Protesters dressed in traditional Māori attire performed hakas while marching alongside tens of thousands of people through the streets of the nation’s capital, Wellington, on Tuesday.

Booming Indigenous Maori "haka" chants rang out across New Zealand's capital on Tuesday, as tens of thousands rallied against a conservative push to redefine the nation's founding treaty. Protests have been swelling throughout New Zealand after a minor party in the conservative coalition government drafted a bill to redefine the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

New Zealand’s parliament was briefly suspended on Thursday after Maori members staged a haka to disrupt the vote on a contentious bill that would reinterpret a 184-year-old treaty between the British and Indigenous Maori.

As tens of thousands of marchers crowded the streets, the throng of people with flags had the air of a festival rather than a protest.View on euronews

Tens of thousands of people marched on New Zealand's parliament to oppose a bill that would reinterpret a 184-year-old treaty signed between the British and Indigenous Maori.

Tens of thousands of New Zealanders confronted parliament to protest a law to redefine a treaty between the Maori and Britain.

The protests have evolved into “a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonization had once almost destroyed,” the Associated Press wrote.