Iyngaranathan Selvaratnam came to Australia in 1986 at the age of one as a Tamil migrant with his parents, in aftermath of the Black July riots in 1983 in Sri Lanka, where up to 3000 Tamils were killed. He grew up in Darwin and attended James Cook University where he studied medicine. He completed his GP training in NT and worked for 10 years in Indigenous health in urban, rural and remote NT. He now lives in Sydney.