she'd only end up unemployed". At the time, Aboriginal people experienced much discrimination in Lismore, including being refused entry to cafes, and she was often called a "darkie" at school. Her father had taught her and her siblings to ignore racism directed at them, and not to become victims.
Roberts initially wanted to study journalism, but was discouraged by her mother, who feared that nobody would employ her because of her race. She first trained as a nurse's aide, and was refused access to nurse training by the matron at the Lismore Base Hospital. She then moved back to Sydney, where she qualified as a nurse at Canterbury Hospital in 1979.
After a stint on Hayman Island, Queensland, Roberts went to London, England, in 1981 to train in accident and emergency nursing at Westminster Hospital, gaining a certificate. She then travelled to several other countries, including India, volunteering as well as doing paid work as a nurse. On her return to Sydney, she studied for a diploma in performing arts for three years at Brian Syron's acting studio, alongside fellow students Ernie Dingo and Lydia Miller. During this time, Roberts worked at Manly Hospital to support herself.
Career
Roberts was a co-founder of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust (ANTT) with Brian Syron, Lydia Miller, and others, with Justine Saunders as adviser. The ANTT arose out of the First National Black Playwrights Conference and Workshop in Canberra, in 1987, becoming formally incorporated in 1988. Second (1989) and Third National Black Playwrights Conferences followed. In 2016, Roberts said that the living person she most admired was Lydia Miller, as a "true Cultural Custodian who pass[es] on knowledge to ensure there is wealth and richness of understanding the environment and country and they do it with such humility and spirit of generosity always astounds me". Miller had also been a nurse, and they became friends and continued to work together. Roberts was the originator of the idea to do Welcomes to Country before the conferences, and galleries and arts organisations followed suit.
Roberts started her radio career at Radio Redfern as a volunteer, before being offered a position at the ABC and subsequently applying for a position at Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). In 1989, she presented the SBS Television program First In Line along with Michael Johnson, becoming the first Indigenous presenter on prime-time television. Roberts was employed as presenter of Vox Populi, an SBS Television program, in 1990, becoming the first Indigenous Australian to present a prime time current affairs program. She also wrote, produced, and directed several documentaries for SBS, including In the gutter, no way?, offering a Black perspective on substance abuse, in 1990.
From 1992 until 2014, Roberts was a producer at the Indigenous media agency Vibe Australia, where she produced and was broadcaster on its Deadly Sounds national weekly radio program until 2012. Along with Vibe founder Gavin Jones, in 1995 she established the Deadly Awards, which ran for 20 years. During this period she also worked for Network 10 and Radio National (RN). In 1998 Roberts founded the Dreaming Festival, an Indigenous arts festival which ran in Sydney until 2004, relocating to become part of the Woodford Folk Festival, Queensland in 2004. She remained artistic director of the festival until 2009. The success of this event let to further appointments as director of large-scale public cultural events.
In 1995, Roberts was appointed Indigenous Cultural Advisor for the Olympic Games in Sydney. As part of this role, she was artistic director of the Aboriginal event in the first of four years of festivals, dubbed "The Festival of the Dreaming", first held in 1997. In 2000, she oversaw Awakening, the Indigenous segment of the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics choreographed by Stephen Page.
On the morning of each Australia Day (26 January) between 2003 and 2013, she directed the Woggan-ma-gule (later renamed WugulOra) ceremony at Barangaroo in Sydney, which celebrated First Nations' culture, honouring the past and celebrating the future. From 2005 until 2007 she was a presenter on the Indigenous culture program Awaye! on RN. From 2008 until 2011, she was creative director for the Sydney New Year's Eve celebrations, which in 2016 she regarded as her greatest achievement. In 2010 Roberts was consultant festival director of the Garma Festival. In December 2012, she co-hosted the inaugural broadcast of National Indigenous Television (NITV) with Stan Grant from Uluru.
Having been a trustee of the Sydney Opera House from 1998 until 2006, Roberts was appointed head of Indigenous programming there in 2012, a job which was created for her. She held the position until March 2021. During her tenure there, in 2014 she established Homeground, an annual free outdoor festival featuring Indigenous music, dance, and culture. Roberts presented the weekly national program Deadly Voices from the House, which included live talks and a monthly podcast. In 2016 she oversaw Songlines, when the roof was lit up with Indigenous artwork, and on the eve of NAIDOC Week in 2018, one side of the Opera House was lit with art, as part of the daily "Badu Gili" projections.
Roberts was a driving force behind the Parrtjima Festival in Alice Springs, becoming its creative director in 2017 and curating the festival through to its 10th anniversary in 2025. Other major cultural event work included the 2003 Rugby World Cup, Vivid Sydney, the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup opening ceremony, and Dubai Expo 2021. She worked on several film and TV projects, including documentary films about Tom E. Lewis (Balang) for SBS, and Henrietta Maree (Bukal).
In late 2025, Roberts was consulting development director on the NITV documentary The Colleano Heart, about the Colleanos, an Aboriginal circus family, created by Pauline Clague.
Stage productions In 1988, Roberts performed in Akwanso, Fly South, which went on tour, playing at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney, ANU Arts Centre in Canberra, and Space Theatre in Adelaide. She co-starred with Rachael Maza and Lydia Miller in Belvoir's 1993 production of Louis Nowra's play Radiance. This was a groundbreaking play, that was the first of a number of touring performances of Indigenous plays. In 1998 she performed in a one-woman show Please Explain, written by Mick Barnes and directed by David Field at the Belvoir, and created the solo production Bible Boxing Love, which toured the east coast in 2008.
In October 2009, Roberts directed an international production of the opera Miracle in Brisbane by the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli for the Brisbane Festival at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts. In 2010, she directed and produced BodymARKS, which featured at the 2010 Darwin Festival. In 2012, she wrote and directed Yarrabah the Musical for Opera Australia, as well as directing and producing BodymARKS, which featured at the 2010 Darwin Festival.
In June 2016, she was co-creator and director of the theatrical piece Three Brothers at NORPA, which was inspired by a Bundjalung creation story. She was a board member at NORPA at that time.
In October 2019, Roberts's production Natives Go wild was staged at the Sydney Opera House. She was involved in the creation of the World Indigenous Art Orchestra from 2021 until her death.