Reconciliation Program

Nepean Creative and Performing Arts High School

Artist: Cameron Letta

Artist statement...

The annual Reconciliation Program incursion gives every student two days to sit with a theme, examine it from multiple angles, and make something in response to it. For First Nations students, seeing their culture and knowledge placed at the centre of a whole-school experience is a powerful statement about where they belong in this community. For all students, the process of moving from listening to yarning to creating produces the kind of understanding that lasts. Not just knowledge of this year’s theme, but a way of engaging with reconciliation that they take into every year that follows. That is the tomorrow being built.

Reconciliation means...
Reconciliation, to me, is about genuine understanding. Not the kind that comes from a textbook, but the kind that grows when students are given the space to listen, question and create. Working in Aboriginal Education, I see every day how powerful it is when young people move beyond awareness and into real empathy: when they begin to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture not as something distant or historical, but as living, present and deeply connected to the world around them.

To me, reconciliation is not a destination. It is what happens in those moments of genuine connection: between students and culture, between understanding and action, between who we are today and who we are choosing to become.