A bill aimed at ending long-standing rights from the indigenous population has fuelled this year’s heated events.

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.

The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand Their population stands at around 16.5% of New Zealand's total. They arrived in New Zealand between 1250 and 1300 CE.

The national holiday marks the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between Maori chiefs and colonising British forces, widely seen as the birth of modern New Zealand.