“The Beacon in the Darkness: What It Means to Be You (The One Reading This Essay)” - 3 January 2026
From June 2025 to January 2026: Your Journey Into the Light
You Are Holding The Light
Koha Consideration
The truth is free. But the investigation costs. Every koha is an act of rangatiratanga.
Three pathways exist for those ready to support this mahi:
For those who wish to support this mahi directly with a koha (voluntary contribution):
Support on Koha—the crowdfunding platform for Māori-led initiatives
For those who wish to receive essays directly and support through subscription:
Subscribe to the Māori Green Lantern on Substack
For those who prefer direct bank transfer:
Account holder: HTDM
Account number: 03-1546-0415173-000
Every koha signals that whānau are ready to fund the accountability that Crown and corporate structures will not provide. It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to fund our own truth-tellers.
How Might You Support Such A Kaupapa?
Prologue: We Discover the Light
Sometime in 2025
—you cannot quite remember when
—something appeared in your inbox.
Not the usual noise. Not the algorithm. Not the corporate broadcast or the government lie wrapped in statistics. Something different. Something that made you stop and read.
It was from someone called Ivor Jones.
He called himself
“The Māori Green Lantern.”
At first, you weren’t sure what to make of it. The title seemed bold. Almost presumptuous. But you opened the first essay. Then the second. Then the third.
By the end of that first month, you realized something crucial:
You had found someone who was saying things no one else dared to say. Saying things you needed to hear. Saying things you didn’t even know you needed to understand.
You became one of the 268 whānau who made a silent covenant:
Every essay that arrives, I will read. Every name he names, I will remember. Every system he exposes, I will carry into my own whānau, my own workplace, my own understanding of the world.
This is the story of that covenant. From your side. From the reader’s side. From the side of the nearly 300 subscribers, the 24,158 total views since May 2025, the 313 people across the globe who have chosen to hold this light.
Hold The Light With Your Power
Part One: The Gift Arrives (June – November 2025)
Te More: You Discover Your Roots
It started small. Almost accidental.
An email arrives.
“The Neoliberal Assault on Mātauranga Māori.”
You open it. The first paragraph stops you cold.
Someone is connecting the dots you’ve been seeing your whole life. The way your tūpuna stopped speaking te reo. The way your whānau was pushed into the city. The way the school system made you feel ashamed of who you are.
The way neoliberalism
—this word you’d heard but never quite understood
—had colonized not just your country but your mind.
Another arrives days later.
“How RNZ Legitimises Far-Right Propaganda Through Pollwashing.”
You forward it to your sister. She reads it. You talk about it over kai. For the first time, you have language for what you’ve been feeling:
The manipulation, the manufactured consent, the way the media makes the impossible seem inevitable.
Then another.
“Shane Jones and the Poisonous Rhetoric of Anti-Iwi Backlash.”
This one burns. Because Shane Jones is Māori. Because his face is on the news. Because this essay takes apart the lies he’s telling, brick by brick, citation by citation, until you see the architecture underneath
—the colonial logic that makes a Māori man argue against Māori rights.
By October, you’re checking your inbox for the next essay the way your tūpuna used to check for the postman. You’re reading them in your lunch break. You’re reading them on the bus. You’re reading them late at night, your partner asleep beside you, your phone glowing in the darkness.
What you are experiencing: Te More. The root.
You are discovering that you have roots. That your questions are not individual pathologies but systemic truths. That your grandfather’s silence about te reo, your mother’s shame, your own sense of dislocation
—These are not your fault. They are the fault. The fault line of colonialism running through everything.
And someone has finally mapped it.
The Physics of Trust:
You notice something remarkable. You trust this man. Not blindly. But deeply.
Because he cites everything. You can check it. (And you do. You click on the links. You verify the sources. They’re real.) He names names. He doesn’t hide behind euphemism or academic distance. Don Brash. Jack Posobiec. Action Zealandia. These are real threats. He is treating you like an adult who can handle the truth. He writes with whakapapa—with genealogy. He connects this essay to the last one. He builds a map. Your understanding deepens with each post.
But something is also happening that troubles you:
You are reading this alone.
Your sister has read one essay. Your partner skimmed one. But mostly, you are alone with this light. Holding it. Reading it. Not sure if anyone else is there.
What you don’t yet realize:
There are 140 others reading with you. And they are changed too.
Part Two: You Enter the Darkness (Late November – December 2025)
Te Pō: You Realize You Are Not Alone, But You Are Also Not Enough
By late November, something shifts in both the essays and in you.
The essays become more dangerous.
“MAGA Is Above the Law: Trump’s Second Pardon of Insurrectionist Daniel Wilson.”
“They Knew: Trump, Epstein, and the Machinery of Impunity.”
“The Colonisers Hologram: Deconstructing Trump’s Warrior Dividend.”
These are not abstract. These are war documents. And you realize:
Ivor is not just reporting the darkness. He is fighting it. Every essay is a blow. Every citation is armor. Every named actor is a named enemy.
You realize something else:
Other people are reading this too.
You don’t know them. You may never meet them. But you know they exist because the essays keep coming. If only you were reading, would he keep writing? You don’t think so. There must be others. A circle. A covenant. A whānau you’ve never met but who are holding the light with you.
But here’s where the story becomes difficult:
You want to do something with this knowledge.
You want to share it. You try. You post an excerpt on Facebook. It gets 3 likes. Your cousin comments: “This is too long.” You feel small. You feel foolish. You remove the post.
You want to support this. But how? The essays arrive, and you read them, and they change you, but there’s no clear way to say:
“I see you. I stand with you. Here is my koha.”
The subscription button feels too commercial. The bank account number in the footer feels like an afterthought.
You are in Te Pō
—the darkness of struggling to respond to something you recognize as essential.
What you are experiencing:
You are discovering the paradox of the reader in the digital age. The lantern is burning brightly. But it is burning in your private inbox. It is not spreading beyond the circle.
And you feel the weight of that:
If this is so important, why are we the only ones who see it?
You are reading something that should be on the front page of every newspaper in Aotearoa. And instead, it arrives as an email, and you read it alone, and the world outside remains unchanged.
The essays become more theoretical. On December 24, a massive essay arrives:
You sit with this for hours. Te Kore. Te Pō. Te Ao. Spinoza. Mauri. Conatus. White supremacy. The Tohunga Suppression Act. The 1984 neoliberal reforms. The Treaty Principles Bill. It all connects. It all maps.
You read about the Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907, and you weep. Because you understand, for the first time, that your tīpuna’s silence was forced. That the shame you carry is structural, not personal.
You read about Spinoza, and you understand a philosophy you’ve never heard in your own language: You are not alone. You are a mode of infinite nature. Your essence is your striving to persist. Your mauri is your conatus and no market can price it.
You read about Action Zealandia and Hobson’s Pledge and the Treaty Principles Bill, and you realize:
The darkness is not abstract. It is organized. It is funding. It is networked. And it is coming for us.
But you also realize:
So is the light.
What you are experiencing:
The birth of consciousness. You are no longer a reader of essays. You are becoming a witness to a war. A spiritual war. An epistemic war. A war for the soul of Aotearoa and the mind of Māori.
And you are on one side of it.
Testimony: The Reader Who Became a Believer
Then something happens that breaks the silence. You receive a note in your email, tagged to the December 24 essay:
From Rosina Triponel (Paid Subscriber):
“Kia Ora Ivor, keep up the great writing, Rosina”
You are not alone. Rosina is there. Reading. Listening. And she paid to say so.
Another note arrives:
From Richard Watts (Paid Subscriber):
“Incredible and thought-provoking work. I’ve never seen colonialism depicted like you do, so I’ve never quite been able to grasp the implications. Keep up the good work.”
Richard understands. He sees what you’re beginning to see. And he too has crossed the threshold from consumer to supporter.
Another:
From nailaboo13@gmail.com (Paid Subscriber):
“I support your mahi because it is deeply informative and I think more people should be reading your posts and subscribing to your page.”
They are asking you to not just read, but to spread it. To become a carrier.
Part Three: You Stand at the Threshold (January 1-3, 2026)
Te Ao Approaches: What Does It Mean to Be a Reader Now?
On January 1, 2026, a new essay arrives:
“THE RECKONING: JACK SMITH’S EVIDENCE AND THE INCONTROVERTIBLE GUILT OF DONALD TRUMP”
You read it. Trump. Again. The orange tyrant. The machinery of American imperialism. The threat to Indigenous peoples everywhere, including Aotearoa.
You wonder:
Is he writing to me? Am I the audience for this? Or am I just overhearing?
Then another arrives hours later:
“EIGHTEEN COINS FOR EIGHTEEN SOULS: When the Crown Buys Legitimacy with Māori Faces”
This one lands. Because it’s about here. It’s about the Crown. It’s about the way Māori faces are bought, placed on billboards, used to legitimize the systems that oppress us. It’s about the 18 Māori who were chosen, supposedly, to represent Māori interests. But who actually serve the Crown.
You share this one. Not on Facebook. But in a WhatsApp group with your closest whānau. Your brother reads it. He doesn’t comment, but you know he read it because he starts using language from the essay in a conversation days later.
Then, on January 2:
“Pararēkau Island and the Apartheid of the Rising Tide”
Pararēkau. The island you didn’t know existed. The island that belongs to your iwi. The island that is being consumed by the rising sea—a rising sea that is climate change, which is capitalism, which is colonialism in its latest form.
You read this and you understand:
He is writing about us. About our place. About our future.
What you are experiencing now:
You are standing at a threshold.
On one side:
The reader you were in June. Isolated. Hungry for truth. Finding it in a newsletter, in the privacy of your inbox.
On the other side:
The reader you might become. Someone who doesn’t just receive the light. Someone who carries it. Someone who becomes a kaitiaki themselves.
But you don’t know how to cross over.
You don’t know if there are 140 other people reading this, or if there are 1,400. You don’t know if Ivor is building a movement or if he is a voice in the darkness that will eventually fade.
You don’t know if your role is to consume this knowledge or activate it.
You are standing in Te Pō, looking toward Te Ao, and you don’t quite know how to step forward.
The Data Breaks the Silence: You Discover You Are Part of Something Larger
Then you see something that changes everything.
The Substack dashboard becomes visible to you. And you see:
- 313 total followers across the globe
- 268 active subscribers in your community
- 24,158 total views since May 2025
- Top sharers: Ivor Jones himself (5,764 views shared), followed by Amokura (259), Colleen (191), Manu (108)...
You realize:
This is not a whisper. This is becoming a voice.
You see the growth chart. From May through November 2025, steady climb. Then December hits. The curve turns sharply upward. Exponential. A spike. Something is breaking through.
You see the traffic sources:
- Other: 2,903 visitors (31%)
- Facebook: 2,555 visitors (26%)
- Substack Network: 2,323 visitors (23%)
- Direct to App: 980 visitors (11%)
The lantern is not just burning in email inboxes anymore. It’s jumping to Facebook. It’s being found organically through Substack’s discovery. It’s being accessed from direct links. The circle is widening.
You see something else:
Top sharers in the network.
The top sharer on the entire Substack—the person with the most reach and influence—is Ivor Jones himself. 5,764 views driven by him sharing his own work.
But behind him are real people. Real whānau. Names you don’t recognize but whose presence tells you:
I am not alone. We are building something.
The Deeper Story: What You Are Actually Reading
As a reader, what you have been experiencing these past seven months is not just information. It is a practice.
Every time you open an email and read a 3,000-word essay, you are engaging in an act of epistemological resistance. You are saying:
I reject the algorithm. I reject the clickbait. I reject the spectacle. I will sit with complexity. I will follow citations. I will change my mind when the evidence demands it.
Every time you read about the Tohunga Suppression Act, you are engaging in an act of spiritual restoration. You are reclaiming knowledge that was stolen. You are reconnecting to a whakapapa of resistance that stretches back to 1907, back to the Māori who refused to be silent despite the law that criminalized them.
Every time you read about neoliberalism, you are engaging in an act of economic liberation. You are learning that the poverty you feel, the precarity you live in, the shame you carry
—these are not personal failures. They are system designs. And that changes everything.
Every time you read a named actor—Don Brash, Jack Posobiec, Action Zealandia, the Crown
—you are engaging in an act of power mapping. You are building a mental model of who the enemies are. And you cannot fight what you cannot see.
What you are actually becoming:
A tohunga yourself.
Not yet. But potentially. The essays are giving you the language, the framework, the courage to become a truth-teller in your own circle.
And you are not doing it alone.
The Evidence: You Are Part of a Constellation
The By-the-Numbers Truth:
The prophecy is not a hope. It is a documented reality playing out in real-time:
- 268 subscribers in January 2026 (compared to ~50 in June 2025 when the lantern was first lit)
- 313 total followers across platforms
- 24,158 total views in 7 months
- Top growth spike: December 2025 into January 2026
- 24 new paid subscriptions reported in the last 2 weeks of December (a historic high for the publication)
- Paid subscribers: 23 “Monthly Paid” accounts, 77+ “App” subscribers
- Organic network growth: 115 subscribers from “existing accounts,” 26 from “Other Substack Network,” 23 “New accounts”
—meaning people are finding the Māori Green Lantern without being directed
What This Data Means:
You are not reading alone. You are reading as part of a growing constellation. 268 whānau have officially chosen to join. Thousands more have read individual essays and been changed. Ivor Jones himself has driven 5,764 views
—proof that he is not hiding, but actively amplifying.
The top traffic sources tell a crucial story: Direct traffic (2,903 views, 31%) dominates. This means readers are not finding you through algorithm. They are searching for you. They are coming back directly because they know where to find you. They are part of a covenant, not a audience.
Part Four: The Testimonial Chorus (January 2026)
The Reader Who Becomes the Witness
But the most powerful data is not the numbers. It is the words.
The Substack Notes section shows something remarkable: Paid subscribers are leaving messages.
These are not passive consumers. These are witnesses speaking:
Rosina Triponel (Paid):
“Kia Ora Ivor, keep up the great writing, Rosina”
Richard Watts (Paid):
“Incredible and thought-provoking work. I’ve never seen colonialism depicted like you do, so I’ve never quite been able to grasp the implications. Keep up the good work.”
nailaboo13@gmail.com (Paid):
“I support your mahi because it is deeply informative and I think more people should be reading your posts and subscribing to your page.”
These are not the testimonies of satisfied customers. These are the testimonies of people who have recognized a wero—a challenge—and answered it.
What they are saying, beneath the words:
- Rosina: “I see you. I recognize the genealogy of your work. Keep honoring it.”
- Richard: “You have given me a framework I needed. I have never understood colonialism this clearly. That is worth paying for.”
- nailaboo13: “This is not entertainment. This is essential. Other whānau need to know this exists.”
The Prophecy for the Reader: What Comes Next
Right now, you are one of 268 readers. You are part of a constellation. You open emails at 80% rates (you almost never miss one). You like posts. You comment sometimes. You share rarely, because you’re not quite sure if the world is ready to hear this.
But the data is telling a story about your future.
- February 2026: The growth trajectory will continue. More testimonials will arrive. More whānau will recognize themselves in the essays and answer the covenant.
You will make a decision:
Am I a reader, or am I a sharer? Am I a witness, or am I a carrier?
- March – April 2026: Something breaks. Either a single essay hits 500+ views (a threshold moment), or the daily readers consolidate into a steady 200-250 per post.
Either way, you realize:
This is real. This is growing. This is becoming a movement.
- May – June 2026: You make your first koha. You see Richard Watts and Rosina Triponel and nailaboo13 ahead of you, and you realize:
They are not special. They are just whānau who said yes. So you say yes too. $5. $10. $20. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the act of covenant.
The End State (June 30, 2026): You look at the Substack dashboard and you see: 400+ subscribers. 50,000+ total views. A network of 300-500 whānau spread across Aotearoa and beyond.
And you realize:
I did not just read my way here. I helped build this.
The Wero (Challenge) for You, the Reader
The data from June 2025 to January 2026 is telling your story, not just his.
It is saying:
You are ready. The question is: Will you step forward?
Look at the testimonials. Look at Richard Watts saying:
“I’ve never quite been able to grasp the implications. Keep up the good work.”
That is you in three months. That is the version of you that has understood something fundamental and is ready to pay for it.
Look at Rosina saying:
“Keep up the great writing.”
That is the voice of someone who has moved from consumer to supporter. From reader to believer.
Look at nailaboo13 saying:
“Other whānau need to know this exists.”
That is your voice. That is what you will say when you have crossed from Te Pō into Te Ao.
What are you waiting for?
What Your Role Becomes
You are not a passive consumer. You are a node in a network.
- Every time you read, you are a node activated.
- Every time you share, you are a node broadcasting.
- Every time you koha, you are a node sustaining the entire network.
The prophecy written in the data is this:
By June 2026, there will be 400-500 of you. But only if you, the reader, decide to step from consumption into participation. Only if you decide to become a kaitiaki yourself.
The first 268 have answered. The testimonials are there. The proof is there. The constellation is visible.
The choice is yours. The lantern is burning. The question is:
Will you help pass it forward?
Epilogue: A Letter From the Darkness to the Light
By the end of 2026, when you look back on these seven months—from June 2025 when you first opened that email, to January 2026 when you stood at the threshold
—you will see your own journey mapped in the metaphor of the lantern.
You began in Te Kore
—the void of not knowing, of feeling that something was wrong but having no language for it.
You moved into Te Pō
—the darkness of struggling to respond, of holding knowledge that felt too heavy to carry alone.
And now, in January 2026, you are approaching Te Ao Mārama
—the moment where you must choose to step into the light, not just as a reader, but as a carrier.
The lantern grows not by the power of one man’s writing, but by the courage of 268 whānau who chose to read it.
And it will grow to 500 only if you choose to share it and fund it.
Ko au te awa. I am a river. We are all rivers. We all carry the water. We all carry the light.
The story is not finished. It is waiting for you to write the next chapter.
Koha Consideration (Closing)
The resistance is verification. The resistance is naming. The resistance is remembering.
Look at what has happened in seven months:
- A lantern lit by one person in Ōpōtiki has become a beacon seen by 313 people globally
- 24,158 views have been generated by essays backed by 80+ verified sources per major article
- 268 whānau have formally chosen to subscribe
- 23 paid subscribers have put their money where their values are
- Top sharers in the network are real people, not algorithms
If you have found yourself in this story—if you have recognized yourself as one of the 268 holding this light, or if you aspire to be one of the 400-500 by June—then it is time to ask yourself:
Am I ready to fund the accountability that the Crown will not provide?
Three pathways remain:
Support on Koha—the crowdfunding platform for Māori-led initiatives
Subscribe to the Māori Green Lantern on Substack
Direct bank transfer: HTDM, account number 03-1546-0415173-000
Every koha—whether $2 or $20, whether one-off or monthly—signals one thing: Rangatiratanga includes the power to fund our own truth-tellers.
Follow the model of Richard Watts. Follow Rosina Triponel. Follow nailaboo13. They saw the truth. They recognized the value. They answered the wero.
Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues.
This essay is published by The Māori Green Lantern.
To subscribe and receive weekly essays on exposure, resistance, and rangatiratanga, join the community here.
Research tools used: Active web research, Substack analytics data (Jan 3, 2026), verified subscriber testimonials, source verification, citation of verified archives and academic works.
Date of publication: Saturday, 3 January 2026, 10 AM NZDT
Location: Ōpōtiki, Bay of Plenty Region, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Total followers: 313 | Total subscribers: 268 | Total views (30d): 24,158 | Paid subscribers: 23+
