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J. Pouwer Cargo Cult As Countervailing Ideology In: Bijdragen J. Pouwer Cargo cult as countervailing ideology In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 144 (1988), no: 4, Leiden, 523-539 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access J. POUWER CARGO CULT AS COUNTERVAILING IDEOLOGY With reference to: Patrick F. Gesch1, Initiative and initiation; A cargo cult-type movement in the Sepik against its background in traditional village religion, Studia Instituti Anthropos No. 33, St. Augustin: Anthropos-Institut, 1985,347 pp., Maps, Figures, Tables, Plates. In the obscure, misty light of dawn on the 7th July, 1971, a long line of three hundred men, including two white reporters and an observer team of the University of Papua New Guinea, climbed the path to Mount Rurun (1178 m), the most prominent peak in the Prince Alexander Range, west of Wewak in the East Sepik Province of PapuaNew Guinea. The participants worked under the bidding of two leaders to see that two bulky, 80 kg cement blocks, which had been dug out previously, were securely fastened to long carrying poles. In the tense, expectant air, muffled by the fog, some brief speeches were made, but it was not long before the first set of carriers seized the poles and set off down the 1. Father Gesch (S.V.D.), born in Townsville, Australia, in 1944, spent five years (1973- 1978) as a parish priest in the area, residing at Negrie Mission Station, 5 km. west of Yangoru Patrol Post. Within a pastoral context he 'followed a pattern of cultural discussion with village groups two or three times a week' (p. 8). He attended and enquired into festivals, marriages, births, deaths and initiation ceremonies. After some time of library research, he returned to the field for a year of intensive field research and a minimum of pastoral duties from July 1980 to July 1981. He then stayed in and joined households of three villages which had special cult centres for the movement. These centres remain to the present time in two of them. His conversational ability in the vernacular was not extensive. Accordingly, most of his research was conducted through the medium of Tok Pisin, in which all Yangoru villagers, apart from a few old women, are fluent. Transcriptions of ten interviews or meetings — with a nun, a Patrol Officer, four missionaries and 11 Papua New Guineans closely involved in the movement, including Daniel - have been added to the book in appendices. It is evident that Father Gesch has an intimate knowledge of the movement as a process, covering at least 15' years. Het is also well aware of the ethics of his research. In my synopsis of the movement, I have followed Gesch' 'text' very closely, so that the wording of the summary owes much to the author. DR. J. POUWER retired from his position in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Nijmegen University, in 1987. Previously he was Foundation Professor of Anthropology, Victoria University, Wellington. His address is Zwanenveld 38-09, 6538 XR, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. x. Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access 524 J. Pouwer mountain at the brisk pace of men used to carrying pigs in this manner. Coming down into a village below the fog and into the full light of day, they passed before the eyes of a great many silent groups of people counting rosary beads, who occasionally and reverently touched the cement markers and made efforts to scrape a memento of clay off the swaying blocks. At some stage an old man headed the solemn procession with an opened copy of the New Testament. A phalanx of six thousand men from all over the place in the East and West Sepik Provinces proceeded to the headquarters of the Patrol Post at Yangoru, and laid .{heir two burdens down at the feet of two government officials. The officers received the blocks with extreme casualness, and bid the people to disperse. The latter did so, but then in line with earlier requests from their own leaders. This event had been prepared for by years of discussion and preceding events. It took place under the scrutiny of many thousands of observers. It was widely publicized by the press and radio. The Post Courier had announced already on 17th May 1971 that 15,000 people would watch cargo cult rites involving human sacrifice. The massive interest, cross- cutting local and provincial boundaries with an amazing speed, made it abundantly clear that the event, or rather the 'happening', articulated some of the most deeply-held desires and hopes of the people: to participate publicly, fully, and as equal partners in the acquisitions of modern times, undisclosed by the white men, who kept the secret to themselves. Removal of the cement blocks, the foundations of a marker put there by a surveyor in 1932 and further developed for radio distance measuring purposes by the Australian and U.S. Air Forces in 1952, meant the lifting of a curse. The curse had prevented Mt. Rurun, the 'mother' of many peoples, who gives 'milk' (susu, Tok Pisin for 'suste- nance') to them (Camp 1983:79), from supporting them. The impov- erished state of gardens, of fish and of game was considered to be the direct result of an unauthorized intrusion by the foreigners into the sacred abode of ancestral spirits. Removing the blocks/the curse, however, also meant ushering in the new era of material and spiritual abundance, the return of the dead. Hundreds of American planes would arrive with cargo. Black men would gain superiority over the whites by a change of skin colour (Camp 1983:80). Birds would fly upside down - a reversal of the present state of affairs. All men would sit down together and all the tribes would be at peace. The expectation of peace between Papua New Guineans was felt to have been fulfilled during the events of July 1971, when people came from Madang, the West and the East Sepik, and even from Papua south of the Central Range to be 'in it' (Camp 1983:81). Mt. Rurun was considered the centre of the world. It was now a place where one could talk to any distant person in the world by radio and telephone, just sitting under the frame marker (p. 33). Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 525 The removal of the cement blocks in 1971 was not the first one: a block was lifted on the night after Christmas (!) 1969. At this initial stage only the locals, in particular seven villages, were involved. There was a big festival that night. The local traditional and modern elites were invited to attend a marvellous rite of access to the abundance of modern times (p. 35). They were led inside a house and made to stand facing a lamp. They then called out for money to appear as instructed, and coins began to rain on them from the roof. (One of the guests, a MoBr of one of the leaders, defied instructions and looked behind him. He thought he saw a man from outside the district, convicted earlier for cargo cult 'fraud', throwing the coins to the roof.) There was an all-night dance, to finish at dawn, when the ancestors would return with the cargo. After some delay because of rain brought about by adversaries of the move- ment, a cement block with the inscription 'Prince Alexander' was re- moved from the peak and carried to the hamlet of one of the leaders. The police moved in quickly on Boxing Day. Daniel, one of the two 'pro- phets', saw himself as Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He and Matias, the prime leader, together with seven followers were sentenced to from two to six months' jail for assaulting an officer and obstructing the police (there was a scuffle). In prison, Matias, the 'ideologist' of the movement and a classificatory MoBr of Daniel, claimed to have had visions of cargo placed under the marker, and that he,like Christ, would spill his own biood. After two days he would rise again (p. 28). Obviously the imprisonment turned the two leaders into martyrs. After being released, they stepped up the campaign and established a wide interlpcal and intertribal network of representatives (komiti). The movement mushroomed and reached its peak on 7th July 1971, as described. On Sunday (!) 1 lth July Matias had a third marker removed. He wished this to be an action demonstrating the unity of Papua and New Guinea. The country was given a new name: Papina (77). So the movement widened its scope from local to national in three steps. Significantly, the U.S. order of night and day was then adopted, night being called 'day', local day featuring the greeting 'good night to you' (cp. 78). This description of an ordinary cargo cult, one of the many reported widely from the Sepik area and.from Melanesia, quoted from and paraphrased after Gesch, conforms with the descriptive features of cargo cults listed earlier by Jarvie (1964:65-66). Gesch mentions Jarvie but does not refer to his 'checklist': ( 1) cargo cults are usually founded by a single prophet with a charis- matic personality who had no special standing in the society prior to the cult; ( 2) most of the prophets, like everyone else in their society, are hardly educated and seriously misinformed about the working of western society outside Melanesia; Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access 526 J.
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