Thousands of marchers descended upon New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland on Wednesday as part of the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti (March for the Treaty of Waitangi) to call for Māori (New Zealand’s indigenous people) unity, and protest a law that seeks to alter the country’s constitutional foundations.

Organized by the Toitū te Tiriti (Honour te Tiriti) group and supported by Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party), protesters are currently making their way across the entirety of New Zealand’s north island to Parliament in Wellington. With them is a new generation of Māori activists rallying support for te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding constitutional document signed between Māori and the Crown in 1840. I caught the hīkoi (march) as it passed over Auckland’s harbour bridge to gauge the mood on the ground and opposition to government’s controversial Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill.

I arrived at 9:00 am to an unexpectedly energetic gathering, given that many of the marchers had already travelled over 400 kilometers in two days from Te Rerenga Wairua/Cape Reinga. Out-of-town whānau (extended families) gladly greeted one another as the park swelled with expectant marchers. We were let out systematically, in groups of 250 or less and under the watchful eye of hi-viz marshals and uniformed officers.

Kotahitanga (collective unity) – the air was replete with it. Elders armed with walking sticks, barefoot schoolkids in collared uniforms and parents – strollers in tow – determinedly made their way up the bridge and down the other side. The more confident marchers led the rest of us in waiata (song), both tangata whenua (people of the land, Māori) and tauiwi (non-Māori) joining in. They tread in the footsteps of those who made the same laborious journey in 2004 and 1975.

Nine years earlier, thousands took to the bridge after the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004’s passing, which extinguished by and large the right of Māori to have their claims to customary title of the foreshore and seabed investigated by the courts. Despite the 2004 Act’s replacement with a statutory scheme that provides successful applicants with limited ownership rights in the form of a ‘customary marine title’, it is a wound that never fully healed. A government announcement earlier this year broadcasting their intention to reverse a decision of the Court of Appeal and increase the threshold for Māori to obtain title has only made matters worse.

A further twenty-nine years back, protesters passed through Auckland to present a 60,000-signature-strong petition to Parliament and protest the alienation of Māori land, led by a then 79-year-old Dame Whina Cooper. The sense of past among marchers was palpable.

Fastened to bamboo stakes, wooden dowels or fishing rods (my favorite) flew tino rangatiratanga (high chieftainship) and United Tribes flags, key symbols in Māori sovereignty movements. They adorned the bridge with brilliant red, white, black and blue plumage, flapping madly in the northeasterly breeze.

New Zealand’s largest bridge swayed eerily underfoot as we reached its crest. Two hundred feet below, a protest flotilla crisscrossed the width of the harbor, its sailors waving and distantly calling out to us. Beeps of support from trucks, busses and cars in the adjacent lanes of traffic were almost incessant. I did, of course, cop my fair share of disapproving looks from commuters, some sour and others a mix of bewilderment and surprise.

Reaching solid ground I paused to let the swaying fade and watch protesters around me embrace, shed tears and rest their legs on the motorway barrier. Their hīkoi had only just begun; marchers were heading to gatherings at two significant sites of Māori protest: Bastion Point and Ihumātao, to be received by local hapū (subtribe) Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.

According to police, 5,000 took part in Wednesday’s hīkoi. Marcher and Labour MP Willie Jackson, who was ejected from Parliament the next day for delivering a message from hīkoi organizers during the Treaty Principles Bill’s first reading, counted 10,000. Based on drone footage taken at the protest, however, organizers estimated 25,000-35,000. On those numbers, the hīkoi would be the largest ever to have crossed the harbor bridge. My initial guess landed somewhere in the middle of those figures, but regardless, it seems unlikely that the hīkoi’s stop in Auckland will be easily forgotten.

The Treaty Principles Bill, one of the reasons protesters were out that day, seeks to ‘reinterpret’ the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. These principles are words and phrases intended to capture the spirit of the Treaty to enable its incorporation into law. Problematically, the proposed principles conflict with current jurisprudence and the text and spirit of te Tiriti/the Treaty itself. Marchers are aggrieved by the fact that the Bill has the effect of extinguishing, in a legal sense, the right of Māori to self-determination and sovereignty. Although the bill is almost certainly doomed to fail at its second reading in mid-2025, the Waitangi Tribunal has found that damage to the Māori-Crown relationship has already been caused.

Yesterday 42 Kings Counsel (senior solicitors and barristers) signed a letter to the Prime Minister calling for the Bill to be abandoned. They consider the Bill “wholly inappropriate as a way of addressing such an important and complex constitutional issue” and that “it is not for the government of the day to retrospectively and unilaterally reinterpret constitutional treaties.”

From my vantage point in the throng of marchers on Wednesday, the hīkoi was an impressive display of unity. Toitū te Tiriti’s message of kotahitanga (unity), carried by a new generation of Māori organizers, will resonate with many. As the convoy moves closer to Wellington, it looks to pick up even more steam, with an estimated 10,000 demonstrators turning out today in the central north island town of Rotorua. All eyes now turn to the capital for the hīkoi’s arrival in two days.