New Zealand’s Parliament Suspends Maori Lawmakers Over Haka Protest

New Zealand’s Parliament on Thursday suspended three opposition lawmakers over their performance of the haka, a traditional Māori dance, as a protest while the body was considering a contentious bill last year.

In a party-line vote, lawmakers voted to suspend Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, the co-leaders of the Te Pāti Māori party, without pay for 21 days. Another member of the party, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, was suspended for seven days.

The penalties were the harshest ever handed down to New Zealand lawmakers and came as the country has been retreating from a decades-long push to support the rights of Māori, its Indigenous people. It has also in recent years been engaging in an increasingly fraught debate about the place of Māori culture in public life.

The bill that drew the lawmakers’ protest was put forward by a member of the governing coalition, the most conservative government in a generation. While it was destined to fail in Parliament, it became symbolic of what opponents characterized as the government’s anti-Māori agenda.

During a reading of the proposed legislation in November, when the speaker asked Ms. Maipi-Clarke how her party would vote on it, she stood up, began to perform the haka and tore up what appeared to be her copy of the bill.

She moved onto the floor of the chamber and continued the performance, joined by Mr. Waititi and Ms. Ngarewa-Packer, as well as Peeni Henare, a Labour Party lawmaker who is Māori. The speaker, Gerry Brownlee, temporarily stopped the session, and Ms. Maipi-Clarke was suspended for a day over the protest, which Mr. Brownlee described as disrespectful.