Crowds throng New Zealand’s Parliament grounds in support of Maori rights

“Just fighting for the rights that our tupuna, our ancestors, fought for,” Shanell Bob said as she waited for the march to begin

Thousands of people gather outside New Zealand’s parliament to protest a proposed law that would redefine the country’s founding agreement between Indigenous Maori and the British Crown Picture: Charlotte Graham-McLay/AP

Tens of thousands of marchers crowded the streets in New Zealand’s capital Wellington on Tuesday to oppose a lawthat would reshape the county’s founding treaty between the nation’s Maori people and the British Crown.

For many, it was about something more – a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonisation had once almost destroyed.