Michael Cook offers a retake on Australian history by imagining a contemporary Indigenous community with Aboriginals living the lifestyle prescribed by white norms. Carefully choreographed images reflect on notions of truth and identity, and consider how art and images shape history and cultural memory.

Highlighting disjuncture between the reality of Indigenous life and the white Australian dream/ideal, he raises the questions ‘what makes a person civilised?’ The images explore the ongoing effects of colonisation and cultural marginalisation, and suggests how different history might have been if those Europeans had realised that the Aborigines were indeed civilised.