Shaun is a member of the Yugambeh people, an Australian Aboriginal group whose traditional lands are located in South East Queensland and the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales. Davies is the great-great-grandson of Julia Ford née Sandy (c.1860-1896), an Aboriginal woman who has the sole tombstone in the Deebing Creek Aboriginal Cemetery; Julia was a native Aboriginal woman from the Southport area of the Gold Coast and married Arthur Ford (c.1866-1954) at Nerang in 1883, Arthur was an Aboriginal man from the Murwillumbah region in northern New South Wales. Shaun grew up and has spent the majority of his life in Logan City, an area his family had lived in before the arrival of Europeans. As a child, he was taught Yugambeh dreamtime legends from his Elders, such as that of the janjarri (the Yugambeh Yowie), a spirit that guards the region from trespassers.

As creative, Davies uses stories passed from his family line to increase awareness and appreciation for his traditional culture and language. Shaun is a linguist and the Language Research Officer at the Yugambeh Museum Language and Heritage Research Centre, where he has been since 2015. Describing social media as the new “campfire” and technology’s central importance in keeping Indigenous languages alive for future generations, Davies has worked with Snapchat, aided the development and expansion of the Yugambeh App,and the creation of Google’s ‘Woolaroo’ – an open-source photo-translation platform.He has written/translated songs for the Yugambeh Youth choir. and provided Yugambeh interpretations for Ellen van Neerven’s poetry. Davies is an activist for Aboriginal language, and has advocated for the use of Indigenous place names over their contemporary English names, calling for Burleigh Heads and Mt Warning to be known by their Yugambeh names.