Case file · Folklore / legend
Yali's cargo movement, Madang
After the Second World War, Yali Singina, a decorated coastwatcher, was taken by many in the Madang area as a prophet who could bring the Europeans' 'cargo' through ritual and the return of the dead.
1945 CE · -5.22, 145.79 · status: official
The account
Yali himself promoted economic development, but followers built a movement around him; the colonial administration jailed him in 1950. Peter Lawrence's book 'Road Belong Cargo' (1964) made the movement famous.
The sceptical view
Anthropologists interpret cargo beliefs as attempts to explain colonial wealth inequality within local cosmology.