Rosalie Lynette Kunoth was born on 4 January 1937 in Utopia, Northern Territory (Arapunya), she was an Arrernte and Anmatyerre woman.

She was one of eight children and she grew up speaking both Arrernte and Anmatyerr and learnt English as a third language, with her father beginning to teach her in the lead-up to her attending school.

[3] In 1951, Kunoth was 14 and staying at St Mary's Hostel when the filmmakers Charles and Elsa Chauvel recruited her to play the title role in their 1955 film Jedda.

[10] By 2008, she had returned to the Utopia homelands, 260 kilometres (160 mi) north-east of Alice Springs, and in that year became president of Barkly Shire.

[11] In August 2008, in Canberra for Amnesty International, she denounced federal government intervention in the Northern Territory as a "huge violation of human rights", displacing "more Indigenous people from their traditional lands, depriving them of opportunities to speak their native language and severing links with [their] culture.

[13] At the 2013 federal election, Kunoth-Monks stood unsuccessfully as a senate candidate in the Northern Territory on behalf of the First Nations Political Party.

[14] In November 2014, Kunoth-Monks was a significant influence in bringing together with Tauto Sansbury a national gathering of Indigenous leaders to unite in the "fight" for their lands – the "Freedom Movement" – in Alice Springs.

[15] On 9 June 2014 Rosalie Kunoth-Monks appeared on ABC TV's Q&A, where she delivered her withering and now well-known "I am not the problem" speech.

Michael Gunner, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, began his eulogy with her famous words from her 2014 appearance on ABC TV's Q&A: "Don't try and suppress me.