STRATEGIC PAPER #107 - FROM BABYLON SCARCITY TO TE ŌHANGA MAURI ABUNDANCE

Seeing The Truth

For a long time, people have called Taitokerau a "poor" or "deprived" place. But that is just a bad story we’ve been told. It is what I call a "Babylonian" way of seeing things, where people look at our land and our whānau and only see things to use or take. They see the North through the eyes of scarcity, as if there isn't enough to go around.

But when we listen to Wairua Tapu and the wisdom of our ancestors, we see a completely different reality. We aren't poor; we are just poorly organised. We have been running on an old, broken "software" that teaches us we are all separate. This way of thinking is what allows our wealth to be sucked out of the North, leaving us to deal with the mess.

The Leaky Bucket

Think of our economy like a bucket that is full of holes. Right now, most of our timber is shipped away as raw logs. That means all the sunlight, rain, and hard work that went into growing those trees is sent overseas before we can even use its energy. We get a little bit of money, but the big profits and the good jobs happen somewhere else. We are left with the broken roads and the slash in our rivers.