A proposed law that would redefine New Zealand’s founding treaty between the British Crown and Māori chiefs has triggered political turmoil in the country.The bill is never expected to become law. But it has become a flashpoint on race relations and a critical moment in the fraught 180-year-old conversation about how New Zealand should honor its promises to Indigenous people when the country was colonized.

Booming Indigenous Maori "haka" chants rang out across New Zealand's capital on Tuesday, as tens of thousands rallied against a conservative push to redefine the nation's founding treaty.