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.

We need to have a hard kōrero about the numbers. The recent reports confirm what we have known in our bones for generations: the forensic economic loss to Ngāpuhi—the actual value of the land and resources stripped from our tūpuna—exceeds $20 billion. That is the debt.

But the political reality? The Crown is offering a settlement likely between $500 million and $800 million. They call this a "realistic range" because of the "Fiscal Envelope" and the relativity clauses with Tainui and Ngāi Tahu. If the Crown pays us what we are owed, it bankrupts the country. So, they offer us cents on the dollar.

This creates a fracture in our iwi. On one side, we have the "Blockers"—hapū in the Hokianga and Whangarei who say, "Keep your money, we never ceded sovereignty". They are standing on the Wai 1040 finding that our rangatira never gave away their authority. On the other side, we have the "Advancers"—hapū in the Bay of Islands and Whangaroa who say, "We need the resources now to feed our people". They are moving ahead to secure assets like Kororipo Pā and leverage the mandate.

For nearly two centuries, we have been told that order must be imposed from the top down. Whether it’s a government department in Wellington or a centralised trust board, the message is the same: the "centre" knows best. But in Taitokerau, we know this is a "Bad Explanation" that has left our regions drained and our people waiting for permission to thrive.

The Insight: The Entropy of the Centre

Centralised systems—what I call the "Babylonian" model—are thermodynamically broken. In physics, trying to force order from a single point into a complex system creates massive "entropy" or disorder. Think of the "Runanga" or "Trust Board" models often imposed on us; they often create a "Brown Bureaucracy" that mimics the Crown, separating the resources from the actual flax-roots need.

When power is centralised, information gets lost. The managers at the top can never have the granular, local knowledge held by the whānau at the "edge" of the network. This leads to sub-optimal decisions, high energy costs for bureaucracy, and a system so fragile that one bad policy at the top propagates disorder everywhere.

I was standing on the side of the road near Maungatapere the other day, watching another line of trucks hauling raw logs toward the port. It’s a sight we’re all used to in Te Tai Tokerau. But if you look at those trucks through the lens of physics, you aren't just seeing timber. You’re seeing a massive export of embodied energy.

For decades, our home has been treated like a "Leaky Bucket." We send away the best of our whenua—the sunlight, the rain, and the soil nutrients that grew those trees over thirty years—and in return, we get a few low-wage jobs and some fiat currency that usually leaves the region the moment we spend it on petrol or power.