#tribe: ni-vanuatu

[brighter-arda]

Melanesian Descendants of Indis

Day 1 Tolkien of Colour Week: Family, Connection to Lands, Connection to Waters

Information about who and what the photos are is in the image description below, thank you to @the-quiet-fire-of-defiance for helping with it

Part 1 of toi's indigenous tolkien series

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[Image description: four graphics with eight images each.

Graphic 1 is mostly in shades of gold, yellow and brown. The images are

1: a Ni-Vanuatu woman looking to one side, smiling. She has mid-brown skin and curly blonde hair with dark roots. Text says "Indis". 2: a golden mask from Maluku 3: a golden cowrie shell necklace from the Solomon Islands 4: Bosra Frazier, a West Papuan woman. She has light brown skin and curly hair that fades from dark to blonde. Text says "Findis". 5: a smiling Ni-Vanuatu woman with dark skin and coily black hair. She wears white, red and green facepaint. Text says "Lalwen". 6: a cropped image of a Kanak wood carving 7: a tinted image of Fijian masi (patterned cloth made from bark) 8: Marylou Mahe, a Kanak woman with brown skin and gold-brown hair. She wears a garland of leaves and flowers on her head. Text says "Faniel".

Graphic 2 is mostly in shades of green and brown. The images are;

1: a Sepik Papuan man with dark skin and black hair. He wears shell necklaces around his neck, orange paint on his face, and a headdress with black cassowary feathers. Text says "Fingolfin" 2: a Roro (Papua New Guinea tribe) headdress 3: Maluku wood carving 4: a Papuan woman with dark skin and a black afro. She is smiling at the camera and has a circlet of grasses on her head. Text says "Anaire" 5: a Solomon Islander man with dark skin and curly hair. His hair is brown at the roots but quickly becomes blonde. Text reads "Finarfin". 6: another example of Fijian masi (patterned cloth made from bark) 7: the inside of a Fijian chief's vale (house). It is decorated with many patterned cloths. 8: A Ni-Vanuatu woman with brown skin and light hair. Text says "Earwen".

Graphic 3 is mostly black. The images are

1: a Papuan boy smiling widely. He has dark skin, coily dark hair and a yellow headdress made of grasses. Text says "Fingon" 2: a small hut on stilts 3: a Warup drum from the Torres Strait islands. It is carved from wood and painted dark. 4: a serious-looking Korafe Papuan boy. He has yellow-orange ceremonial facepaint, many necklaces of stones and shells, and a feathered headdress. Text says "Turgon" 5: a young Sepik Papuan girl with dark skin, black hair and white face paint. She is holding a very small baby crocodile and grinning at the camera. Text says "Aredhel" 6: a Maluku wooden carving of a boat with two figures 7: a photo from Vanuatu of a large tree covered in vines and with a hut perched up in the branches. A boy stands in front of the entrance.  8: a young Papuan boy with dark skin and black hair. He has stripes of white paint on his face, layered decorative necklaces, and a hat lined with what looks like fur. Text says "Argon".

Graphic 4 is mostly in shades of blue. The images are:

1: a Solomon Islander boy in a canoe on strikingly blue water. He is looking up with a smile. Texts says "Finrod". 2: light streaming down through a large hole in a cave ceiling. The beam highlights a figure standing on a rock underneath, surrounded by shallow blue water. 3: a tinted blue version of this art by Matilda Nona who is from Badu Island in the Torres Strait. There are six turtles of various sizes swimming in spirals of water. 4: a Solomon Islander boy holding part of a coconut. He has dark skin and curly hair which is darker at the roots and lighter at the ends. Text reads "Angrod" 5: a grinning Solomon Islander boy. He has dark brown skin and wavy blond hair. Text reads "Aegnor" 6: five Fijian camukau (traditional boats) in shallow water. 7: a photo of the Marovo lagoon from above, showing small green islands in a vivid blue sea. 8: a Solomon Islander girl smiling. She has dark brown skin, wavy blonde hair, and a pink flower tucked behind her ear.

End image description.]

#indis #findis #lalwen #faniel #fingolfin #anaire #finarfin #earwen #fingon #turgon #aredhel #argon #finrod #angrod #aegnor #galadriel #pacific tolkien #silmarillion #toi's indigenous tolkien series #toi's creations #contains image description #moodboards and edits

[queersatanic]

In the mid-2000s, future co-owner and founder of The Satanic Temple Cevin Soling (a.k.a. "Malcolm Jarry") visited the South Pacific Island of Tanna to try to convince them he was returned messianic cargo cult figure John Frum as part of a project for Soling's company Spectacle Films. This is already known.

Quick version

Longer version

Having not seen more than the trailers, what we didn't know previously was that this was not a one-off event but apparently a years-long investment for Soling to try to be recognized as a cult leader.

In Tanna, Tonks and I saw platoons of men marching under the midday sun. We also met Cevin Soling, a documentary-maker from Boston who for years had brought strange cargo – salad spinners, fishing tackle for people who don’t fish, medical equipment – to John Frum believers in Sulphur Bay. “Apparently there was a prophecy I would come,” said Soling, wearing white chinos and a baseball cap. Indeed, in a speech to believers, the chief of Sulphur Bay described him as the “last man” who would reveal the destination of their movement. Soling had tried to turn the whole endeavour into a documentary, and even made necklaces with his own face printed on them.

As a tease for their book The Men Who Would Be King, this article is really great.

But this is not an article about Soling, just how he fits into this larger pattern, so we don't get more than that anecdote and this here.

Outsiders might think Ni-Vanuatu are gullible people, easily taken in by foreign soothsayers. But that’s not the whole picture. There’s a scene in Soling’s film where one of the John Frum chiefs is examining the goods the foreigner has brought, pleased the cult appears to be working – it just so happens the cargo has been brought by a wealthy American film-maker, not Frum. In our conversations with the chief, he evaded the question of whether Soling was the man they’d been waiting for. “People tend to forget there is a huge amount of local politics on these islands,” says Kirk Huffman, who worked as an anthropologist for the post-independence government in Vanuatu and was curator of its national museum. “One level of analysis is that these chiefs are using outsiders for their own benefit.” Many communities believe the Frum prophecy and the arrival of a man like Soling, weighted down with offerings, can bolster a tribe’s standing. “Something similar happened in Fiji in the early 19th century, with white people being asked by traditional chiefs to become their allies. These local leaders would use the outsiders, not least their arms and ammunition, to political ends,” Huffman says.

Still, it's interesting that—along with not listing himself as owner of The Satanic Temple and related front companies—Cevin Soling doesn't seem to think it worthwhile to remind folk he attempted to fulfill the prophecy of John Frum and make a movie of it when he's self-promoting.

#The Satanic Temple #Cevin Soling #cargo cults #cults #John Frum #Vanna #The Men Who Would Be King #Vimeo

[mansinasia-blog]

References

Bunlap. (n.d.). Retrieved February 10, 2018 from https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Bunlap

Bunlap. (2018). Retrieved February 8, 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunlap

Jolly, M. (n.d.). Women of the Place: Kastom, Colonialism and Gender in Vanuatu. Retrieved February 7, 2018 from https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=sTfJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=political+structure+bunlap+tribe&source=bl&ots=Uh0t9nQQWm&sig=sftmNQ8ONNw4tn-nT5q1GKMqJ-4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVz6GIiZjZAhVO57wKHReQDjcQ6AEITzAJ#v=onepage&q=political%20structure%20bunlap%20tribe&f=false

Ni-Vanuatu. (n.d.). Countries and their Cultures. Retrieved February 12, 2018 from http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Tajikistan-to-Zimbabwe/Ni-Vanuatu.html#ixzz56lUvpTO0

Pentecost. (1996).  Retrieved February 9, 2018 from http://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/christianity/christianity-general/pentecost

Tabani, M. (2010). The Carnival of Custom: Land dives, millenarian parades and other spectacular ritualizations in Vanuatu. Retrieved February 11, 2018 from https://www.academia.edu/1860502/The_Carnival_of_Custom_Land_dives_millenarian_parades_and_other_spectacular_ritualizations_in_Vanuatu

Vanuatu Environment Current Issues. (January 20, 2018). Retrieved February 12, 2018 from https://www.indexmundi.com/vanuatu/environment_current_issues.html

Images from Google Images

#culture #issues #photos