The New Zealand Parliament has voted to impose record suspensions on three lawmakers who did a Maori haka as a protest. The incident took place last November during a debate on a law on Indigenous rights.
New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday agreed to lengthy suspensions for three lawmakers who disrupted the reading of a controversial bill last year by performing a haka, a traditional Maori dance.
Two parliamentarians — Te Pati Maori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi — were suspended for 21 days and one — Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, from the same party — for seven days.
Before now, the longest suspension of a parliamentarian in New Zealand was three days.
How is that relevant to who can and can’t discuss Indigenous rights though? Surely the more people in the world who care about Indigenous rights, the better.
To answer your question the US has about 5 out of 435 members, Canada has about 12 out of 343 members. New Zealand has about 33 out of 123 members which is obviously a much larger proportion of their total.
I will never understand why so many Canadians and Americans seem so unaware of one anothers’ Indigenous rights movements. You are neighbouring countries and some of your Indigenous nations are cross-border.