Will they press for TM recognition is the question….
Australia’s ABC writes
Every year, as Vanuatu’s wild monsoon season comes to an end, Chief Luke Fargo instructs the boys of his village to build a 30-metre tower using branches cut from a nearby forest.
Key points:
- Indigenous groups in Vanuatu want compensation from bungee operators
- Nagol land diving has been practised for centuries as a celebration of yam harvest
- Bungee jumping only became popular in the West in the 1980s
When the structure stretches to the sky, the boys prepare for the next stage — to jump from the highest platform, with only a vine wrapped around their ankles to catch their fall.
In some videos capturing the stomach-turning leap, you can hear the land diver scrape the ground.
The 69-year-old chief, who has performed the ritual himself many times, invites people from around the world to watch these land diving ceremonies, called Nagol, from his home on the southern tip of Pentecost Island.
But he was saddened when he found out the event had inspired the creation of bungee jumping, a global sport he believes was stolen from his people.
Origins of the jump
The people of Pentecost island have practised land diving for centuries as a way to celebrate the season’s yam harvest.
The elaborate ceremony includes traditional dancing where participants men wear nambas, or penis sheaths, and the women wear grass skirts.
According to some reports, the ritual grew out of a legend involving a woman running away from her marriage.
She fled into the jungle, but, pursued by her husband, scrambled up a tree, tied a vine to her ankle and jumped, managing to land safely.
Her husband, failing to affix the vital vine, fell to his death.
But Chief Fargo said the ritual now symbolises an initiation for young men and boys — a rite of passage to prove their strength.
For decades now, the three month-long event has drawn in numerous tourists, who pay a $150 fee to watch the young men hurtle toward the ground.
Even Queen Elizabeth II was treated to the spectacle during a visit in 1974, but with fatal consequences: because the land diving was held in the wrong season, the vines lacked elasticity and snapped, leading to a death of one of the divers.
In 1979, the Vanuatu spectacle inspired Oxford University’s Dangerous Sports Club, who decided to recreate it over the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the United Kingdom.
New Zealand entrepreneur AJ Hackett then took the idea to found AJ Hackett Bungy in 1988, the oldest commercial bungee jumping operator in the world.
Mr Hackett had pioneered an elastic bungee jumping cord in the mid-1980s and shot to global notoriety after bungee jumping off of the Eiffel Tower in 1987.