Stiff Gins

The Stiff Gins are an Indigenous Australian band from Sydney consisting of Wiradjuri/Yorta Yorta woman Kaleena Briggs and Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson and are renowned as Australia's foremost and longest-performing all-Indigenous female group.

They call their music "acoustic with harmonies" and are regularly compared to Tiddas.^[1] The band was formed by Nardi Simpson and Kaleena Briggs Emma Donovan in 1999,^[2] after meeting at the Eora Centre while studying music.^[3] The band's name uses the word gin (a derogatory word for an Aboriginal woman which was also a Dharug word for woman/wife) with the word stiff to become strong black woman,^[4] a name which caused debate about use of the word gin.^[5]

The band won Deadlys in 2000 for Most Promising New Talent and in 2001 for their single "Morning Star".^[6]

In 2012 Stiff Gins performed at TEDx Sydney, simulcast by ABC Radio.^[7]

In 2016 Stiff Gins, with Lucy Simpson, Felix Cross and Syd Green, created Spirit of Things, new works exploring the dispossession and spiritual repatriation of Indigenous cultural objects held in museum collections.^[8][9]

In 2025 Stiff Gins released their fifth studio album Crossroads, marking a 25-year career point for Australia's longest-performing all-female First Nations band.