11/18/2024

New Zealand’s Founding Treaty is at a Flashpoint

Why thousands are protesting for Māori rights

A proposed law that would redefine New Zealand's founding treaty between the British Crown and Māori chiefs has triggered political turmoil and a march by thousands of people the length of the country to Parliament to protest it.

The bill is never expected to become law. But it has become a flashpoint on race relations and a critical moment in the fraught 180-year-old conversation about how New Zealand should honor its promises to Indigenous people when the country was colonized -– and what those promises are.

Tens of thousands are expected to throng the capital, Wellington, for the final stretch of the weeklong protest march on Tuesday. It follows a Māori tradition of hīkoi, or walking, to bring attention to breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Associated Press.