We often talk about "the system" as if it’s a faceless machine, but our tūpuna and the prophets who walked this land before us had a much sharper name for it: Babylon. As Bob Marley famously sang, we need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, because while they can’t stop the time, they certainly try to steal our energy. Today, we stand at a crossroads in Taitokerau where we have to choose: do we stay in the "Leaky Bucket" of Babylon, or do we finally build Zion?

In the traditions of the Ringatū and Ratana movements—much like the Rastafarian faith—these names aren't just religious labels; they are descriptions of opposing economic and spiritual operating systems. Babylon represents the "Newtonian Error," the idea that we are all separate, isolated particles just trying to grab what we can. In modern Northland, Babylon looks like the log trade: we export 61% of our raw timber—our "embodied energy"—to the other side of the world, receiving fiat currency that we immediately spend on imported goods. It’s a state of high Entropy (disorder) that leaves our roads broken and our whānau struggling while the "order" is realised offshore.

A shared signal

I was driving out to Mt Manaia with some whānau the other day, just soaking in the views of our beautiful hills. We were listening to a song by Unity Pacific, and it hit me just how much of our story here in Taitokerau is tied to a land thousands of miles away.

Most people see the red, gold, and green flags at Waitangi or during our festivals and think it is just about the music. But if you look deeper, those colours are not just a fashion choice. They are signals of a deep connection, what we might call an invisible thread, that links our struggle for sovereignty here to a global movement.

Prophets and promises

This connection did not start with reggae music in the 1970s. It goes back much further. In the 1800s, our own prophets like Te Kooti and Ratana were reading the Bible through their own eyes. They did not see a story about a foreign people needing "saving" by the British. They saw themselves.