The new government recently announced it would dial back use of Māori language in government organisations, and scrap Māori Health Authority
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Protesters blocked traffic on key roads and lined streets in towns and cities while calling for the coalition to scrap plans to review the Treaty of Waitangi, the country’s 180-year-old founding document which was signed between the Crown and Māori leaders.
“We will not accept being second-rate citizens and being relegated backwards by this government,” Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the Guardian after a protest in Wellington where close to a thousand people marched on Parliament House.
During the rush hour commute in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, protesters gathered at key freeway entry points waving Māori flags and carrying signs, according to local media reports.
“All the gains we’ve had to beg for are about to be turned back 50 years and we will be forced to try again, said Melody Te Patu Wilkie, 52 who organised the protests in the west coast town of New Plymouth.
However, during the election campaign New Zealand’s now-prime minister and leader of the conservative National party, Christopher Luxon said a referendum on the co-governance would be “divisive and unhelpful.”
Te Pati Māori took its protest inside parliament as MPs individually came forward to swear allegiance to King Charles III, New Zealand’s head of state.
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