Depending on who you are or how you feel about Australia Day, January 26 can be a cause for celebration, protest or barely worth a comment.

Recent public debate has underscored how the day can be a source of pain or anger for many of Australia's Indigenous people.

For some, like author Claire G. Coleman, the most productive way to process this anger is by channelling it into their art.

For others, it's a day of sadness and mourning.

We asked four prominent Indigenous Australians, who've been a voice for their people through the creative arts, to tell us how they'll be spending January 26.

Here's what they told us.

A day of mourning

Ryan Griffen is the creator of science fiction TV series Cleverman, whose titular character is an Indigenous superhero.

Griffen says he finds the lead-up to January 26 draining.

Cleverman creator Ryan Griffen says January 26 is a day of mourning. ( ABC RN: Teresa Tan )

"Aboriginal people are constantly fighting for our culture throughout the entirety of the year — it just seems that this month in particular everything is just ramped-up," he says.

"For me, it'll never be Australia Day. It's a day of mourning for me and for many other Aboriginal people. To even express that and then be hit with such anger that we're expressing these views, it's just tiring."

This year, Griffen and his 12 year-old son will attend the Sydney Invasion Day rally.

"I talk to him a lot about the meanings of this day, and we get out and march," he says.

Then after the rally they'll spend the rest of the day "just relaxing."

"I love, as all parents do, to force my views and excitement onto our children. We'll go for the march in the morning and then I'll switch off social media and shut out everything that's going on outside the house," he says.

'I'd rather not be part of it'

Writer, poet, satirist and commentator Anita Heiss published a memoir in 2012 titled Am I Black Enough For You?

Like Griffen, Dr Heiss says she's tired, but she's also sick of explaining "why January 26 is problematic as a national day of celebration" every year.

She says the first time she was asked to comment on the changing the date debate was back in 1998.

Dr Anita Heiss plans on working on January 26. ( Supplied: Amanda James )

But with the date and associated debate remaining the same, today, like last year, she'll be working.

"I've decided to work on January 26 because, in the main, it is a day I'd rather not be part of," she writes on her website.

"I'll pop into the Yabun concert in Sydney after work and spend some time connecting with family and friends, reminding myself that we have survived as a strong, determined, proud people."

Yabun Festival started in 2001, and labels itself as the largest one-day gathering and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia.

Black flags everywhere

A Bardi Jabirr Jabirr woman and actress, Shari Sebbens is perhaps best known as one of the stars of musical dramedy The Sapphires.

Recently, she starred in a film called Australia Day.

Shari Sebbens usually attends the Invasion Day rallies. ( Getty Images: Frazer Harrison )

The film tells the story of three Australians whose lives end up entangled on Australia Day.

On January 26, Sebbens attends Invasion Day rallies, but that isn't her only form of protest.

"I'm kind of chuffed that all the stories I've been fortunate enough to tell have been some form of protest by their very nature," she says.

"I protest because I can — because it's the very least I can do for my mob, who can't take the day off, can't physically get to a rally, or need to practice self-preservation and not face the world that day.

"If I can't make it to a rally I'll surround myself with my mob.

"Black flags are up everywhere and we're blasting all the blackest music and laughing and talking and remembering our history and loving each other sick, because around this time of year it can feel like no one else does."

Sadness or anger

Writer Claire G. Coleman, a Noongar woman whose ancestral home is in Western Australia, says she used to have a "hard time working out what to do on Invasion Day."

The discovery of her Aboriginality coincided with what she describes as "the same time that people started celebrating Australia Day."

Writing has helped Claire G. Coleman channel her anger. ( ABC: Angus Kingston )

In the last two years, Coleman says she's started getting angry about Australia Day and has attended Melbourne's Invasion Day rallies.

She then goes to Balit Narrun Festival, a concert of Indigenous music.

This year she's taken her anger online, penning opinion pieces, including one for Indigenous X about the day.

"I think the time when we allow people to say incorrect things for propaganda against Aboriginal people has to end," she says.

"I haven't been picking arguments, I've been stumbling into them."

Writing and sharing this anger has proven cathartic to Coleman.

"I'm probably happiest this Invasion Day than I've been in years. It's like packaging up all the bad emotion and giving it to other people, which means anyone who reads my work gets to absorb the anger that I'm giving to them," she says.

This is the first January 26 since she published her acclaimed speculative fiction novel Terra Nullius, which is a strident statement against the very idea of terra nullius.

"I can hold onto that, that I've done this thing. I said to myself that I'll be happy and feel content with the way the world is going if I manage to change one person's thinking. I think I've gone well beyond that," she says.

"Until I got angry, I was sad. It was almost a choice — you can be sad or angry — I'm angry."