Why are New Zealand’s Maori protesting over colonial-era treaty bill?

Members of the Maori community march through the streets in a protest rally to criticise the government for its policies affecting the Indigenous Maori population in Wellington, New Zealand on November 19, 2024 [Sanka Vidanagama/AFP]

A fight for Maori rights drew 42,000 protesters to the New Zealand Parliament in the capital Wellington on Tuesday.

A nine-day-long hikoi, or peaceful march – a tradition of the Maori – was undertaken in protest against a bill that seeks to reinterpret the country’s 184-year-old founding Treaty of Waitangi, which was signed between British colonisers and the Indigenous Maori people.