News brief

Protests against proposed New Zealand Indigenous law. Police say tens of thousands of people have arrived at New Zealand’s Parliament in protest of a proposed law that would redefine the country’s founding agreement between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown. Under the principles laid out in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which guides the relationship between the government and Māori, tribes were promised broad rights to retain their lands and protect their interests in return for ceding governance to the British. The new bill would set concrete definitions for the treaty’s principles and specify that those rights should apply to all New Zealanders, drastically reversing Indigenous rights.