Contenu du sommaire : La Kanaky Nouvelle-Calédonie a rendez-vous avec l'histoire

The French state has grown accustomed to brandishing the Constitution as a boundary not to be exceeded. However, since the Constitution reflects the political history of a state, its political and legal culture, the peoples of the overseas do not always feel always connected to this vision of politics. Therefore, the concept of "associated country," unknown in French law, is frequently designated as one of the institutional solutions in New Caledonia. In New Caledonian society, the desire to live together presupposes a dialogue between man and himself, borne by tolerance, without an excessive degree of resentment, and towards a kind of makeshift politics, another term for audacity. Is this a solution?

‪The article analyzes the Nouméa Accord signed on May 5, 1998 between the three political forces and legitimacies (then involved): France represented by the state, the Kanaky of the flnks (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), and New Caledonia in the French Republic of the rpcr (Rally for New Caledonia in the French Republic), to show how the current political arrangements introduce a transfer of shared sovereignty conditional on setting independence aside and shelving the sovereignty of Kanaky. The Nouméa Accord is presented in a consensual manner as a masterpiece of decolonization, whereas it is programming an ordered recolonization that meets the geopolitical and strategic goals of France in Oceania.‪

People belonging to the colonial metropolis doing anthropological fieldwork in a colonial context cannot be neutral, especially when the individuals in question are anti-colonialist citizens. Since the end of the Indigénat rule, Kanaks —as native people— entered the political world in order to claim, step by step, their rights as full French citizens, the recognition of their identity, and subsequently the independence of their own country. Their demands relate, in part, to the effectiveness of this rebalancing, especially on this day before the referendum on self-determination. This current review of 40 years of institutional life in the territory with regard to the objective of independence, taking into account the election campaign for the referendum and the diverse forces present, allows us to put forward what some call “decolonization inside the republic,” which may sometimes be perceived as a form of re-colonization. This paper also returns to the notion of “independence versus sovereignty,” which is at the heart of the New Caledonian debate.

In the archipelago of New Caledonia, a history of French colonization and continuous changes in political status has produced a multicultural society delineated by strong ethnic and cultural boundaries. The 1988 political agreement enhanced measures that gave priority to the Kanak people's identity and culture. Ten years later, the Noumea accord conceived the political ideology of a "common destiny" for Caledonians of all origins, renewing the debate about how indigenous identity could share common cultural areas alongside the other communities that have settled there since the ‪nineteen‪th century. Social sciences question the manner in which these different identities could merge into a pan-Caledonian citizenship that includes an attachment to the same land and the sharing of a common culture. Anthropology focuses here on the emerging features of this postcolonial society that combines racial clichés with cultural creolization : What traditions, what heroes and what symbols will epitomize the utopia of Caledonian unity ?

‪French colonization of New Caledonia ‪‪w‪‪as ‪‪achieved‪‪ in the ‪‪nineteen‪‪th ‪‪c‪‪entury mainly through convict labor. The penal colony was a land of exile for French convicts, but also for people from ‪‪n‪‪orthern Africa, with a massive over-representation of Algerians. The Algerian convicts had to create a new life ‪‪for themselves ‪‪on Kanak lands by becoming “colonists against their will‪‪.‪‪” Their unique experience was fostered by a specific process of “invention of tradition” well before historical research allowed ‪‪f‪‪o‪‪r the‪‪ contextualiz‪‪ing—within a coherent frame—of‪‪ their harsh life of Muslims in exile and ‪‪of ‪‪the story of‪‪ how ‪‪their descendants ‪‪came to be rooted in this land‪‪. After having detailed the reasons ‪‪for‪‪ the presence of “Arabs” ‪‪o‪‪n a Melanesian Island and the painful path followed by this community to reach a stage of re-appropriation of its past, the author question‪‪s the possible role that the ‪‪“‪‪Caledonian Arabs‪‪”‪‪ could play in a reconciliation process utterly needed in New‪‪ ‪‪Caledonia between the Kanaks and the other ‪‪“‪‪children of the land.‪‪” ‪

Formerly known as a penal colony or land of exile, New Caledonia is currently engaged in a self-determination process. The issue of cultural plurality and identity development arises for all individuals living in this territory. Our article focuses particularly on the descendants of Algerians in New Caledonia and presents results from a piece of qualitative research conducted with nine of these descendants. The current context indeed generates a form of identity questioning: for these descendants, an intercultural identity is being developed between a root identity and a New-Caledonian identity in the making. Beyond these results, can the political situation that our research focuses on, as well as the end of the silence regarding the origins and identification of family ties in Algeria, produce a collective memory and a diasporic emergence for these descendants and their community?

‪In New Caledonia, we have been witnessing a renewed interest in the question of identity by the populations living in the archipelago in recent years. Japanese emigrants who settled in New Caledonia established marital relations with Kanaks and descendants of Europeans. Their genealogies have thus become embedded with those of many non-Japanese families over the course of several generations ‪to the point of having lost the memory of the history of their Japanese ancestors who arrived on New Caledonian territory. This article focuses on members of the same Japanese family from Okinawa. Through the perspectives of various testimonies, it traces‪ a history influenced by the weight of colonial power, reconstituting a past that has for too long remained unknown, but that is representative of many contemporary social situations in New Caledonia.‪

The “Accords de Matignon” (1988) aimed to redress inter-community socioeconomic imbalances inherited from colonization. However, after the “Accords de Noumea” (1998), New Caledonia's government moved away from this goal, ceasing to collect statistical information on “communities” from 2003 to 2009, making it impossible to estimate gaps and design “affirmative action” policies. Programs to reduce education and employment gaps became accessible on the basis of Caledonian citizenship, often granted when required conditions were not met. The French government devolved powers in primary and secondary education and employment policies to the local government, resulting in very low proportions of Kanaks holding university degrees and accessing higher occupations. The unemployment rate among Kanaks continues to be several times that of other communities. The halting of the decolonization process has left the Kanaks at the bottom of New Caledonian society.

In this article we return to the roots of the Caledonian mining tax system. We aim to find out what principles have structured its implementation and its development. We highlight the key elements of the Caledonian mining tax system based on legislation since 1859 and public budget data since the 1900s. After some trial and error, the yields from the mining claims and the proportional taxation on mining exports became the main tools of the Caledonian mining tax system. However, since 1975, taxation on the profits of mining companies has replaced taxation on mining exports –which has increased the instability in Caledonian tax revenues.

‪Under the Noum‪‪é‪‪a‪ Accord‪, currency is one of the sovereign responsibilities that could be transferred to New Caledonia. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the core issues behind currency, namely the arguments ‪for‪ and ‪against‪ the alternative possible currency arrangements, given the ‪current and future ‪economic, trade‪,‪ and monetary challenges that face the country. Since the other Oceanian countries ha‪ve‪ exhibited wide diversity in terms of their exchange rate regimes from the 1970s, we use them as comparative case studies in order to ‪offer‪ a fresh perspective on the currency futures for‪ the‪ ‪knc.

This article deals with ordinary sociability in a multicultural peri-urban area in relation to the notion of belonging to a country. In the context of a loyalist commune where the Kanak presence had very quickly been erased, I first retrace the extension of the habitat within the district of Katiramona-Nondoué from the 1970s. A familial and neighborly sociability distinguishes this northern part of Dumbéa, at the interface between the bush and Noumea. Through their common habits and the representation of themselves, the inhabitants, mostly of modest means, show a local society unified by its common features, even if the investment in neighborhood life hardly counteracts localized family and cultural groups. While the sense of belonging to the country reveals opposing societal choices, it reflects this proximity of groups through the complexity of identities and the flexibility of their affirmation. This may ultimately appear as a means of creating a distance with regard to political divisions.

When we raise the issue of New Caledonia's independence, a popular fantasy stirs up the ghost of Vanuatu, as if we had lessons to teach this courageous‪ people who, until now, have managed to maintain a distance from junk food, juvenile delinquency, and individual and collective psychosis. However, the impasses of the Anthropocene call for new civilizational paths. Our notions and practices of being-in-the-world and of togetherness have to be reinvented, to be rethought. This urgently requires novel initiatives, some of which have already been put to work elsewhere on the planet. In this paper, we attempt to put forward the idea that the space of Kanak customary practices has the required potential to offer a way of being-in-the-world that is both durable and displays a high degree of humaneness. This is why one can speak of civilization in this space of customary practices, where a refined symbolism performs a genuine craftmanship of the social.‪

‪The New-Caledonia referendum contrasts the Western world‪‪—‪‪commonly associated with modernity‪‪—‪‪with the Kanak cultures‪‪—‪‪related to custom. This portrayal of relations with so-called traditional societies is inherited from colonialism and, as an ethnocentric perspective, it fails to understand societies on their own terms. This paper shows that the French concept of custom aims to present a configuration of Kanak values, and categories of language, that do not correspond to the Western oppositions between tradition and modernity, or between nature and culture. As the world environmental crisis is leading to a reconsideration of these two oppositions, it has to be remembered that ‪‪“‪‪progress‪‪”‪‪ and ‪‪“‪‪market economy‪‪”‪‪ had not been required by Kanak cultures to perpetuate their societies. When they do borrow elements from modernity, it is above all in order to maintain the coherence of their organizations and the viability of their social life.‪

This article proposes an interlacing of the ethnographic experiences of two researchers working in two different field sites, one in the north of the Grande Terre (Wëté), the other in Lifou (Drueulu), with the aim of better understanding how, in this pre-referendum historic moment, Kanak men and women refer to their own past and redefine it. Each author presents his/her respective analysis, which results from this dialogue. The text highlights an increased desire on the part of the Kanak people to be protagonists in redeploying and valorizing elements of their own societies in the face of the challenges of the future. The historic moment of the 2018 referendum is not only unfolding around political issues, it also entails a vision that makes the idea of a sustainable society rooted in Kanak cultural elements a central concern.

‪New Caledonia began creating its first educational project in the early 2000s. After more than ten years of negotiations, this project was voted at the beginning of 2016 by the Congress of New Caledonia and its implementation was made possible thanks to a three-year plan voted at the end of 2016 and applied in February 2017. Does this educational project entail the creation of an emancipated Caledonian school system and identity? First, I recall the steps that enabled the gradual and chaotic construction of this educational project. Next, I study the new place given to Kanak languages and culture by asking if the Kanak identity has really found its place in the Caledonian school system. Finally, I discuss how the educational project and the three-year plan focus on New Caledonian citizenship.‪

‪From a literary research perspective, the repatriation of the relics of Ata‪‪ï‪‪ in September 2014 raises significant inventory-related issues, in addition to the fact of being confronted with discourses and stories provoked by the 1878 Kanak revolt and the Grand Chief‪‪'‪‪s personality. In New Caledonia, a multiplicity of forms characterize the representations of the Grand Chief. These demonstrate the manner in which the mobilization of the image of Ata‪‪ï‪‪ signifies a relationship with a colonial past, the subject matter of this article. This relationship with the colonial past is made evident through several aspects that engender relationships of reciprocity: colonial and political discourse, historiography, and literary creation. The purpose of this article is to analyze the presence of Ata‪‪ï‪‪ in political discourses, and to return to the constitution of two great narratives‪‪—‪‪one Kanak and the other colonial‪‪—‪‪in order to comprehend the transfers and reappropriations that exist between colonial writing and contemporary literary creation.‪