Showing posts with label cargo cult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cargo cult. Show all posts

February 15 - John Frum Day in Tanna, Vanuatu

Posted on February 15, 2020

Today, on an island in the Melanesian / South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, Ni-Vanuatu men will wear old U.S. Army and Air Force uniforms in a parade. People with surnames like Lini and Salwai will wear green fatigues with name tags like Hill and Patterson. They will carry sharpened bamboo poles, and they will march and perform military maneuvers.


This parade is a notable feature of John Frum Day, a holiday that has to do with a mysterious figure - possibly a United States soldier - named John Frum. The reason why Frum is celebrated on this day, of all days, is that he is said to have promised to return to the island of Tanna on February 15 of some unnamed year. 

Note that John Frum was supposed to have first visited Tanna in 1939, more than 80 years ago, so he would be REALLY old if he were still alive.

And if he were actually a man.

Some people call John Frum a spirit being or a god. Some people believe he was a real and historic person. Some assume that he is a legend that was cobbled together from several historic and/or legendary characters. 

Still others shrug all of that speculation away as unimportant. They insist that the importance of John Frum is the inspiration he provides to Vanuatuans: the religion and/or the political party and/or the social movement that he inspired.

Some celebrating John Frum Day will be celebrating his
supposed connection to the United States, as well.
On the other hand, some Vanuatuan believers in John
Frum say that he doesn't have any connection with the
U.S. OR with the date February 15!


Frum is supposed to have mysteriously appeared on the island, telling the Ni-Vanuatu people that they should resist the European Christian missionaries who had insisted that Vanuatuans move their villages, abandon their religion, and follow the Christian god. Frum supposedly instructed them to flee from the missionaries and their teachings, and instead go back to the old places and old ways. 

Honoring "the old ways" includes grass skirts - and here
women dressed in gorgeous grass skirts perform during John
Frum Day.

That's why John Frum is seen as a religious figure AND a figure of political resistance AND a figure empowering Vanuatuans to maintain their traditions.

I find it interesting that it is so difficult - actually, impossible, probably! - to discover exactly how the John Frum thing got started, even though it began during modern times, less than a century ago.

By the way, I wrote about "cargo cults" and John Frum in this earlier post.


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July 30 – Independence Day in Vanuatu

Posted on July 30, 2013


Independence from France AND Britain?

This South Pacific island nation had a unique government during most of the twentieth century: it was ruled by both France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. One reason this sort of arrangement was so unusual was because France and the U.K., historically, have been enemies more often than friends!

But many of the settlers who came to the islands from the 1600s to the 1800s were British, and even more of the settlers were French—and each group of European settlers wanted their home countries to provide a government to protect their interests against the Melanesian peoples who had lived on the islands for thousands of years.

During the colonization and the joint rule by France and Britain, Vanuatu was called the New Hebrides (in French, Nouvelles-Hebrides) after the Hebrides Islands of Scotland. It sounds as if the joint rule was a bit inefficient. If I've understood what I read correctly, there were two of everything, so if the bureaucratic mess of (say) the British immigration office got you down, you could turn around and try the French one. There were two court systems and two prison systems, too, and people could choose which courts to use and which prison systems to submit to. I read that the British prisons were more strict but also more humane, but the food in the French prisons was better.

(Well, of course!)

The British helped Vanuatu gain its independence on this date in 1980—after the brief “Coconut War”—although France dragged its feet all the way through the independence process.
Melanesian kids

A Cargo Cult...

Have you ever heard about the Melanesian religions known as “cargo cults”? Vanuatu has a famous cargo cult revolving around John Frum. It is possible that this religion (and, now, also a John Frum political party) was inspired by an American G.I. named John Frum—or any John at all (“John Frum” could have evolved from the phrase “John from America”). It's of course possible that Frum is an entirely fictional character, someone who never existed but who was created in bits and pieces from reports of people's visions and dreams. No matter what, Frum was supposed to be a god who appeared to the Melanesians and promised that all the white people would leave the islands and the Melanesians would enjoy a new age of prosperity....but only if the Melanesians first cut themselves off from every aspect of European society and took up traditional ways.

Because of Frum's supposed message, his followers gave away all their money and Western-style possessions, and they left their schools and churches and plantations. They moved to the island interior and began to participate in traditional feasts, dances, and rituals.

The cult got its start shortly before the start of World War II, and during the war its popularity increased. After all, the American G.I.s who came by plane during the war brought with them a lot of cargo, both supplies and equipment.

This grass airplane was built to show
what the symbolic landing strip was...
When WWII was over, the airfields abandoned, and the equipment removed, many believers in John Frum began to build symbolic landing strips in an apparent effort to lure American airplanes back, and more cargo.

A leader of the John Frum religion, named Nakomaha, created what he called the “Tanna Army,” a non-violent ritualized army that participated in parades. Every year on February 15—the date that John Frum is supposed to come back, some unspecified year—the Army holds a parade, and they march with chests painted with "USA" (or shirts that read "Tanna Army USA").

I found the accounts of this religion—which is now, somehow, a political party in Vanuatu—sort of confusing. Do Frum followers pretty much worship Western goods (cargo), and yearn for more? Or do they avoid or give away all Western goods?

To learn more about Vanuatu, check out this earlier post. 

Also on this date:



















Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on July holidays, historical anniversaries in July, and July birthdays.

And here are my Pinterest pages on August holidays, historical anniversaries in August, and August birthdays.


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