Culture of Tanna

class="apple-converted-space"> nambas) and grass skirts, and the children do not go to public schools. According to anthropologist Joël Bonnemaison,author of "The Tree and the Canoe: history and ethnography of Tanna, their resistance to change is due to their traditional worldview and how they "perceive, internalise, and account for the dual concepts of space and time." 

The island is the centre of the John Frum religious movement, which attracts tourist interest as a cargo cult. The first wave of the John Frum movement was a means to escape from what was known as Tanna Law, imposed by the presbyterian mission at Lenakel from early in the twentieth century until World War II. Many Tanna Islanders had moved from their traditional villages to the mission villages on the coast, only to be subject to highly repressive church practices designed to change their cultural norms.The first John appeared at night as a spirit at a place called Green Point and told the people to return to their traditional way of life (custom). From that time until the present day custom on Tanna has been seen as an alternative to modernity encouraged by many missionary denominations. Yaohnanen is the centre of the Prince Philip movement, which reveres Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and prince consort of the United Kingdom. John Gibson Paton, the infamous Protestant