Prompted by a surging Māori protest movement, for the past 50 years the courts of New Zealand, lawmakers and the Waitangi Tribunal -– a permanent body set up to adjudicate treaty matters -– have navigated the differences in the treaty’s versions and tried to redress breaches by constructing the meaning of the treaty's principles in their decisions.

By Lucy Craymer and Lewis Jackson WELLINGTON (Reuters) -Tens of thousands of New Zealanders rallied before parliament on Tuesday in one of the country's largest ever protests to oppose a bill that opponents say seeks to dilute the rights of Maori and threatens to set race relations back decades.

As tens of thousands of marchers thronged the streets in New Zealand’s capital Wellington, the column of people, flags aloft, had the air of a festival or a parade rather than a protest