[1] She had a twin sister, Lois Roberts,[4] and two brothers (Phillip and Mark), and her parents also raised several cousins with them.
[8][a] 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.
[5] He joined the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972, and talked to Gough Whitlam about Indigenous land rights there.
[6] 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.
As a teenager she and her family spent a some years in Sydney, where she attended Canterbury Girls' School, but they returned to Lismore because her father was so homesick.
[3][2] After a stint on Hayman Island, Queensland, Roberts went to London, England, in the early 1980s to train in accident and emergency nursing at Westminster Hospital, gaining a certificate.
[1] Roberts was a co-founder of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust with Brian Syron, Lydia Miller (daughter of Pat O'Shane and activist Mick Miller[9] and later executive director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts at the Australia Council[10]), and others, with Justine Saunders as adviser.
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".
[22] During her tenure there, she presented the weekly national program Deadly Voices from the House, which included live talks and a monthly podcast.
[12] She co-starred with Rachael Maza and Lydia Miller in Belvoir's 1993 production of Louis Nowra's play Radiance.
[6] In 1998 she performed in a one-woman show Please Explain, written by Mick Barnes and directed by David Field[25] at the Belvoir,[12] and created the solo production Bible Boxing Love, which toured the east coast in 2008.
[22] In late August 2024, Roberts presented a new play, My Cousin Frank with Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) in Lismore and Byron Bay.
[5][28] Directed by Kirk Page, Roberts narrates the story of "a family's journey from the tumultuous era of dispersal and silence to navigating a world controlled by government policy".
My Cousin Frank is a lead-in to a planned production in 2025, called The First Aboriginal Olympian, and Roberts hopes to unite the community of Lismore in their pride in being the home of this significant man and family history.
She was also doing consultancy work for Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA), JUTE Theatre in Cairns, and Opera Australia.
[16] British photographer Penny Tweedie's image of Roberts, taken around 2000, is held by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
[3] Actress Deborah Mailman paid tribute to Roberts' power as a role model as well as her achievements and legacy during her tenure at the Sydney Opera House: "Her ability to change things.
The new position, in which the office-holder is intended to be a "guide and counsel" on Indigenous content, had an initial term of one year, with the possibility of a two-year extension.
[4] Roberts' twin sister Lois, a hairdresser, was involved in a car accident around 1970, aged 20, and received severe brain damage.
[7] Roberts married actor Bill Hunter in 1993[7] and they lived together and raised Emily together until around 1999, when he suddenly announced that he wanted to leave the marriage.
[6] Her later partner is Steven Field,[7] a landscape designer and stonemason whom she met around the time of her sister's disappearance, and he stepped in as stepfather to Emily.