Ever since he was little, Bruce Martin has had a foot in two worlds: the remote community where his Aboriginal mum is from, and the cities where his white dad has lived.

His mum, Dorothy Pootchemunka, is a senior Wik woman from Aurukun, an Indigenous community in western Cape York, in far north Queensland.

His dad, Dave Martin, is a chemical engineer turned anthropologist who spent more than eight years living and working in Aurukun from the mid-1970s.

Bruce says the story of his family is not as clear cut as it might seem to outsiders.

"It's not all black and white," he says with a wry smile.

"It's many shades of grey in our particular story."

From the bush to the boardroom

Bruce Martin being held as a child by his father Dave. ( Supplied )

Bruce spent his early years in Aurukun.

His first language was Wik Mungkan, the dominant language of the Wik peoples.

Aurukun often makes the news for grim reasons — street fighting, youth sexual violence and law-and-order problems, which led to the evacuation of school teachers two years ago.

"Aurukun can be a pretty hard and difficult place, but it's also a really beautiful place, with beautiful people," Bruce says.

"What shines through are two things — people's cultural knowledge and their willingness to share, and the absolute beauty of its geography."

"But I could be biased," he adds.

The 35-year-old always seems completely at ease, whether he's speaking to an elderly relative, or joking with a white ranger who's moved to town.

"I feel just as comfortable sitting in a boardroom in Sydney, as I do sitting on the beach, eating damper my mum's made under the coals," he says.

And he's been inside a fair few boardrooms.

Bruce's mother Dorothy Pootchemunka weaving for an upcoming ceremony. ( ABC RN: Georgia Moodie )

In 2013, Bruce was appointed to the inaugural Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council. He currently sits on the board of the Indigenous Land Corporation and the council of James Cook University.

He's worked in Indigenous community development, for the Cape York Land Council, and was instrumental in the creation of Aak Puul Ngantam, a Wik organisation that gets people back on their country.

But it wasn't always easy for Bruce to move between Aurukun and mainstream Australia.

When Bruce was five, his parents separated.

A dispute over whether he would live with his father in Canberra or his mother in Aurukun ended up in the Family Court.

"I remember there were people from Aurukun in court, including my mum's brother-in-law Bernard and her younger sister Jennifer," Bruce says.

"Bernard actually gave evidence that he thought it was a good idea for me to stay with dad and to go to school in Canberra, but to make sure that for holidays and for ceremony that I would have to come back home.

"And that's essentially what happened."

Bruce with his father Dave. ( Supplied )

When Bruce was in high school, it became more difficult for him to move between the two areas.

"I remember feeling confused because every time I'd come up to Aurukun, I was seen as being a whitefella because of dad," he says.

"Not in a negative way — in fact, people talked about it positively, saying that I looked like a white fella, or I spoke really good English like a whitefella."

But things were very different for Bruce back in Canberra.

"I was told I was the first Indigenous student to ever attend Canberra Grammar, so I was definitively seen as Aboriginal," he says.

"It was only once I realised I had a firm foot in both camps that I really felt comfortable in my own skin.

"I'm very, very proudly a Wik man, and that also includes being very, very proud of my father's heritage as well."

A unique perspective

When Bruce tells people about his heritage, he says they often jump to incorrect conclusions.

"People say 'oh, it's lucky that you've got such a traditional mum, that you still perform ceremony'. Or they say, 'oh, it's good that you've got an educated white dad, because it means there was a focus on your education'," he says.

But Bruce says because spent most of his childhood away from Aurukun, it was his father speaking to him in Wik Mungkan that helped him keep his language.

"Ultimately I thank my dad for the fact that I still speak language, because he knew that it was important, and important to my mum," he says.

When Bruce returns to Aurukun, he often goes fishing with Cecil Walmbeng ( ABC RN: Georgia Moodie )

And Bruce is grateful to his mum for ensuring he continued his studies, even though it meant he was often away from Aurukun for months at a time.

"I remember wanting to stay out bush many, many times, and mum turning Heaven and Earth to make sure that I got back into town to catch the plane back to school," he says.

Bruce's unusual upbringing has given him a rare and important skill — a deep understanding of how things work in both remote Aboriginal communities and mainstream Australia.

"Not too many people have been able to go from somewhere as remote as Aurukun to the places that my family down south have lived, like Brisbane or Melbourne or Canberra," he says.

"Although I'm not religious, I feel blessed with the childhood I've had."