Tens of thousands of people have marched on the New Zealand parliament in Wellington to protest against a bill that critics say strikes at the core of the country’s founding principles and dilutes the rights of Māori people.

The demonstrators oppose a law that would reshape the country's founding treaty between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown.

Protesters dressed in traditional Māori attire performed hakas while marching alongside tens of thousands of people through the streets of the nation’s capital, Wellington, on Tuesday.