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.

Nearly ten thousand people took to the streets in New Zealand to protest the introduction of the controversial Treaty Principles Bill in Parliament. Critics said the bill, if passed, could reverse the rights and other protection mechanisms for the Indigenous Māori people.

Hundreds of people on Monday set out on a nine-day march to New Zealand's capital of Wellington in protest over legislation that would reinterpret a treaty at the heart of race relations in the Pacific country.