Every year, the ABC board invites a prominent Australian to present a series of radio lectures, expressing their thoughts on major social, cultural, scientific or political issues.

The 53rd Boyer Lectures is presented by Professor Marcia Langton AM, Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at The University of Melbourne. The series of four lectures is an investigation into the dependency of Aboriginal businesses and not-for-profit corporations on the resources industry, and their resultant vulnerability to economic downturns. The series will support her claim that The emergence of an Aboriginal middle class in Australia in the last two to three decades has gone largely unnoticed. There are hundreds of Aboriginal businesses and Aboriginal not-for-profit corporations with income streams, delivering economic outcomes to communities on an unprecedented scale.