The Tribal Eye

Some of the most spectacular and dramatic tribal sculpture in the world came from the islands of the Western Pacific. Today, Malekula, in the New Hebrides is one of the few places where people still carve in the old tradition. Rituals are held in the men’s cult-house, where masks and figures are made to be exhibited to boys as they become initiated into the spirit world. Life size effigies, the heads of which are human skulls fleshed out with clay, dance as cavorting puppets in funeral ceremonies. The images are startling, even horrifying, but they are essential elements in the religious life of the people. Without the one, the other would disappear. Then we journey to the neighboring Solomon Islands and examine their magnificent war canoes, their sea spirit dances, and an anthropological phenomenon, Moro. This island mystic arose to say that the gods of the island wished the people to send the foreign Christians back home and once again worship the ancients.