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Vailala Madness
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Vailala Madness

Melanesian religion
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History

Vailala Madness, cargo cult of the Papua area (now Papua New Guinea) that began in 1919. This movement was based on the revelations of local prophets that the ancestors were withholding European material goods from indigenous peoples. Cult doctrines included the iconoclastic destruction of old ceremonial objects and the moral, social, and logistical preparation for the arrival of vast quantities of Western “cargo,” expected to be delivered by ship or plane. Cargo cults such as the Vailala Madness were widespread in New Guinea, the Bismarcks, and parts of the Solomons and New Hebrides, and some of the movements were highly political and explicitly anticolonial in character.