Cargo cults

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Cargo cults. The popular name for millennial movements in Melanesia. During the last 100 years, hundreds of these have come into being from Fiji to Irian Jaya, and also in other tribal cultures. Local myths of a golden age encourage prophets to announce the imminent return of culture heroes or ancestors bringing spiritual or material ‘cargo’ of the kind discovered through Western contacts. This will inaugurate a new era of human fulfilment and equality with whites. Some movements are religious in form, as with Manseren cults, the Vailala Madness, and Jon Frum. Others also attempt realistic development, as with Paliau and Yali, and the Peli and Pitenamu Societies.

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