BIG MAN ON TANNA
On the remote island of Tanna, the Duke of Edinburgh’s death will be keenly felt – but what comes next for the Philip cult?
Prince Philip, who died on 9 April 2021 two months short of his 100th birthday, was mourned throughout the world, with millions watching his televised funeral on 17 April; but the Duke of Edinburgh’s passing will perhaps be most keenly felt on the island of Tanna, part of the Vanuatu archipelago in the Melanesia subregion of Oceania. Vanuatu, an island nation known as Ripablik blong Vanuatu locally, was, before its independence in 1980, an Anglo-French colony called the New Hebrides. At some time in the 1950s or 1960s, it is believed that tribesmen living on the tiny volcanic island of Tanna saw a portrait of Prince Philip alongside Queen Elizabeth II, and identified him as the pale-skinned son of a mountain god who, according to local legend, had once ventured far away across the ocean to marry a powerful woman.
When the Queen and Philip paid an official visit to the New Hebrides in 1974, the identification with this deity was solidified when a warrior named Chief Jack Naiva, one of the paddlers of a war canoe that greeted the Royal Yacht Britannia, caught sight of Prince Philip standing on the deck in his white uniform. “I knew then that he was the true messiah,” said Chief Jack. “From the believers’ point of view, he is not English but from their island,” explained anthropologist Kirk Huffman. “The original spirit of which he is in the process of recycling is one of their own people. They explain his light skin with a story that says he rolled on a coral reef and it shredded off his black skin and left him white.”
Philip was thus regarded by the inhabitants of Tanna as a living god, worshipped as ‘The Big Man’, to whom villagers prayed daily. They asked his blessing for their banana and yam crops grown in Tanna’s fertile volcanic soil, and they fervently believed that one day he would return to the island and unite the nations of England and Tanna.
The village of Younanen, centre of ‘The Prince Philip Movement’ is a remote one, over three hours from the island’s capital, Lenakel. Largely cut off from the world with limited electronic communications, the islanders only became aware of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death on Friday 16 April, the day before Philip’s funeral. A worker from a nearby spa resort had made a journey to break the news. One tribeswoman immediately burst into tears, while the men fell silent as they tried to comfort their children. In May 2017, when Philip retired from public duties, villagers hoped the Prince would then have time to visit them. Chief Jack Malia said: “If
The mourning ceremonies for the Duke are set to last 100 days
he comes one day, the people will not be poor, there will be no sickness, no debt and the garden will be growing very well.”
According to prophecy, it had originally been hoped that the Duke of Edinburgh would return to Tanna on 10 June 2010, his 89th birthday, when, it was thought, he would live alongside villagers in a straw hut, hunting the island’s wild pigs and adopting the local traditional dress: for males, a large grass penis sheath. Although the prophecy never came to pass, the tribespeople remained faithful in their support for the entire Royal family. In 2018, to celebrate the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, villagers celebrated with dancing, raising Union flags and slaughtering of what the village chief described as “many, many pigs”. The powerful and intoxicating drink kava was also consumed in large quantities. A muddy-looking liquid drunk from coconut shells or plastic bowls, kava is a mixture of water and the crushed roots of the kava plant.
Drinking it produces a feeling of mild euphoria and drunkenness akin to alcohol. It also numbs the mouth and tongue.
It is thought that much kava will be taken during the mourning ceremonies, set to last 100 days, for the late Duke. “I imagine there will be some ritual wailing, some special dances,” said the Mr Huffman. “There will be a focus on the men drinking kava – it is the key to opening the door to the intangible world. On Tanna it is not drunk as a means of getting drunk. It connects the material world with the non-material world.”
Prince Philip always took the esteem with which he was held by the people of Tanna very seriously. Over the years, he exchanged various gifts with the islanders. Tanna elders once sent him a ‘nal nal’ wooden hunting club, and he in turn sent them back a photograph of himself holding the club. This photograph has become a cherished religious icon on the island.
A delegation of five islanders visited Britain in 2007 hoping for an audience with Philip as part of a Channel 4 documentary called Meet the Natives.
The filmmakers took the men to stay with the prince’s friend Sir Humphrey Wakefield at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. Sir Humphrey took the Tanna tribesmen on a hunting trip and invited them to various black-tie dinners. During their visit to the UK, the delegation were invited by Prince Philip to a private reception at Windsor Castle. There was trepidation in anthropological circles that a slip of the tongue by the Duke could shake the religion to its core. But the meeting, if a touch awkward, was hailed as a success. One of the islanders, Jimmy Joseph, said: “Because we believe that he is the son of our god, meeting him is just wonderful.” Once they had returned to Tanna, the delegation relayed the somewhat cryptic message they said they had been given by the Duke of Edinburgh to their chief: “When it is warm, I will send a message. At the moment, it is cold in England.”
It is thought that after the 100 days’ mourning for Philip, the villagers of Younanen will deify his son and heir to the throne, Prince Charles. In 2018, Charles visited Vanuatu where he was made an honorary high chief, presented with local gifts and garlands of flowers, and took a sip of specially brewed Royal Kava, last consumed when Prince Philip himself had visited in 1974. The coconut shell from which the Prince of Wales had drunk was taken to Younanen where a shrine was built for it. “So a connection was made between Tanna and Charles,” said Mr Huffman. “I suspect the beliefs of the islanders will continue with Prince Charles.” D.Telegraph, 30 April 2010; 9 April 2021; Independent, 10 April; S.Telegraph, 18 April 2021. See also FT354:10-11.
Matthew Baylis, author of Man Belong Mrs Queen: Adventures with the Philip Worshippers (Old Street, 2013), spoke to FT about what he thinks might be next for Tanna’s Philip cult:
“For anthropologists and anyone else who has an interest in cults and religious movements, this is like one of those eclipses that only happen once every 466 years. We can see what happens when a movement based on belief collides with reality.
“So they’ll be busy debating where to take their long-lived, but frail religion. In my view, they are most likely to seek a relationship with another Royal personage, and that’s most likely to be Prince Charles. I certainly think the whole USP of the Philip movement – what gave it the edge over other competing religions on the island – is it being a relationship with a verifiably alive person. They’re unlikely to say Prince Philip has returned to the island and dwells with them invisibly. That would make their cult on a par with the other big force on the island, the USA-worshipping John Frum, whose shadowy main man has neither delivered on his alleged promises nor shown his face.
“I gather that Siko Nathuan, chief of Yaohnanen – the village at the centre of the cult – is looking to give the job to Prince Charles. That doesn’t mean it will happen. They’re well informed on matters Royal over there: the old Chief, Jack Naiva, had a kind of Windsor family archive stored inside a biscuit tin in his hut, and he and his fellow villagers questioned me intensely about the various personalities.
“Admiration was expressed for Prince Harry: for the same reasons, I think, that the Duke of Edinburgh once appealed. A man of action – doing something manly in every photo, carrying a gun, riding a horse, always with a cheeky grin. Harry’s marriage to, and production of an heir with, Megan Markle will also be important to them. They believed that the late Duke of Edinburgh, secretly a black man married to a white woman, was using his power and influence to create a world where black and white people became brothers and sisters once more. They saw evidence of that happening whenever they travelled to the capital, Port Vila, where, in contrast to the rigid racist hierarchy of colonial times, people of all colours married and had babies together. How much more fitting could Harry and his new family be?”
For Matthew’s Fortean Traveller account of his time on Tanna, see FT309:74-76.