Indigenous athlete and former senator Nova Peris says the impact of relentless racist attacks was a big factor in her decision to leave Federal Parliament in 2016.
Ms Peris, who was the first Indigenous woman elected to Federal Parliament, said the continuous attacks - including death threats - affected her family.
"I had death threats. The AFP were tracking down mail that was sent to me. This is what I had to endure," she said on the ABC's Q+A program.
She said the extent and intensity of the abuse she faced as an athlete and politician was a surprise compared to her experiences growing up in Darwin within a large Indigenous community.
"As an Aboriginal person growing up in Darwin, close to 40 per cent of the population is Aboriginal. It is very multicultural.
"So I sort of didn't get any racism growing up in the Top End, but post my schooling life, representing Australia in sport over the years.
"You think: 'God, what have I missed in education? Terra nullius'.
"You come down interstate, and the racism started, and it was like wow, this is what it is like to be Aboriginal person in this country."
'You get attacked'
She said Australia still had to come to terms with its racist past.
"When you're an Aboriginal person in this country and speak out and start calling racism out, you get attacked, because for so long this country has had this thought process.
"Racism is about inferior races. White is up here. Black is down there.
"That's how this country has been built," Ms Peris said, referring to the on , which overturned the fiction that Australia was uninhabited before British settlement.
She said her attempts to call out racism were met with vitriol.
"So when people talk about the history of this country. The history of this country is violent.
"There has been attempted genocide, there have been the massacres, there has been the poisoning, there has been the rapes.
"There has been so much. And it has been horrible. The truth just gets to people. They don't want to have a bar of it. But us as Aboriginal people, we inherit that everyday.
"If I don't acknowledge that then I'm denying everything that makes me who I am."
'Unfinished business'
Ms Peris became the first indigenous Australian to win an Olympic gold medal when she was a member of the Hockeyroos in Atlanta in 1996.
She said she is proud of representing her country at an elite level in sports and in politics - and left the door open to one day returning to life as a politician.
"I have inherent responsibilities to be a voice because my mum didn't have a voice, my grandparents. No-one had a voice.
"But my children needed me the most [which is why I left politics]. Not to say I wouldn't go back one day. I feel there's unfinished business."
