FromCannibal Toursto cargo cult: On the aftermath of tourism in the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This article challenges the moral parable of the film Cannibal Tours by drawing on long-term ethnographic research in a Iatmul-speaking village along the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea—one of the very communities featured in the film. In this article, first, I argue that Cannibal Tours silences indigenous agency and thus contributes to the very symbolic violence the film-maker aims to critique. Second, I interpret Sepik River tourist art not as meaningless trinkets, as the film implies, but as complex aesthetic expressions of postcolonial identity. Finally, I discuss the recent emergence of cargo cult ideation in a Sepik society as a response to heightened fiscal marginalization after the sale of the tourist ship in 2006. The moral force of Cannibal Tours leads most viewers to wish that the tourists would simply leave. And they have. Local villagers, however, desperately yearn for the return of tourism—and now enlist the dead in this effort.