Indigenous "Haka" chants boomed across New Zealand's capital Wellington, as tens of thousands of people rallied against a bill that critics say would alter the core of the nation's founding treaty and dilute the rights of Maori people.

A fight for Maori rights drew 42,000 protesters to the New Zealand Parliament in the capital Wellington on Tuesday. A nine-day-long hikoi, or peaceful march – a tradition of the Maori – was undertaken in protest against a bill that seeks to reinterpret the country’s 184-year-old founding Treaty of Waitangi,