Donna Burns

Donna Burns is an Australian basketball player with an intellectual disability who won gold as a member of the Pearls in the 1992 Madrid Paralympic Games for Persons with Mental Handicap. Burns is an Indigenous Australian and descendant of the Yorta Yorta.

Personal Burns is an Australian basketball player who won gold as a member of the Pearls in the 1992 Madrid Paralympic Games for Persons with Mental Handicap. Born in 1972 in Echuca, Victoria, Australia, Burns is an Indigenous Australian and descendant of the Yorta Yorta. She is the granddaughter of Margaret Tucker, an Indigenous Australian activist and writer.

Basketball career

Burns alternated from playing netball to basketball from the age of eight. As a teenager she focussed on basketball at the encouragement of her coach, who saw her potential to represent Australia.

Recognition NAIDOC Victorian Sports Person of the Year 1993 1993 National Sportswoman of the Year at the 4th biennial National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sports Awards Inducted to Aboriginal and Islander Sports Hall of Fame