New Zealand's parliament was brought to a temporary halt by MPs performing a haka, amid anger over a controversial bill seeking to reinterpret the country's founding treaty with Māori people.

Hundreds of people on Monday set out on a nine-day march to New Zealand's capital of Wellington in protest over legislation that would reinterpret a treaty at the heart of race relations in the Pacific country.

The Te Pāti Māori MPs began a haka during a vote for the legislation that would reinterpret a 184-year-old treaty between the British and the Indigenous people of New Zealand that some say is discriminatory.