Free Republic

Indigenous lawmakers broke into a tribal dance to protest a bill in New Zealand's parliament.To reject a piece of legislation proposed by the island country's libertarian party, a bunch of Māori members of Parliament (MPs) staged a protest by busting out the "haka," a Māori war dance traditionally used to terrify enemies on the battlefield.Māori members of New Zealand’s parliament disrupted the passage of a bill that would reinterpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which uplifts Indigenous peoples. The MPs performed a haka—a traditional Māori dance and chant—causing the session to be suspended. pic.twitter.com/89VhB1aqAS— red. (@redstreamnet) November 14, 2024The disruption...

The Maori Party is already driving a larger and considerably more dangerous wedge into the New Zealand Left than anything so far inserted by the National Party. As it grows in strength and consolidates its already powerful grip on the Maori imagination, the Maori Party has the potential to split Labour into two hostile camps, aggravate racial sensitivities within the trade union movement, and push the Greens below the all-important 5% MMP threshold. The Left's vulnerability to the Maori Party is entirely of its own making. From the early-1980s, the critical "sites of struggle" for most progressive political activists shifted...