New Zealand's indigenous community is rallying against a proposed bill that could strangle state support and stoke anti-Maori rhetoric, opponents say.

The New Zealand Parliament was suspended after Maori members staged a haka to disrupt the vote on a contentious bill to reinterpret an 184-year-old treaty between the British and Indigenous Maori. The controversial legislation is seen by many Maori and their supporters as undermining the rights of the country’s Indigenous people,