Kim Scott's discovery of his own identity throughout his novel True Country and his representation of Aboriginal culture, is reflective of a deliberate challenge to the ideologies that shape how Australia thinks about Aboriginal people. The colonisers in the novel embody a racist, white supremacist ideology, one that would see Aboriginal people as less than, or as other to, themselves. While this is no longer the dominant or popular way of thinking, it was at some point, and remains somewhat prevalent today in certain circles.

Scott shows that the way he thought before about Aboriginal culture and the world in general has changed drastically, as his experiences working in the Kimberley have led him to become immersed in Indigenous culture and ways of life. Through his use of the colonial record, shifting perspective and Aboriginal English, Scott both challenges and somewhat reinforces popular narratives and stereotypes, and in doing so tries to reshape the readers' attitudes towards understanding that many of these negative stereotypes are not innate to Aboriginal culture but rather the result of centuries of colonial power and oppression.

Scott's clinical description of the "old people's camp" as "places of disease, filth, and full of uncivilised people" carries some very important truth. The "sexually involved" acts being committed against "an eight-year-old girl" at the camp are inexcusable, and Scott (bravely) doesn't imply otherwise. However, when we as readers pry a little further to understand why they're in the camp, it becomes more apparent that the "old people" are not the only ones at fault. Scott cleverly challenges the reader's biases as likely non-Indigenous people this way, as their probable lack of experience with racial injustice might lead them to think that their consequences would be a result of potentially criminal actions.

The threats of the "mission shoot[ing] their dogs" reek of colonial superiority and exercise of power with a sour taste of racial discrimination. This threat seems to imply that the men are kept captive against their own will, their pets threatened if they try to leave. Scott understands that this injustice doesn't excuse any of their frankly vile acts, but still tries to reshape the attitudes towards these men into a more forgiving one by providing more context.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the "lack of dress" being cited as another reason to hold these men captive is a blatant hypocrisy on the principal's end. Current ideas of clothing are a modern novelty, or colonial imports, and colonist minds in the novel seem to forget how life was before they came to Australia. Scott argues that the lack of dress is only "filth" to those most ignorant of Aboriginal culture, and that this popular way of thinking about dress standards, likely held by the reader, is a completely colonial invention and thus an oppression of Aboriginal culture.

The principal further jeopardises himself when we read that he "writes at length" in the "hot, insect ridden" Australian climate. Colonialism was often practised for its monetary implications, using the land for agricultural or industrial applications for the purpose of making money. The fact that the principal is subjecting himself to these unpleasant conditions tells us that this is likely the case here, along with his disregard for the Indigenous people and their culture.

His willingness to endure the country itself while dismissing the culture that already belongs to it points to an ideology that prizes the land as a resource and treats its people as "others", or obstacles. In representing the coloniser in this way, Scott asks the reader to question what may be a habitual assumption, that the colonial presence in places like Karnama was ever kind or civilising.

By placing the principal's personal view or representation of Aboriginal culture as "filth[y]" and "full of uncivilised people" alongside his greedy, true intentions to essentially eradicate Aboriginal culture (Father Pujol also heavily protests doing "anything that will encourage native ways") and instead steal their land to presumably use for his own monetary gain, Scott challenges the reader's evaluation of the intents of colonisation from just finding a place to hold convicts, to an intentional erasure of culture for personal greed and benefit.

Scott continues his line of questioning by shifting the perspective from the principal and the mission ledgers to Gabriella, and along with that bringing in Aboriginal English, leaving the more polished standard of English behind. Standard English is the language of those ledgers and the official record, so by handing the narration to a community voice instead, Scott uses this language as a symbol of resistance against colonial power. The reader is pushed to think about that culture from the inside rather than simply accepting the version written about it from the outside.

Through this language, and through Gabriella's description of the authors of those journals as "devils", or "djimi", Scott flips the script completely, as we now read the coloniser's representation of culture from an Aboriginal point of view. The othering view of the principal is turned back on him, and the habitual way of seeing Aboriginal people as "other" is shown to be just one ideology, rather than a natural truth.

In representing Aboriginal culture this way, Scott works to dismantle the attitudes that sit beneath these ideologies, showing that much of the reasoning behind the discrimination they promote is in fact a direct result of colonial power rather than anything innate to the culture itself. Whether he is genuinely trying to reshape the values of the white supremacist or not is doubtful, and I would lean towards "probably not". It seems more that he reshapes the values, attitudes and beliefs of the ordinary reader, the one who has absorbed these popular ways of thinking without ever questioning where they came from.