Under the principles laid out in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, tribes were promised broad rights to retain their lands and protect their interests.

New Zealand’s Parliament was temporarily suspended on Thursday as Māori lawmakers performed a haka, a traditional group dance, demonstrating their community’s anger and fear over a bill that aims to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with its Indigenous people.

Hundreds of people on Monday set out on a nine-day march to New Zealand's capital of Wellington in protest over legislation that would reinterpret a treaty at the heart of race relations in the Pacific country.