ABSTRACT
In 1946, Australian government patrols ventured into the central highlands of New Guinea and were received by an excited group of primitive people. They were excited by the arrival of airplanes from the Australian government because they believed that a prophecy was being fulfilled: “The arrival of the Whites was a sign that the end of the world was at hand” and a new utopic world of material wealth, cargoes and endless happiness was waiting for them (Worsley 2009). So, the natives went ahead to kill pigs and other domestic animals, which were a mode of survival, a symbol of social status and a source of ritual practice, in the belief that after “three days of darkness ‘great pigs’ will appear from the sky” with all forms of cargoes, rations and food items for them (Worsley). They also piled up firewood for creating fire signals, wooden airplanes, signal stations, a runaway for the airplanes to arrive and wireless antennae of bamboo and rope. They believed that the ‘great pigs’ would enable them to change their black skins into white ones.
Such was the impact of the collision of the European civilization with Indigenous cultures, which developed a convincing knowledge system about the white man’s magical power. Though the ‘great pigs’ never arrived, they continue to imitate the white man’s pattern of receiving cargoes from World War II airplanes. American physicist Richard P. Feynman, in a lecture at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1974, argued that this practice is a cargo-cult science, because “they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential because the planes don’t land” (1974: 11). He warned the audience to refrain from such systemic and epistemic violence that is caused by mimicry of colonial/European civilizational objects and to be conscious about their respective Indigenous modes of knowledge production.
