Tens of thousands of people have marched on the New Zealand parliament in Wellington to protest against a bill that critics say strikes at the core of the country’s founding principles and dilutes the rights of Māori people.

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.

As tens of thousands of marchers thronged the streets in New Zealand’s capital Wellington, the column of people, flags aloft, had the air of a festival or a parade rather than a protest.