Marjorie Nelson is a Nyoongar Elder from Merredin in the wheatbelt region of Western Australia and was born on a farm twenty miles from the town of Pingelly. Her mother was a Nyoongar woman, Ida Eva Humes, and her father was Jack Michael, a descendant of Native Americans reared in the New Norcia Mission. Ida, her fourteen brothers and sisters, and her parents moved from town to town as they followed work in the shearing gangs.
When Marjorie turned seventeen her family moved to the wheatbelt town of Beverley, which is about one hundred and thirty kilometres east of Perth on the Avon River. Here she married Jack Nelson, moving to Shackleton and later to the Merredin Reserve. In 1972 Nelson moved to Perth and worked as a voluntary worker for many years with Graham Maybury, a radio presenter and founder of Lifeline WA, a volunteer based organisation dedicated to providing specialist, life-affirming counselling and education services to Western Australians.
