New Zealand's rightward shift ignites mass protests from Indigenous Māori people

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: New Zealand has long been known  for its progressive policies, including efforts to correct and address historical wrongs  against its indigenous Maori population. But, as Ali Rogin reports, a new  right-wing government has reversed many of those policies and triggered  mass protests in the Pacific nation. ALI ROGIN: They marched for nine days in  the dark and through the rain, carrying portraits of generations past and the flag  symbolizing their right to self-determination.

Protesters from New Zealand's native Maori  community walked alongside non-indigenous New Zealanders to form what's thought to be  the largest March in the nation's history. The peaceful show of force culminated last month  in the capital, Wellington, outside Parliament. At the protest's heart, a bill proposing  changes to New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, or Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

MAN: To safeguard, to honor, to  protect Te Tiriti o Waitangi. WOMAN: Why are we doing this? Why are we bringing a bill in where there is already  a foundational document in there?

ALI ROGIN: Signed in 1840, the treaty  helped establish New Zealand's first colonial government and promised  land and other rights to Maori. CARWYN JONES, Lecturer, Te  Wananga o Raukawa: The Treaty of Waitangi is certainly seen as  being part of our Constitution. ALI ROGIN: Dr Carwyn Jones, a Maori legal  expert, says, for more than a century, the government mostly ignored the  native rights set out in the treaty, pushing many Maori off their  ancestral lands and into poverty.

ANNOUNCER: The column now seems to  number an excess of 4,000 people. ALI ROGIN: But decades of activism has  led to increased treaty recognition in New Zealand law and policy. Today, the treaty  is interpreted as a partnership between the government and its native people, who make up  almost one-fifth of the country's population.

CARWYN JONES: What that meant  in terms of the courts is that government has an obligation  to act as a treaty partner, to act with utmost good faith and reasonably  towards the other treaty partner, with Maori. ALI ROGIN: That's led to legal acknowledgment of  some Maori rights such as land rights, services that address Maori socioeconomic disadvantage,  and official status for the Maori language. CHRISTOPHER LUXON, Prime Minister  of New Zealand: I mean, let's be clear.

There's a strong depth of  emotion on all sides of this debate. ALI ROGIN: That progress, many believe,  is threatened by last year's election of the most conservative government  New Zealand has seen in a generation, a coalition of three parties led by former  airline executive Christopher Luxon. CARWYN JONES: It is one of the most  anti-Maori governments we have seen in a long time.

And this is the first  government in a long time which is deliberately rolling back on those rights  and taking us backwards in that respect. ALI ROGIN: In the last year, the government has shut down an agency  that addressed Maori health disparities, made it difficult for local governments  to have dedicated Maori representation, and scaled back the use of the Maori language by  government departments, but most controversially: MAN: Christopher Luxon, you are presiding over  the most racist piece of legislation in 100 years. ALI ROGIN: .

. . it helped introduce a bill into Parliament that would fundamentally  change how the treaty is interpreted.

DAVID SEYMOUR, New Zealand Minister for  Regulation: Well, my bill would replace those principles of so-called partnership that have been  invented by the courts over the last 50 years and say, no, no, no, for the most part, people would  have equal rights before the law in New Zealand. ALI ROGIN: David Seymour, who  himself has Maori ancestry, leads the right-wing backed party and  is the architect of the legislation that would effectively remove some  Maori rights recognized in the treaty. DAVID SEYMOUR: This bill, as a matter of  fact, takes nothing away from anybody, unless you're one of those people who believe  that you should have special rights over and above others as a consequence of your birth  and your ancestry.

And we just reject that. ALI ROGIN: The reaction was  loud, swift, and viral. .

. (CHANTING) ALI ROGIN: . .

. when some Maori lawmakers, led  by the country's youngest member of Parliament, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, launched into  a haka, a ceremonial dance, in protest. KASSIE HARTENDORP, Director, ActionStation:  When we saw her do that, we were all immensely proud and knew she was doing the exact  right thing on behalf of all of us.

ALI ROGIN: Kassie Hartendorp is a  Maori activist who helped organize the largest petition against the bill and  attended the protests outside Parliament. KASSIE HARTENDORP: Get people signing up to make  submissions against the Treaty Principles Bill. ALI ROGIN: She says removing unique  Maori rights ignores the historic disadvantages her community has experienced.

KASSIE HARTENDORP: We die younger.  We're more likely to be locked up in prison. We have every negative health  statistic you can imagine.

And so we do not live equal lives. We have not been  afforded equality. So to now be told that our sovereignty is standing in the  way of supposed equality is just a lie.

ALI ROGIN: In a recent poll, more New Zealanders  said they opposed the bill than supported it, but most said they don't know enough about it.  Many legal experts, including at New Zealand's Ministry of Justice, say the law could throw  the country into a constitutional crisis. CARWYN JONES: It would effectively be  the end of the treaty relationship.

If you undermine that relationship, then  you start to take away the legitimacy of government. You start to erode social  cohesion if you are not willing to give effect to a recognized Maori right  or to act in partnership with Maori. ALI ROGIN: Prime Minister Luxon has said he  only promised to support the bill through the first stage of review and that his  party will not vote for its passage.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Treaty issues are complex. They  have been negotiated, debated, discussed over 184 years. It's simplistic to assume that you can,  through the stroke of a pen, resolve all of that.

ALI ROGIN: While this law is likely doomed, after a year of rollbacks of Maori  rights, many fear what will come next. KASSIE HARTENDORP: Our current coalition  government is stripping back indigenous rights on a whole raft of laws. My concern for the future  is that a far right populist movement will grow in nature to be able to strip us of the sovereignty  that we were guaranteed to those 200 years ago.

Therefore, we need to make sure that we keep this up and make sure that they stick  to their word into the future. ALI ROGIN: An ongoing battle over New  Zealand's past in order to define its future. For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Ali Rogin.