Like Fire: The Paliau Movement and Millenarianism in Melanesia

Abstract

We owe our greatest debt to several generations of the people of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, which was the Manus District of the United Nations Trust Territory of Papua and New Guinea when the research for this book began. Too many people have contributed to name individuals. Those named in the book (we do not use pseudonyms) account for only some of the major contributors. We also would be staggeringly remiss not to thank Margaret Mead. In this book we take issue with some of her writings on Manus and Paliau, but we also draw on her findings. Above all, there would have been no book at all if she had not introduced Theodore Schwartz to Manus in 1953.We are deeply grateful to our spouses, Shirley Otis (Theodore Schwartz) and Jana Goldman (Michael French Smith). Aside from the encouragement and material support they have provided, they have put up with a lot of aggravation. We would not want to have been our own roommates during the many days and nights we each obsessed about the book. In Del Mar, California, Cecelia Gomez and Arlene Olivarria made it possible for us to swan about being scholars without thinking whence our next meals or other creature comforts were coming.We received an important early grant from Mary Catherine Bateson and the Institute for Intercultural Studies. As we continued, Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz made it possible for Smith to travel coast to coast to work with Schwartz as often as necessary without worrying about the expense. Adan Schwartz covered most of the costs of preparing the completed manuscript for publication, with help from Steve and Paula Mae.Aletta Biersack proved herself a colleague of unparalleled endurance. She read several drafts of each chapter and gave us detailed and thoughtful comments. Anything, however, that readers may find amiss with the final LIkE FIREx product is our fault alone, and probably something Aletta warned us about. Ton Otto, a leading scholar of things Manusian, gave us valuable comments on the penultimate draft of the book.10 Landes (2011: 31-6) identifies several types of apocalyptic millenarianism. Recognising a single general type, however, suffices for our purposes. 11 Landes emphasises this point throughout his 2011 work Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience; see especially pages 60-1 and 144-5. 17 See Worsley (1968Worsley ( [1957) and Trompf (1994Trompf ( , 1991. 18 Anthropologists have also produced a number of valuable studies of instances of Melanesian millenarianism that are not cargo-centric, among them Biersack (2013, 2011a, 2011b, 1991), Robbins (2004a), and. 19 In the process, Lindstrom (1993a: 51) seriously misconstrues Schwartz's thoughts on cargo cults and millenarianism.22 In Tok Pisin (the lingua franca in which the conversation took place, which we describe in Chapter 2): Mi tokim tok olsem, na husat moa i ken mekim gutpela toktok long olgeta man long worl? Em Yesus tasol! Em i man bilong gutpela toktok. Mi tok, mi, mi Yesus bilong yupela. Mi Yesus bilong yupela mi tokim ol. 23 In Tok Pisin: Mi tok lo...

Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2022 Conference Distinguished Lecture: Social Movement Sightseeing in Melanesia and Beyond

“…In the early 1970s, Kiriwina's Kabisawali Association opened a tourist guesthouse and offered day tours, but movement leader John Kabisawali soon objected to ‘putting Trobrianders on display as exotica for the pleasure of outsiders’ (Douglas 1996:184). And Paliau on Manus apparently also entertained occasional visiting tourists whether or not they knew much about his movement (Schwartz and Smith 2021:437).…”

“…John Frum thrives in Vanuatu today, institutionalized as a religion and political organization. It has endured through the years along with a handful of other post‐war Melanesian social movements including Manus' Win Nesen (Schwartz and Smith 2021), New Britain's Pomio Kivung, and New Georgia's Christian Fellowship Church. Tourism marketers have featured John Frum among Tanna's cultural and natural charms since the 1980s.…”

Nahau, Pihi Manus, Pilapan: Hegemony's gender as artefacts of history

“…The Australians continued this system when they took over administration after WW1. During WWII and post-WWII, detailed accounts of lapan and luluai can be seen in Schwartz (1962) and Schwartz and Smith (2021). Gustafsson's (1999) work on gender relations among M'buke people highlights complementarity between men and women and women's hold on cultural powers.…”

“…Upon his return to Manus after WWII, Paliau Maloat established the Paliau Movement which was also shaped by cult movements. Schwartz and Smith (2021) highlight that it is difficult to separate the spiritual, religious, and political aspects of the Movement. Whichever way one frames the Movement, it was a powerful phenomenon that gained momentum and spiritually and materially shaped the lives of many Manus people (Schwartz and Smith 2021;Otto 2021;Maloat 1970).…”

“…Nahau's father, Kambuou, was a lapan and the luluai of Lahan people during this movement. Kambuou, referred to as Kampo by Schwartz (1962) and Schwartz and Smith (2021), was one of Schwartz's informants. Detailed accounts of Kambuou and others can be found in Schwartz's (1962) and Schwartz and Smith's (2021) accounts of this period.…”