We are all implicated in the system that cost Kumanjayi Walker his life

We all said it was only a matter of time before one of our clients was killed.

I couldn’t have been further away from the red desert sand when I heard the news. I was sitting on an east coast beach when my phone buzzed with a message: “I hope you’re watching this.”

Then the dam wall broke. My phone was flooded with messages and headlines of Kumanjayi Walker’s death. I sat in the sand, thousands of kilometres away, as the thing we had all dreaded came true: one of the shy, kind, earnest young people we knew had been shot and killed by police. In his home. In his community. On his country.

Related: Kumanjayi Walker: more than 1,000 protest Yuendumu police shooting as NT chief minister urges calm

I want to write about Kumanjayi Walker and the young people I worked with and tell you about their sincerity and their hope and their fears. I want to tell you about how they begged for things to do – anything – in youth detention to help them get ready to face the world when they were released. They asked for Tafe courses and job-ready programs. They asked for anger management courses to help them stay calm. They asked for time out bush and ways to connect with culture. They asked for Aboriginal staff who understood them and who spoke their language. They asked for family.

I want you to understand that it wasn’t bad luck that saw Kumanjayi Walker shot and killed by police. It was the devastating, completely unsurprising, unforgivable natural conclusion of a system that has seen 424 First Nations people die in custody since the end of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.

I want to take you into the courtrooms that put these young people into cages. I want you to hear the Alice Springs judge accuse an Aboriginal mother of “abandoning her children” in that “great Indigenous fashion”, or that same judge compare an Aboriginal man to a “primitive person”. Then you decide whether you think justice is served within those courtroom walls.

I want to invite you into the small, stuffy interview room where I sat with Aboriginal children and their families. I want you to hear their stories of being harassed by police, targeted in their communities and on the street. I want you to listen to their anguish at feeling hated in their own country, feeling like they don’t belong and their struggle to find their way through these layers of anger and fear.

And then, we can wait together for weeks and months as complaints are “investigated” and too often are returned “unsubstantiated” or “inconclusive.” Then maybe you too can see why there is so little trust in a system that seems set up to protect those in power.

Wednesday was the first time since this horrific, bloody, sorry story started that I felt surprise.

A police officer was charged with murder. Now, we wait.

The staunch, strong, grief-laden cries for #JusticeForWalker from the Warlpiri people reverberated around the nation this week. But the struggle is far from over for Kumanjayi Walker’s family, the Warlpiri people and all First Nations people.

Related: Kumanjayi Walker: NT police officer charged with Yuendumu murder suspended on pay

The injustices that First Nations people are so often forced to weather in the shadows have been tragically and violently brought into the light. It is our job now to keep these injustices in the forefront of the minds of every decision-maker who is writing policy that strips First Nations people of power, of every official who is making decisions about what services First Nations people have access to, of every police officer, lawyer, judge, ombudsman and commissioner who is tasked with protecting the rights of First Nations people.

Kumanjayi Walker’s family have been clear. They want justice and they want truth. They want to see the footage of what happened to their son, grandson, nephew with their own eyes. They want a coronial inquest to take place in their community. They want it to be independent. They want 24-hour medical staffing in the community. And they want alternative community policing like night patrol.

We are all implicated in the system that cost Kumanjayi Walker his life and stole him from his family, and we must not turn away until there is justice. No justice, no peace.

• Sophie Trevitt is a lawyer who has been living and working in the Barkly, representing Aboriginal children and young people. This article has been published with the knowledge and consent of Kumanjayi Walker’s family