Hundreds of people gathered at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on Thursday to march to Parliament House and call for a treaty.
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"Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land," they yelled as they marched.
They then sat outside the front doors of the building for an hour as a line of police formed a guard blocking the entrance.
"What do we want? Treaty. What have we got? F*** all," they chanted.
Back at the Tent Embassy, Barkindji man Marbk described the pain he felt every Australia Day, describing it as the most hurtful day of the year.
"They say it's Australia Day but I say Australia Day is every day. Today is Invasion Day. Today 228 years ago is when they took my country by force," he said.
"It hurts. It hurts bad - spirit, heart, soul. We've still fighting back and we're looking for sovereignty to land, to fire, to water, to earth."
Terry Doolan travelled from Broken Hill to participate in the Tent Embassy's Sovereignty Gathering. Australia Day meant nothing to him, he said.
"It's Invasion Day because they have and they still are killing a lot of our people. They're making it tough for us to survive," he said.
"It doesn't matter what you throw at us, you'll always see blackfellas survive. They never killed us."
Melbourne man Steve Walsh rode his motorcycle to Canberra to support the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
"We're all together in this. It doesn't matter whether it's in Canberra or Sydney or Melbourne, we're all together," he said.
"Hopefully sooner than later we'll be making our changes to rules, regulation and Parliament."
Thursday marked the first Australia Day where Kambah man Dave Scorpecci did not celebrate with a beer and a barbecue. Instead, he took his four-year-old son Sebastian to the Tent Embassy in a show of solidarity to indigenous Australians.
He said his feelings about January 26 changed after he underwent cultural awareness training at his work and realised "we've been fed a bunch of lies".
"Instead of being in a sea of Australian flags I decided we'd come here and show our respects and show them we are here for them and we're all brothers," he said.
With AAP
