Earlier this week, tens of thousands of people converged on Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament in a show of solidarity against a legislative onslaught against Indigenous rights.
They had marched peacefully for nine days, in what Māori peoples call hīkoi, in an effort to stop the country’s new right-wing government from forcing through a bill that would dilute Indigenous influence on the government by reinterpreting one of its founding documents.
“Māori have been here, we are going to be here forever. You’re never going to assimilate us,” said Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn, one of the Māori activists who participated in the hīkoi. “This is a great time for revolution.”
Proponents describe the Treaty Principles bill as a push for equal rights for all citizens of Aotearoa, which is how Māori refer to New Zealand: an effort to define principles underlying the Treaty of Waitangi, an English-language agreement signed by some of the country’s colonizing founders and Indigenous Māori that gave the Crown the right to gover... Read more
