The Yali movement in retrospect: rewriting history, redefining ‘cargo cult’

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a definition of the term ‘cargo cult’ as formulated by Papua New Guineans from their personal experience of the colonial encounter. An examination of the negative connotations inherent in their interpretative reconstruction of the concept ‘cargo cult’ reveals that these resulted from a dialogue with western cultural constructions of ‘cargo cults’ which effectively discredited these movements. Interpreted in this way, the indigenous definition can also become the starting point for a reconsideration of the anthropological concept of ‘cargo cult’.

What Happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West

“…In addition to its academic use by anthropologists, the term spread widely to other written genres, from administrative reports on social trouble to newspaper articles and literary fiction. Finally, the term became part of the indigenous religious and political discourse in Melanesia (Hermann 1992(Hermann , 2004Jebens 2004cJebens , 2007Lindstrom 1993). The existence of cargo cults before the invention of the term may be rightly doubted, but they are now an established part of the academic and indigenous discourse and therefore a social reality.…”

Changing South-Pacific : Identities and Transformations

“…10 See Hermann (1992). 11 Hermann (1992). 12 See for instance Jorgensen (1991), Kempf (1992), or Josephidès (1985.…”

“…31 See Lattas (1992b). 32 See Ryan (1969), Billings (1983), Kilani (1983), Hermann (1992), Kempf( 1992). A. Strathern mentions the natives' yearning for wealth which, once in their possession, would put them on an equal footing with the Whites.…”

Cargo Cults, Cultural Creativity, and Autonomous Imagination

“…Recent reassessments (Clark 1992;Hermann 1992;Kempf 1992;Lattas 1992aLattas , 1992bLindstrom 1990aLindstrom , 1990b of the cargo cult literature have focused on exposing the Western cultural assumptions that have distorted our observations and understanding of the ethnographic phenomena-or perhaps have created a phenomenon where no such one exists. Lattas (1992a) has revealed how deeply anthropological discourse has been colored by metaphors of madness, pathology, and irrationality, tropes that have sustained the interests of colonial regimes and provided the rhetorical justification for intervention and suppression on humanitarian grounds.…”

“…So pervasive is this discourse that Papua New Guineans themselves have come to resent, and reject, this construction of otherness in the very term cargo cult. Elfriede Hermann (1992) shows how the popular and colonial understandings of cargo cults have led the people of Sor village (home of the Madang prophet, Yali, who is the subject of Lawrence's now famous study) to deny that they ever participated in cargo cults. They divide Yali's career into two parts in order to assert that during the first stage he recommended work and development, and that only later, when he was a disappointed and broken man, did he engage in cult-like activities.…”