Mining 'helping growth of Aboriginal middle class'

Professor Marcia Langton, Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, says Australia's booming mining industry is contributing to the steady growth of an Aboriginal middle class.

"The mining industry has coincided with the Indigenous rights agenda: first it was land rights in the '70s and native title in the '90s and, following both developments, the mining industry has changed the way it has engaged with Aboriginal people," she told NITV News.

"One of the important outcomes is that now we have 7,000 people working for the mining industry and of course, like many other people in the mining industry, they are on very good incomes, they have been trained and they have highly transportable skills and instead of being unemployable they are now highly employable, and of course employed.

"The outcome of that is that they send their kids to school, they acquire assets," she said.

Watch Part Two of the interview: