Speaker Trevor Mallard twice prevented Rawiri Waititi from asking questions in the debate room on Tuesday, insisting MPs can only ask a question if they are wearing a tie.
Waititi, 40, who became an MP for the first time in the election last October, wore a taonga, a Maori greenstone hanger.
When Waititi continues with his question after being stopped a second time, Mallard orders him to leave.
“It’s not about ties, it’s about cultural identity, mate,” Waititi said as he left the room.
Speaker Mallard said the ties were outdated, he said, but that an overwhelming majority of members had called for the rule to be maintained in consultations on the issue over the past few months.
The incident sparked a debate over colonialism in New Zealand, sparking outrage from around the world with # no2tie soon to be trending on Twitter.
Waititi told Reuters on Wednesday that he was not surprised by the speaker’s treatment because the Maori people had been dealing with this type of treatment for hundreds of years.
“Māori has not been treated equally in its own country, and indigenous peoples around the world have been discriminated against because of racist systems that hold our people in the second place,” he said.
“For us to stand up against submission, to stand up again for assimilation, to stand up against those who try to make us look, feel, make us think as they want us to think … it was to oppose it to stand up. “
Waititi wore the same clothes to parliament on Wednesday and this time he may speak.
“The noose has been removed from our necks, and we can now sing our songs,” Waititi said in the interview.
It has an 11% LGBTQI representation and 21% Māori representation. Parliament saw its first MP of African descent and of Sri Lankan origin after the October election.
But Waititi, who called tires “a colonial snare”, said there was still systemic racism in New Zealand, and it was a product of colonization.
Māori are overrepresented in prisons, the majority of children in state care are Māori, and poverty and unemployment are common in the community.
Asked to comment, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it was not something she had a strong opinion on, and that she had no objection to anyone wearing a tie in parliament or not.
“There are much more important issues for all of us,” Ardern said.