REFLECTIVE INSIGHT #028 - DON’T TRADE AWAY OUR LAND OR OUR FUTURE: T.W. RATANA’S POTATO, FLOUR, AND SUGAR WARNING
A Simple Warning for Our Survival
There’s a prophecy from the prophet T.W. Ratana that has been weighing heavily on my heart lately. On the surface, it sounds like a simple talk about groceries, but when you look closer, it’s a serious warning about the survival of our people.
Ratana warned his followers never to barter away their long-term future for cheap things that don’t last. He spoke of a time when our land, our actual life force, would be traded away for everyday items like "flour, sugar, potatoes," or "flour, sugar, tea, and tobacco." This wasn't just a lesson about what to keep in the kitchen pantry; it was a warning about how our local wealth slips right through our fingers. He saw a future where we would give up our ability to grow our own food and look after ourselves, trading it for cheap, imported goods that leave us empty in the end.
Making vs. Consuming
The way we look at things here in the North, the things we grow ourselves, like the potato or the kūmara, represent Indigenous Production. This is about what we plant, what we create, and the energy we keep within our own community borders. Growing our own food builds life and order. When we make things for ourselves, we are fixing the soil and ensuring that our well-being is in our own hands.
On the flip side, things like "flour and sugar" represent Imported Consumption. These are goods that come entirely from the outside. They give us a quick burst of energy, but ultimately lead to dependency and decay because we can’t make them ourselves. If we’re exporting our raw logs and our best young talent to the cities, only to buy back plastic junk and sugary food from overseas, we are trapping ourselves in a losing game.
The Leaky Bucket of the North
We see this leaky bucket in action every single day across Te Tai Tokerau. We cut down our trees and send them straight offshore on big ships as raw logs. In return, we get electronic money that we immediately spend on imported petrol, groceries, and electronics.
The real manufacturing work and wealth creation happen somewhere else, while our towns are left with low-wage jobs and environmental damage. This process drains our life force (Mauri Mate), and it’s a dead-end street. Ratana’s prophecy is a direct challenge to stop the leak. It’s an invitation to stop being passive buyers who only consume what a broken system hands us, and start becoming master builders who create our own abundance.
Securing Our Collective Future
How do we honor this ancestral prophecy today? We do it by building Te Ōhanga Mauri, our own healthy economy of life force. We do it by supporting local, circular projects like the Ngāwhā Innovation Park, where our communities use their own local geothermal energy to dry their own timber and grow their own food. We do it by realising that our land is an ancestor to be protected, not a piece of property to be traded away to the highest bidder.
The time for our restoration is getting closer. By choosing the "kūmara economy" of local production over the "sugar economy" of outside dependency, we ensure that the North remains a shining light for the rest of the world. Let’s stop trading our pride and mana for short-term consumer goods, and start investing in the assets that truly feed our souls and our future generations. Next time you are at the supermarket checkout or making a business decision, ask yourself honestly: Is this building our local “kūmara economy” (Te Ōhanga Mauri), or is it just adding to the outside “sugar economy” (The Leaky Bucket)?
