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.
During a first reading of the proposal, when the speaker asked Māori lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke how her party, Te Pāti Māori, would vote on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, she stood up, tore up what appeared to be her copy of the legislation, and started performing a haka.
She was joined in the haka by other opposition members on the floor, as well as people in the gallery overlooking the chamber.
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