More than 42,000 protesters descended on New Zealand’s parliament to oppose a law that would reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with Māori people.
Marchers crowded the streets of capital Wellington on Tuesday with flags aloft at the end of a nine-day hīkoi, a peaceful rally, that had made its way through the country with the air of a festival.
Act, the political party that introduced the Treaty Principles Bill, argues there is a need to legally define principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which has been fundamental to race relations.
Its core values have been woven into laws in an effort to redress the wrong done by British colonisers.
Act party leader David Seymour - who is Māori - dismissed opponents as wanting to stir up fear and division.
He told BBC News: “My Treaty Principles Bill says that I, like everybody else, whether their ancestors came here a thousand years ago, like some of mine did, or just got off the plane at Auckland International Airport this morning to begin their journey as New Zealanders, have the same basic rights and dignity.”
But activists, opposing Seymour’s move, say it will spell constitutional upheaval, take Māori rights away and has already provoked divisive rhetoric about people who are still disadvantaged on almost every social and economic metric, despite attempts by the courts and lawmakers in recent decades to rectify inequities caused in large part by breaches of the treaty.
On Thursday, parliament was brought to a temporary halt by MPs performing a haka amid growing anger.
Opposition party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke began the traditional ceremonial group dance after being asked whether her party supported the bill.
Among the tens of thousands of marchers, Shanell Bob told reporters: “We’re just fighting for the rights that our tūpuna, ancestors, fought for.
Using the Māori words for children and grandchildren, she added: “We’re fighting for our tamariki, for our mokopuna, so they can have what we haven’t been able to have.”
Some had travelled the length of the country over the past nine days.
For many, the turnout reflected growing solidarity on indigenous rights from non-Māoris.
The bill that marchers were opposing is unpopular and unlikely to become law, but it became one of the biggest protests New Zealand has ever seen.
Police said 42,000 people - led by Māori Queen Ngā Wai hono i te pō - tried to crowd into Parliament’s grounds, the Beehive, with some spilling into the surrounding streets.
