KG: This week's Spotlight is on leading academic Professor Larissa Behrendt. Larissa is a Harvard Law graduate and is also the Director of Research at the Jumbunna House of Learning at Sydney's University of Technology. She's also chairperson of the board for the National Indigenous TV service.

Larissa Behrendt, NITV: I became really interested in law when I was a child and my interest increased in my teenage years when I was at high school and my interest in law was primarily from seeing the impact of the removal policy on my family and growing up in a family where we were given a very strong sense of social justice, of realising that there were policies that were still being implemented and laws that were still being enacted that were discriminatory against Aboriginal people.

FAMILY SUPPORT

Larissa Behrendt: I feel that all of the success that I have been able to achieve I have been able to achieve because when I was growing up I had the opportunity to have very strong values instilled in me. The very strong values that we embrace in the Aboriginal community of respecting family, of respecting elders, of respecting kinship, of respecting country. And I feel that part of my ability to do what I do is because I have always been able to keep very strongly based in the Aboriginal community, so my real goal for myself is to never lose sight of that.

IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION

Larissa Behrendt: There is a reason why our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandparents worked so hard to give us access to education. It is such a big tool for all of us. It gives us the opportunity to be able to make a contribution to our communities, it gives us the ability to be able to provide for our families.

NITV LAUNCH

Larissa Behrendt: I felt so proud and privileged the day that we launched. I was so humbled to be able to be there as part of an effort that so many Aboriginal people had worked on for decades. It was to me such a celebration of our resilience, of our ability to have a vision and to be able to work tirelessly towards it and it has been such an achievement. I'd get such fantastic feedback from people who say it's great to know that we have a television station that we can turn on at any time and see a black face.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Larissa Behrendt: I would have to say - although NITV would be a close second - I think writing a novel that was based on my family's history, a story that was really close to my heart and important to get told, having that published and having that be recognised with two - with three literary awards if I include my Deadly.