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Sue-Anne Hunter carries the stories of thousands of children with her but one in particular is motivating her to hold Australian governments to account for their treatment of First Nations people.

She met the Aboriginal boy as his caseworker, after he was removed from his family through the child protection system, then tracked his name through youth detention, adult prison before he was finally added to the grim list of more than 600 Aboriginal men, women and children who have died in custody since the landmark royal commission of the 1980s.

“It drives me … to keep his name alive and know that he did not die in vain,” she says. “If we can get change that will be in his honour.”

Hunter was appointed as the inaugural First Nations children’s commissioner in August, and spoke to Guardian Australia in Canberra this month as legislation to establish the commission as an independent office passed parliament.

The Wurundjeri and Ngurai Illum Wurrung woman has a busy schedule, meeting some of the most vulnerable children in the country and using their input to push for legislative change.

Soaring rates of children in out-of-home care and the overrepresentation of young people in custody are her priorities. Indigenous children are as much as 12 times more likely to be in care than non-Indigenous counterparts, and more than 60% of children in custody are Indigenous – they are detained at 20 times the rate of non-Indigenous children.

She says she sees “kids in youth detention, in out-of-home care, sitting with families when children are being removed, in jail cells, with young kids in our hospitals, and in prisons with parents visiting children.

“You can’t do that work and not be changed.”

Hunter grew up in the outer Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows as one of six children. She dropped out of high school in year 10 – dyslexia meant she struggled to fit into the classroom environment.

She worked as a child protection caseworker, completing her undergrad studies at La Trobe University and master’s at Harvard. Her mentors include the US trauma scholar and psychologist Bruce Perry and the longtime Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency chief executive, Aunty Muriel Bamblett.

“I feel blessed that I’ve had these amazing people around me,” she says. “It’s still surreal how far I’ve come. I have to constantly pinch myself that I’m here at all.”

She has inherited a legacy of survival and resilience : her grandmother was the final baby born at Coranderrk mission in south-west Victoria, one of many reserves established to house Aboriginal people forced off their lands by colonisation.

“We descended from the Wurundjeri,” Hunter says. “There were only 13 of us left after colonisation, so we descend from one woman. So for me there’s this legacy of survival and adaption … something I carry with me every time I walk into a room.”

Despite that lineage, and her previous role as a commissioner of Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission, she says she has “always been a kind of reluctant leader”.

“I look back and then I push forward, and then step back. To end up in this role, it is surreal.”

She cautions those in positions of power – in high office and on the frontline – to be mindful of how their decisions will affect vulnerable children, saying: “You never know where these kids will end up.”

Every time she meets policymakers and rubs shoulders with ministers and legislators, she says, she is determined to bring children’s voices into the room.

“Our kids are being removed, our kids are being locked up, our kids are dying from diseases they shouldn’t be – and that’s why we’re here.”

Hunter says her work focuses on building relationships and trust with First Nations communities, organisations working in the sector, and politicians.

“The racism in the system and the injustice is such you can’t just sit [there],” she says. “Once you know, how do you be human and step away from that? You can’t.

“So that’s what gives you the courage. People [have] passed from this stuff. I can’t afford to not speak up.”

Her ambition is that the commission will render itself obsolete because every First Nations child is safe, supported and thriving.

“I’m hoping eventually we do ourselves out of the job, and we don’t need it,” she says. That would be the ultimate goal.”

• Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support; or call Lifeline on 13 11 14, Mensline on 1300 789 978 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636