Living in Sydney, I felt 'reconciliation' was a term bandied around at certain times throughout the year - NAIDOC week, Australia Day, Sorry Day, for example - and largely squeezed out of the conversation the rest of the time.

It would rear it's head, a conversation would bubble away for a few days - maybe even weeks - before disappearing to a place that left most people feeling comfortable again, and some very frustrated.

The term 'Reconciliation' has a ring to it in the sandstone university halls in Sydney where I studied. But practically? What could I do? Is raising a flag on the Harbour Bridge the solution to all our problems? I think not.

Reconciliation must have teeth - that is, it must mean something tangible outside the philosophical lecture halls - if it is to mean anything at all.

I didn't have the faintest idea what 'reconciliation' meant practically, nor how I could have a role to play.

To a large extent, I still do not - although I am more aware now of the reality of my own journey in this space.

My understanding of Indigenous culture developed watching performed ceremonies, dances, story-telling. They were always enjoyable, but I was always the onlooker. There was a line I believed I couldn't cross.

I thought to participate was culturally insensitive - imposing, colonialist, even.

That changed when I spoke to Indigenous cultural tourism and ceremony group Muladha Gamara during NAIDOC week.

One of the group's leaders Adam Nye shared their vision that reconciliation comes through participation.

"People think it is Indigenous culture, but really it is Australian culture," he said. "Come and participate."

So I did. At a NAIDOC event, I put down my journalistic camera and participated in a culture dance - the Birribaan - with others from the community. We danced out a story that has been told on the south coast for 80,000 years.

An onlooker could not tell apart an Indigenous from a non-indigenous dancer. It was one community, dancing together, as one people - a glimpse into reconciliation.

For the first time, I felt reconciliation had teeth.

I can do something: participate, appreciate, learn. We all can.

- James Tugwell