Thousands of people have joined a nine-day march to New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, to protest a contentious bill that redefines the country’s founding agreement between the British and the Indigenous Maori people,

Nearly ten thousand people took to the streets in New Zealand to protest the introduction of the controversial Treaty Principles Bill in Parliament. Critics said the bill, if passed, could reverse the rights and other protection mechanisms for the Indigenous Māori people.

The vote on the Treaty Principles Bill was interrupted on Thursday in new Zealand's Parliament after the country's youngest MP Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, staged traditional Maori dance and ripped apart a copy of a contentious bill.

The Treaty Principles Bill seeks to revise New Zealand’s foundational agreement with Maori people and is hugely unpopular, with even the prime minister deriding it.

The New Zealand Parliament was suspended after Maori members staged a haka to disrupt the vote on a contentious bill to reinterpret an 184-year-old treaty between the British and Indigenous Maori. The controversial legislation is seen by many Maori and their supporters as undermining the rights of the country’s Indigenous people,

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.