Indigenous rights lawyer and law professor Larissa Behrendt began her life-long pursuit to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians at only 11 years of age. She speaks to Briana Everett.

To most people, it would seem like Larissa Behrendt never sleeps. As a professor of law, prize-winning author, indigenous rights advocate, Harvard law graduate, former Assembly of First Nations employee and Australian of the Year 2011 finalist, Behrendt certainly ticks all the boxes when it comes to career aspirations and achievements.

And not surprisingly, her biggest challenge throughout her career has always been "saying no".

"I get asked to do a lot of things and a lot of them are really interesting. Sometimes, I feel very obligated because I am very privileged in a very underprivileged community," Behrendt says.

However, while she admits to working "pretty much all the time", Behrendt focuses her energy only on what she is truly passionate about.

"At the heart of it, I might look like I do a lot but I don't do anything that I don't feel passionate about. And there's a reward in being able to work on the things that you love," she says.

Behrendt's passion and drive is focused on promoting the rights of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders - a passion sparked by her family's past and the legacy left by the 'stolen generation'.

At just 11 years of age, Behrendt - a Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman - made the decision to become a lawyer after her indigenous father found his mother's removal certificate, which revealed the NSW sheep station from which she had been taken by the government.

"The whole idea that there could be laws that could take children away from their family seemed incredibly unjust to me and shocking. Even at that age, [it shocked me] that we could live in a country where that could happen," she explains.

Driven to make a difference, Behrendt completed her undergraduate studies at the University of New South Wales, while also working at Legal Aid through an internship - an experience which eventually encouraged her to return to university and begin her overseas journey to Harvard.

"Processing people through a court for family maintenance claims wasn't exactly the type of law reform I had in mind," she says.

Spending another year at Legal Aid following graduation, Behrendt decided to make her next move.

"I enjoyed university a lot because there were a lot of opportunities to be involved in politics, particularly around indigenous people. So I was interested to go back and have more of that experience," she says.

While she wanted more of the university experience, Behrendt's decision to study abroad and obtain a spot at Harvard was not her own.

"My father was in a relationship with someone who had been [to Harvard] and she encouraged me to apply; and I was too frightened to say no to her. When she got the forms for me, I sat at the kitchen table and filled them in. I'd rather do that than argue with her," Behrendt explains.

But once she got there, Behrendt ended up spending four years at Harvard, completing both a Master of Laws and Doctor of Juridical Science.

"Getting the degrees from Harvard completely changed my life," she says. "The experience of being overseas and studying overseas personally transformed things for me. It gave me confidence. Aboriginal rights is an area that's very political and emotional so it gave me a world-class education to back up my point of view."

When her Harvard experience came to an end, Behrendt then found herself in Canada working for the Assembly of First Nations.

"It was amazing. You get to work with First Nations people who are so much more progressed on issues than we are in Australia," she says.

And although her time at First Nations was an incredibly inspiring experience for Behrendt, after a year she finally felt it was time to return home.

"I did this [became a lawyer] because I wanted to change the world for Aboriginal people and I wasn't doing that where I was - at least not for my Aboriginal people. I just needed to come home," she says.

Returning to Australia, Behrendt quickly landed herself a research role at the Australian National University before becoming a professor at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) at the age of 31.

From there, Behrendt's dedication to research has continued to flourish. Now the director of research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at UTS, Behrendt says more of her work is now directed at general education concerning indigenous issues.

"You really need the data to make a strong argument which backs you up. A lot of the advocacy around indigenous issues can be very emotional, so having hard data is very important," she says, explaining her love of research.

In between her research commitments and her duties as a board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art and chair of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, Behrendt also finds the time to write.

"I tend to be fairly disciplined about writing every day. I'm writing two non-fiction books at the moment and I'm working on a couple of short stories," she says.

"I've always [written]. I've always liked it. I would do it whether I got published or not. It helps me reach a broader audience for some of the same issues I work on in my legal academic work and, at the same time, it's cathartic for me."

Behrendt won the 2002 David Uniapon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for her first novel Home, which depicts how the removal policy affected generations of Aboriginal families, and is closely based on her own experiences.

Her second novel released in 2009, Legacy, describes the complex relationship Behrendt had with her father and won a Victorian Premier's Literary Award.

"I wrote [Legacy] as a homage to my father who passed away. I had the idea of writing it before he passed away but he did pass away so I wrote the bulk of it after that," she says. "It was personal."

With a new novel and a couple of other writing projects on the way this year, plus her heavy involvement in Aboriginal arts and culture, Behrendt is certainly showing no signs of slowing down.

"The new [book] is coming. I've done the research. It's on the backburner a bit but I'm always sort of pottering away at it in one way or another."