Born at the Point McLeay Mission on the banks of Lake Alexandrina in the Coorong region of South Australia, Unaipon was the fourth of nine children of James and Nymbulda Ngunaitponi, of the Portaulun branch of the Ngarrindjeri people. Unaipon began his education at the age of seven at the Point McLeay Mission School and soon became known for his intelligence, with the former secretary of the Aborigines' Friends' Association stating in 1887: "I only wish the majority of white boys were as bright, intelligent, well-instructed and well-mannered, as the little fellow I am now taking charge of."
Unaipon left school at 13 to work as a servant for C.B. Young in Adelaide where Young actively encouraged Unaipon's interest in literature, philosophy, science and music. In 1890, he returned to Point McLeay where he apprenticed to a bootmaker and was appointed as the mission organist. In the late 1890s he travelled to Adelaide but found that his colour was a bar to employment in his trade and instead took a job as storeman for an Adelaide bootmaker before returning to work as book-keeper in the Point McLeay store.
On 4 January 1902 he married Katherine Carter (née Sumner), a Tangane woman. He was later employed by the Aborigines' Friends' Association as a deputationer, in which role he travelled and preached widely in seeking support for the Point McLeay Mission. Unaipon retired from preaching in 1959 but continued working on his inventions into the 1960s.
Unaipon took out provisional patents for 19 inventions but was unable to afford to get any of his inventions fully patented, according to some sources. Muecke and Shoemaker say that between '1910 and 1944 he made ten ... applications for inventions as varied as an anti-gravitational device, a multi-radial wheel and a sheep-shearing handpiece'. Provisional patent 15,624 which he ratified in 1910, is for an "Improved mechanical motion device" - that converted rotary motion which "is applied, as for instance by an Eccentric", into tangential reciprocating movement, an Example application given being sheep shears. The invention, the basis of modern mechanical sheep shears, was introduced without Unaipon receiving any financial return and, apart from a 1910 newspaper report acknowledging him as the Inventor, he received no contemporary credit.
Unaipon was the first Aboriginal author to be published after he was commissioned in the early 1920s by the University of Adelaide to assemble a book on Aboriginal legends. From 1924 onwards he also wrote numerous articles for the Sydney Daily Telegraph. He published three short booklets of Aboriginal stories in 1927, 1928 and 1929. In this time he wrote on topics covering everything from perpetual motion and helicopter FLIGHT to Aboriginal legends and campaigns for Aboriginal rights.
Five of Unaipon's traditional stories were published in 1929 as Native Legends, under his own name and with his picture on the cover.
Some of Unaipon's traditional Aboriginal stories were published in a 1930 book, Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals, under the name of Anthropologist william Ramsay Smith. They have been republished in their original form, under the author's name, as Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines.
In 1936, he was reported to be the first Aboriginal to attend a levée, when he attended the South Australian centenary levée in Adelaide, an event that made international news.
Unaipon was awarded a Coronation medal in 1953 at the age of 81 celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and got the FAW Patricia Weickhardt Award for Aboriginal Writers in 1985 after his death. Unaipon was a very influential man during his era considering he was of Aboriginal ethnicity but was often refused accommodation because of his race.
Unaipon returned to his birthplace in his old age, where he worked on inventions and attempted to reveal the secret of perpetual motion. A member of the Portaulun (Waruwaldi) people, Unaipon died in the Tailem Bend Hospital on 7 February 1967 and was buried in the Raukkan (formerly Point McLeay) Mission Cemetery. He was survived by a son.
In 1985 he was posthumously awarded the FAW Patricia Weickhardt Award for Aboriginal Writers.
An interpretive dance based on Unaipon's life, Unaipon, was performed by the Bangarra Dance Theatre. The David Unaipon Literary Award established in 1988 is an annual award presented for the best of writing of the year by unpublished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors. The David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education And Research at the University of South Australia is named after him, as is Unaipon Avenue in the Canberra suburb of Ngunnawal. An annual Unaipon lecture in Adelaide was also established.
Unaipon's stance on Aboriginal issues put him into conflict with other Aboriginal Leaders, including william Cooper of the Australian Aborigines' League, and Unaipon publicly criticised the League's "Day of Mourning" held on the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet, arguing that the protest would only harm Australia's reputation abroad and would cement a negative public opinion of Aboriginals.
