![]() ![]() He turned up with the documentary crew filming him, recreating the John Frum prophecy. It turns out it wasn’t somebody from the White House, it was Cevin, a filmmaker from Boston. Who, from the White House has come down to see this ceremony take place?’ So we were thinking: ‘Oh, okay, interesting. Just before the ceremony started, we started to get whispers that somebody from the White House was going to be there. The John Frum Headquarters, Sulphur Bay, Tanna © Jon Tonks So we went out to see this ceremony, and we just didn’t know what to expect.” “People dress up in military fatigues, they have bamboo sticks for rifles and the chief of the village looks down upon this ceremony of people dancing and recreating the military presence in Vanuatu in the 40s. “Every February, there’s a ceremony called John Frum day on Tanna,” says Tonks. John Frum is a semi-mythical American figure who is said to have lived on Tanna in the 1930s and who will one day return to Vanuatu to bring plenty to the islands and return the people to the ways of kastom – or traditional culture. Today, the modern cargo cult is epitomized by the southern island of Tanna, both by the village that famously celebrated Prince Philip as a king and by the John Frum ritual. Here, cargo cults combined with anti-colonial sentiments (the group of islands was colonised by the British and the French) and the influx of US troops that brought a cornucopia of goods to the islands during the Second World War. It’s a phenomenon that found its most potent expression in the islands of Vanuatu. ![]() I had been having a conversation with a writer friend called Chris Lord about the South Pacific, and the phenomenon of cargo cults.” “The project started, not long after I published Empire in 2014. ![]() Francisca, Eva and Lyn, Million Dollar Point, Espiritu Santo © Jon Tonks It’s a book where travel, anthropological, and colonialism come up against ideas of the white saviour, the island paradise, and basic questions of the pragmatic choices we make in choosing what we believe. Jon Tonks tells us this story from the living room of his home in Larkhall, Bath. Those are the questions asked by Jon Tonks in his latest book, The Men Who Would be King. What kind of person travels thousands of miles to a remote pacific community in the hope of being hailed as the saviour of that community? What kind of person dresses up in full dress uniform with medals and epaulettes and proclaims themselves the king of an island? And why are these people not merely tolerated, but often welcomed by the members of those communities? ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |