Does anyone know if the old story of South Pacific Islanders who worshipped cargo-planes and even built palm frond duplicates is true? I do remember seeing an old Life magazine photo of one such airplane replica but for all I know it was taken in front of the Waikiki Hilton. Has there been any documented research of anything of the sort actually happening?
It certainly is true. If you look in anthropologist Marvin Harris’ book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches you’ll find plenty of first-hand references. I also like Harris’ explanation of the behavior, which is reasonable and not condescending.
Footage of the Cargo_cuilters was used in TV specials on Van Daniken, for obvious reasons.
A much more interesting use is in the Larry Niven/Steven Barnes sf novek Dream Park.
A horrible oversimplification of a complex occurence; try here:
http://www.nthposition.com/places_cargo.html
There have been several books on the subject. The first one was
The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia by Peter Worsley (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957).
Also:
Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements: Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements. Edited by G.W. Trompf. (Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990).
The newest one is:
Cargo Cult as Theater: Political Performance in the Pacific by Dorothy K. Billings (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002).
But the funnest one is:
Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond by Lamont Lindstrom (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993).
Lindstrom goes beyond anthropologizing the Melanesians by turning the anthropological spotlight on the Cargo Cult kraze in our own society; he looks at how Cargo Cult has become a worldwide fascination and how it spawned all kinds of takeoffs in the First World (like the rock band named Cargo Cult). He asks what it is about the Melanesian Cargo Cult that is so fascinating to us. Or at any rate, its “oversimplified” public image.
I seem to recall seeing an extensive article on cargo cults in National Geographic some 10-20 years ago. Sorry I can’t pin it down any closer than that.
The Jon Frum Movement is an active cargo cult on Tanna, Vanuatu.
Emphasis mine. I think it’s pretty obvious who Jon Frum was: An American Red Cross worker attached to a military unit during WWII who gave the natives supplies during the war and then, mysteriously (to natives with no perspective beyond their own island), left to the Great Beyond.
Join the Red Cross. Become a Messiah.
Here is a better view of the Movement’s flag (`John Frum’ is apparently a variant spelling). – Note similarity to the US flag.
Personal note: I think this is just fascinating, and I half-wonder if it’s not an elaborate prank or publicity stunt. Some people rail against American cultural hedgemony, but here’s an example of us creating an entire religion in modern times. The beliefs of the Melanesians are no more weird or unnatural than the beliefs of Millenialist Christians, but the Melanesians are awaiting the return of a man who may well be still alive.
Well, they have a better chance of meeting Jon than Jesus.
Have any of the soldiers returned to those islands since the war and the cult sprang up?
Tuckerfan: Americans and Europeans in general have tried to eradicate the Jon Frum religion, but the Tannans think it’s yet another attempt by the Colonialists to screw them out of what’s theirs (in this case, the cargo). Vanuatu wasn’t liberated until 1980, so the natives turned Jon Frum into the man who would drive the oppressors away.
The way the faithful see it, Christians have been waiting 2,000 years for their savior, and they’ve only been on hold fifty.
Why the surprise? Scientology is even newer and has far more adherents.
I remember Movietone type newsreels of the Cargo Cults during the mid to late 1940s. I was less than ten years old at the time but I distinctly remember feeling—what? Sympathy? Empathy?–for those people. The newsreels treated the subject with an air of condescension, which I thought was completely unwarranted. We (the allied forces) showed up on their islands, liberated them from the Japanese occupation, which I understand was quite harsh, and showered them with more “stuff” than they had ever dreamed existed. When the was was over, we steamed away and the supply of stuff (Cargo) dried up. When we didn’t return with more cargo, the islanders turned to magic in an attempt to get us and our cargo back again.
I wasn’t aware that any of these cults still existed.
As a young fellow of about ten in the late forties, you had exceptional insight in order to have watched and understood that program.I wonder if it could still be seen? Perhaps it is on a deteriorating reel of film in a can in a warehouse. Today, it would be regarded as a documentary on History Channel. I fear it would not reach the broad population. Maybe a great movie could be made from it. It would be an eye opening insight into religion
I know this is a very old thread, etc., however the briefest search of Cargo Cult on YouTube yields several interesting results, the first being a BBC Documentary.
It was a long time ago, but I am sure that we read about this cult when I was at school in the 50s.
Of course, the idea that, if we do something different than what we’re doing now, a messiah will come and make life much better is not unique to Pacific Islanders. We’ve seen the same sort of ideas in the Native American Ghost Dance, the Pueblo Revolt in what is now New Mexico, the Righteous and Harmonious Fists in China, and the Xhosa cattle killing in South Africa. Religious ideas like this are not uncommon among oppressed peoples. You see claimants of being the Messiah (or something like it) in Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism at various times in history, too.
Of course, the idea of sympathetic magic is even more universal. There’s a theory that cave paintings were an attempt to bring good luck in hunting by depicting a successful hunt.
Is building a model of a cargo plane really that much more bizarre than attempting to fight off a well-armed colonial power, or killing the cattle that your livelihood depends on? It’s probably less dangerous, at least.
I just realized most business plans that companies put together are exactly this. A seriously interesting thought.
I personally think that the theme of light that you find in some winter holidays, notably Christmas, Hanukkah, and Diwali, may come from a form of sympathetic magic. We’re lighting lights in our homes, to encourage the sun to come back at a dark time of year. Of course, these customs have picked up other interpretations over the millennia, as customs do.
New religious movements are not unique to Pacific Islanders, or to “primitive” societies, either. We’ve seen some examples right here in the US in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Pretty much all religions probably have some customs that seem bizarre to outsiders.
Talking about cargo cults as a ridiculous thing has a function, too. It can be a way of justifying colonialism and sending out missionaries- “look at this ridiculous thing those people are doing”.
Heck, that’s the operating idea behind upper-level managers at a large percentage of western corporations (or other large organizations).
The Search for Michael Rockefeller has a minute or two about cargo cults. Unless you want to stream the documentary for the main subject there would be no reason to mention it. One comment became the obligatory take-away quote; ‘Don’t ever tell a Asmat chief to “eat me”’.
The belief that a particular person is the son of God, an incarnation of God, or a prophet with a special connection to God is hardly unique to Pacific Islanders. Christianity, some forms of Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam share beliefs like this.
Here is another variant of a Cargo Cult that is very odd indeed.
This tribe seem to venerate Prince Philip, the husband of the Queen of England as a God who emerged from a volcano on their island. It seems to be traceable back to a Royal visit is 1974. An anthropologist was engaged to try to explain how this belief took hold and who observes the shopping habits of the consumer obsessed developed world are no less of a cargo cult.
However, the cultural exchange seems to work both ways. The islanders seem to have given the world the idea that it might be fun to jump of a large structure with ropes tied around your ankles - the bungee jump. It seems to have taken root in the culture of young travellers in search of adrenaline sports.I saw the reality TV program about the islanders visiting the UK and eventually meeting Prince Philip. They became the anthropologists attempting to understand the ways of the bizarre English tribe.
Their beliefs do not seem very strange compared to other religions. I wonder if they got the messianic character of their belief system from the Christian missionaries?