it would be impossible to find its equal in the whole of New
Caledonia; and it must be recognized that if the Protestant mis-
sionaries have done much harm in the aim of detaching the
natives of the Loyalty [Islands] from us, they will have contrib-
uted notably to the first education of a large number of them.
(Vernaudon 2013, pp. 113–114, translated by author)

Missionary Jones also reported the enthusiasm of Kanak
on Maré island for reading. He relates the case of a young
man who learned by heart in 15 days several texts from the
Gospel of Luke (Leenhardt 2020). The missionary ethnolo-
gist Dubois notes the presence of the Kanak Lues Saiwene
from the Rhô community as an interpreter. Noticed by Cave
in 1876 (in Dubois 1975), he went to study in London. Would
he be one of the first Kanak students to be invited to seek
knowledge elsewhere?

The decree of 3 August 1905, underlined that only French
will be used in primary schools. In 1921, Kanak languages
were also banned from publication (Rivierre 1985). The aim
was to transmit the civilizing will of the colonizers. This
forced the relationship with Western civilization and knowl-
edge, and had very debatable consequences for Indigenous
Kanak people, with repercussions throughout the history of
the New Caledonian school system.

14.6 From the Refusal of Curricula
Modification to the Civil War

In 1971, local elected officials demanded Kanak specificities
to be taken into account in education, relying on the Deixonne
law, which had organized the teaching of regional languages
in metropolitan France since 1951. When consulted on the
admissibility of the request, the vice-rector in Nouméa
replied in 1975 that the practice of the French language must
be constant in elementary school and that the presence of
Kanak languages among the high school exams could not be
envisaged in the short or medium term (Salaün and Vernaudon
2011).

After the civil war in the 1980s and the signing of the
Matignon-Oudinot agreements in 1988, eyes were turned
with much more interest and benevolence toward Kanak cul-
tural recognition. This recognition was accentuated with the
Nouméa Accord (1998), which gave rise to major sociopo-
litical, structural, and cultural reorientations. The teaching of
Kanak cultures and languages, claimed since the 1970s, were
specified: "Kanak languages are, along with French, lan-
guages of teaching and culture in New Caledonia. Their
place in education and the media must therefore be increased
and be the subject of in-depth reflection. Scientific research
and university teaching on Kanak languages must be orga-
nized in New Caledonia. The National Institute of Oriental
Languages and Civilizations will play an essential role in
this. To find their rightful place for these languages in pri-

mary and secondary education, a major effort will be made
to train teacher educators” (JORF 1998). Today, local lan-
guages and cultures are included in school curricula.

The terms “common destiny,” “community of destiny,”
“shared future,” and “living together” entered the official dis-
course (see Chap. 19 of Guiart in this book). Teachers
now strive to use them as the new nomenclature in their
teaching activities. “Living together” becomes a leitmotif in
terms of teaching sequences. The teaching of Kanak cultures
and languages is not only supported by pro-independence
political leaders but also by progressive New Caledonian
counterparts.

14.7 Changes in the New Caledonian
Educational Context

In 2000, the French government transferred the competences
of primary education to New Caledonia. On 27 July 2006, a
decree of the New Caledonian Government was promul-
gated, opening a special external competition for the recruit-
ment of twelve school teachers for the teaching of Kanak
languages and cultures. In 2012, a department of Kanak lan-
guages and cultures (Service de l'Enseignement des langues
et des cultures kanakes, SELCK) at the Vice Rectorate was
created. New Caledonia now controls its own private pri-
mary and secondary education. On 5 January 2016, the New
Caledonian parliament adopted its educational project (élé-
ments fondamentaux de la culture kanak, or EFCK), making
the teaching of the fundamental elements of Kanak
culture compulsory.

Since the beginning of 2017, a practical interdisciplinary
teaching programme (Epi) on the fundamental elements of
Kanak culture in the four course educational cycle (fifth,
fourth, third) was made mandatory in middle schools.
Currently, under the aegis of the Vice Rectorate of New
Caledonia, a university-labeled training program in
Languages, Oceanian cultures, and learning (LCOA) is being
conducted by the University of New Caledonia's
(UNC) Teacher Training School. In 2020, internal teacher
training exams in Nengone (Maré) language were organized
by the Vice Rectorate in Nouméa. During the visit of the
French President Emmanuel Macron in May 2018, the
Minister of Education, Michel Blanquer, announced the cre-
ation of a certificate of teaching at secondary school level in
Kanak-French languages. In 2022, a laureate in Drehu lan-
guage was registered, while other candidates were already
preparing for teacher training exams in Paicî and Ajië lan-
guages (see Fig. 14.1). The training courses for the competi-
tive recruitment for the languages of the North Province are
currently being conducted by the UNC Teacher Training
School. The new qualifications translate a certain will to
extend the field of language competencies.
<figure><img src="image_72.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.1** Customary and linguistic areas. (Source: https://georep.nc/, cartography: Eibl 2022)</figcaption></figure>

However, the recognition of Kanak cultures and languages in the educational context evolves very slowly and timidly. The didactic translation of Indigenous knowledge is still underexplored. Sociopolitical recognition is certainly important but insufficient for intensive modifications of the educational system. The missionaries, because of their commitment to evangelization, introduced knowledge and learning techniques from Western societies in the Pacific islands. But faced with the complex demands of Indigenous communities to rebuild their identity, this utilitarian model was exhausted and reached its own limits. The moral wear and tear of religious knowledge can be seen through behaviors in the social world.

## 14.8 A Rather Disturbing Record Despite a Rebalancing Policy

Today, the period of the Nouméa Accord granted for contextual and institutional rebalancing is coming to an end, and it is time to evaluate various engagements. Different perspec-

tives are in play. For example, the Kanak and Oceanian youth in general are concerned about their social-economic situation and are claiming their place in a changing society. Richard and Niester (2018) highlight the difficult quest for a “common destiny” (see also Chap. 19 by Guiart in this book) and the persistence of social-economic inequalities. In the prison “Camp-Est” in Nouméa, more than 90% of the inmates are Kanak. Inequalities appear on an unflattering balance sheet after some 30 years following the Accords. The daily newspaper “Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes” (2019) added that young people and Kanak in general are the most affected by social inequality. People under 30 have an unemployment rate of 28.3%. Among young people, as in the general population, this rate is strongly linked to school qualifications. It is 41.3% for people under 30 without a qualifying degree. This percentage drops to 26.6% and 20.5%, respectively, with a professional degree (CAP/BEP) and high school diploma. In fact, 20% of Kanak people have a high school diploma or higher, compared to 33% for the total New Caledonian population. Some 34% of Kanak are under 30, compared with 29% for the population as a
whole. Their level of employment is 59.1% (compared to 64.7% for the total population). Finally, the unemployment rate among Kanak women is lower than of Kanak men (17.9% compared to 18.7% in 2019).

The psychiatrist Schonholtzer (2017) alerted public authorities to high suicide rates. He highlights that Indigenous peoples are more affected than others by mental health problems and suicide because of generational gaps and the rapid social transformation process that has increased vulnerability and risks. Social-economic inequalities have encouraged Kanak people to move to the dormitory districts of Nouméa built between the 1960s and 1970s, reinforced by the so-called nickel boom of 1969–1972 (see Chap. 9 by Demmer in this book). The children born in these neighborhoods form a new uprooted youth. They often end up with illusory identities, confined, and lacking perspective.

Schooling can play a major role to give those youth new perspectives and to bring about societal reforms in general. The EFCK is an opportunity to synergize a number of potentialities to produce material, cognitive, and cultural hybridity. Indigenous Kanak knowledge should be integrated into curricula. That institutional presence will allow for the development and reinforcement of the symbiotic relationship between research and teaching. But in what way can the EFCK constitute an opportunity to integrate Indigenous knowledge in New Caledonian education? And how can it become part of anchoring for an educational and social rebalancing through teaching and teacher training? These are two questions that lead to the following hypotheses.

## 14.9 The EFCKs for Innovative Perspectives

The EFCKs opens up a path toward innovative perspectives, both for teachers and students. The inclusion of EFCKs in school curricula allows for the recognition of Indigenous knowledge and contributes to the psychological repair of oppressed cultural practices, promoting reconciliation. The symbiotic approach between research and teaching (Astolfi 1992) converging toward the practices and techniques of Indigenous Kanak life will allow the anchoring of schooling in the social environment, and promote curricular mixing in the material, cognitive, and cultural sense. The inclusion of the EFCKs in the New Caledonian educational context strengthens “Oceanity” and provokes the reversal of being “on the margins of” … it thus leads to a restructuring of identity that uncovers Indigenous potentialities.

In the following, I will focus first on the ethno-sociological reasons for teaching EFCKs. Second, I will use examples to show how certain Indigenous knowledge can become academic knowledge, through transposition.

## 14.10 For a New Ethics and a Cultural Common Good

Koninck (2004) has shown that it is possible to democratically construct an ethic and a common good whose denominator in the life of each group is culture. Whatever the material situation—rich or poor—the cultural spirit of people can, through education, participate in fighting against global environmental and social crises. We should thus restore what history has tried to eradicate in indigeneity, through its dispossession and by its dehumanization.

Kanak Indigenous perspectives and practices and the construction of epistemologies are important for the development of New Caledonian society. In return, Kanak people should accept, with a spirit of co-responsibility, to be confronted with issues of globalization and be capable of managing ontological upheavals that the society is going through. This path of noble reflection can contribute to reducing unconscious conflicts of social imagination (Wadrawane 2022 On the other hand, a detotalization of the Indigenous context can provoke “disadherence” with the educational sociopolitical models that perpetuate societal binaries. The aim is to attempt an innovative renegotiation of endemicity that is neither based on an outdated essentialism nor referring to the imaginaries of “civilizing missions” and “progress” common to European nations (Clément 2021, p. 82).

The issue is not to tear oneself away from one's own world nor from the world of the other, but to combine through education what can be retained from colonial history and what is maintained and transmitted as Indigenous cultural knowledge. Education contributes to a decolonisation of the mind. The reconciliation between Western and Indigenous educational cultures will only be possible if each accepts to break by negotiation certain parts of their social ideology.

## 14.11 Knowledge from the Communities to Rebalance “Differently”

The former New Caledonian vice-rector Jean Charles Ringard-Flament initiated the introduction of the EFCK in secondary schools in 2018 and the creation of the teacher education exam (CAPES) in Kanak languages in 2020. He emphasizes the need for a constructive “break”: “We must [be able to] overcome this osmosis between the school and the community by rehabilitating knowledge in a different way” (Interview, 20 June 2018). The inclusion of EFCK in the New Caledonian education project is therefore an opportunity to rehabilitate Indigenous knowledge in a different way, through a transposition process.

The statement of Ringard-Flament translates what the local Kanak schools (Écoles populaires kanak, EPK) were
demanding. They requested and campaigned for procedures to develop an educational rebalancing. FLNKS leaders encouraged parents to boycott public schools, which were described as colonial.

On 9 February 1985, the second FLNKS Congress in Nakety on the east coast of New Caledonia-Kanaky decided to create EPKs as part of this boycott (Leblic 2018). At a didactic level, the EPK wanted to create “a dialogue between traditional wisdoms [...] and contemporary sciences. [...]” (Gauthier 1996, p. 133). Salaün and Vernaudon (2014) highlighted that Indigenous education as a practice of resistance questions common knowledge that such schools should enable.

The EPK experience is an important part of the history of education in New Caledonia-Kanaky. By challenging the educational system, EPK seeks an educational alternative, a different way of schooling. There are similarities here with European popular education movements and Freire's (1974) pedagogy of the oppressed. Teaching in EPKs occurred in Kanak languages, in French, and in English. Indigenous knowledge and Kanak culture were central to the project, which aims to train the citizens of tomorrow.

The attempt to dismantle conventional schooling by the introduction of Kanak knowledge and ways of thinking was quickly aborted, but the strategy of vigilance developed by EPK forged ahead, and its overall pedagogy did not go unnoticed. For example, in language teaching, EPK succeeded in abolition of monolingualism (Wadrawane 2017). Currently, New Caledonian and state educational institutions try to keep a double articulation between national heritage and local Kanak specificities.

The EPK cannot therefore be reduced to a simple historical period of Kanak struggle for independence and against educational domination, with some of the schools closing by the end of the 1980s. First, they explored how to rebalance education between the two co-present heritages. Secondly, they showed interest in using the (Kanak) languages of students for a better appropriation of knowledge. The EPK model confirmed the relationship between orality and learning. Seeking balance or rebalancing is therefore an important sociological fact. I will now consider ethnological data from fieldwork to show the importance of balance issues in New Caledonia's social space.

## 14.12 The Indigenous Ethnological Conception of Social and Spatial Balance

The school of Rhô on Maré island serves as our first example. The second example is the school of Näcaao (Netchaot), which is located in the center-east of the main island Grande Terre in the Kônhè region.

The Rhô community on Maré in the customary district of Guahma was in the spotlight when Protestant missionaries from the London Missionary Society arrived. The first school infrastructures were built in this community. The current school in Rôh was built in 1966 on a border zone between two conflicting family plots of land: the school is located almost at the edge of the community (see Fig. 14.2). The church is halfway, in the middle of the community, while the school infrastructure is pushed further away. The school is thus in a consensual position. It borders the land plants of the Hnassil and Huemone families.

This spatial positioning of the institutional infrastructure has led to a lasting appeasement, and the community has benefited from this rebalancing provided by an exogenous object. We can see above (Fig. 14.2) how the school was positioned on a plan drawn up by the Tadin gendarmerie in 1966.

At the school in Näcaao (Nechaot) (SANC 1962), I conducted interviews with two elders, and I was surprised that this public school straddles an imaginary line dividing the Catholic zone from the Protestant zone of the community. The school thus offers another consensual position. Children of both parishes share the same secular space, where the rules remain the same for everyone. Figure 14.3 shows the location of the school between two confessional zones.

The essential aim is to restore balance. The example of consensual school locations in the community illustrates how power struggles are avoided. When the missionary and anthropologist Leenhardt (1974) used the term “nata” in Nengone language to refer to the pastors, he may not have imagined its impact, both in terms of Protestant proselytizing and in terms of the desire to learn, to transmit new things, and to communicate knowledge.

The aim of rebalancing power relations may be surprising but it is present within broader society, for example giving away a child (a girl or boy) to rebalance a clan (Leblic 2004). The search for balance is also present in the world of education. Wakolo Pouye (Interview, 11 April 2000) said that the older teachers often manage to mix the newest pedagogical advice communicated at official inspectors' visits with their learning techniques from the local social milieu. They pass on school knowledge (an “exogenous imprint”) by using didactic local environmental tools (a “local imprint”). They prepare youth to claim, without ostracism, social progress and the culture of their identity.

## 14.13 Polarization of Spaces and Imbalance

Despite the Kanak construction of a “double footprint,” school administration has maintained a polarization of spaces in the educational world. The beginnings of a dual school orientation appear: children of settlers orienting
<figure><img src="image_73.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.2** Localization of the current Rôh school on Maré island. (Source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>

toward general curricula and Kanak children toward vocational paths (Hadj et al. 2012). The democratization of these educational paths has struggled.

The polarisation of spaces and the marginalisation of Kanak culture developed during colonisation has been denounced by various researchers in social sciences. Wittersheim (2006, p. 87) for example notes:

> The Melanesians have experienced a major trauma through colonization, which is still a central element in their personalities and in their identity constructions, as well as in their family or historical memory. The relationship with a family memory interwined with history continues to be a major issue for people who were born well after this period.

However, marginalisation in the colonial period did not prevent the acquisition of new knowledge. After the establishment of missionary schools in communities, a training center, called “School of Indigenous teachers at Mont-Ravel” opened in Nouméa in 1913 (JONC 1913) and lasted until 1942. The creation of the two associations AICLF (Association des indigènes calédoniens et loyaltiens français) and UICALO (Union des indigènes calédoniens amis de la liberté dans l'ordre) allowed the new Kanak elites to assert themselves at the political and social level. The members of these two associations also sought to harmonize the transmission of both conceptual knowledge and their collective social heritage. In spite of this good will, the training
<figure><img src="image_74.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.3** The school in Näcaao (Netchaot) as a consensual element. (Credit: Wadrawane 2022)</figcaption></figure>

of young islanders to gain qualifications remained marginal-
ized. The failure of young Kanak people in schooling rein-
forces the point of view of the supporters of independence
that schools were colonial (Kohler and Pillon 1982).

Education anthropologists and sociologists (e.g., Ogbu 1985) have shown the ignorance of educators with regard to the culture of their students. Patrice Godin (2019) from the University of New Caledonia notes that efforts must be made to understand Kanak society deeply, because it is often defined around myths, while dialogue and conversation is an important and common practice. The introduction of Indigenous knowledge and its use in teaching can contribute to valorizing the place of formerly marginalized Kanak people in society, and contribute to shared values.

14.14 A New Societal Imaginary for New
Caledonian Schools

Section 3 of paragraph 4 of the Preamble of the Nouméa Accord emphasizes that it is necessary to lay the foundations of a New Caledonian citizenship. This cannot be done without the school, which trains and educates future generations. EFCKs are one element of identity formation in school.

The opportunity to develop research, teaching and training,
however, provokes a tussle between different teacher
groups—teachers used to the spirit of the secular school
since the beginning of their history in New Caledonia, and
those who think that it is time to innovate and re-build the
institution, taking into account complex local cognitive and
cultural realities. The latter position is supported by scien-
tific research and the media. The school however tends to
alienate its pupils from their culture and way of life. It is thus
seen and experienced as a destructuring colonial object.

The teaching of Kanak and Oceanian cultures and lan-
guages, as well as various contextual changes to curricula,
the proposal of a new national education project, and the
compulsory teaching of EFCKs have all been produced
through contestation. The actors include ideological and
marginal progressives, independence proponents, and sup-
porters of the EPK initiatives. Paradoxically, and contrary to
popular belief, those who criticize formal education are often
those who also advance it. The PENC (New Caledonian
Education Project) was voted on by the Congress in 2016
and made the teaching of EFCKs compulsory. But this reori-
entation of schooling was ultimately one of the consequences
of the handshake between Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Jacques
Lafleur in 1988 and bears a kind of “double imprint” of colo-
nization and indigeneity.
# SIX FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS OF KANAK CULTURE

<figure><img src="image_75.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.4** The six fundamental elements of Kanak culture. (Source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>

## 14.15 Rehabilitating Cultural, Social, and Traditional Cohabitation in Schools

The reinvention of identity in the New Caledonian school should occur with the EFCKs. Certain practices and techniques of Indigenous life favour a symbiosis between research and teaching. The EFCKs are an opportunity to promote and strengthen this “double imprint”. Moreover, the EFCKs progressively amplify the development of “Oceanicity” through the curricula. Teachers therefore contribute to the rehabilitation of cultural, social, and traditional cohabitation. Ethno-sociologically, the inclusion of the EFCK in the curricula can help reverse situations of being “at the margins of...”

It is essential to make choices when we want to develop the relationship between school and custom. The risk lies in the enclosure of one's own culture. The procedure of didactic transposition therefore seems to represent a way to avoid sinking into “populism” and allows control of the methods of transmission, learning, and acquisition of new knowledge by students. Often, knowledge from the missions is preferred to the detriment of knowledge from public education. The didactic transposition of Indigenous knowledge can thus lead to balance religion and administration.

## 14.16 EFCKs Grasp and Understand Reality: What is their Pedagogical Contribution?

Depending on the fields of research, one of the competences of the scientific expert is to deconstruct reality in order to select, reduce, and build up knowledge. Expert knowledge contributes, on the one hand, to the rational influence of research and, on the other hand, to the modification and perhaps improvement of social life. Knowledge

establishes new social perspectives. Indigenous Kanak people discover the scientific validity of certain cultural elements, and this is one of the benefits of scientific research and pedagogy.

I suggest that the transition from Indigenous knowledge into teaching should include documenting social practices and then transforming them into rationalizing objects by the researcher. The transposition into classroom activities is also essential. All these breaks represent a procedural phase before the final status of academic knowledge or knowledge taught through school activities is valorised.

If EFCKs allow to the grasping of Kanak realities, they should not be used in the classroom without first carrying out various transformations so that they can be explained and used. The six fundamental elements of the EFDK<fnref n="2" /> are: yam, person, clan, traditional house, land and space, and language and speech (Fig. 14.4).

I will illustrate the EFCKs by examples taken from fieldwork showing that it is possible to transpose Kanak cultural objects into academic knowledge. I have therefore selected two EFCKs as objects of study:

- Language and speech used to describe the intellectual development of children

- Spatial practices, through the practice of *Aengeni hnameneng*

I then present two education elements:

- An illustration of modes of transmission, based on Bruner's theory

- The yam calendar produced by teacher candidates in their second year of training

<footnote n="2">²The new curricula for 2019, voted on 10th January by the Congress of New Caledonia, once again emphasized the value of Kanak cultures by considering EFCKs and other New Caledonian cultures.</footnote>
## 14.17 Language and Speech: Intellectual Development and Learning Strategies

The study of Indigenous languages is advantageous for discovering and naming the world. Languages are the best mirror of the human spirit (Alin 2010). In Nengone language on Maré island, for example, there is a specialized lexicon to describe the stages of intellectual development in relation to learning. A school child, between 3 and 5 years old, who has mastered a certain number of skills is called *Thu-ni*. The term *Thu-ni* means “who can do.” The question “*Bo thuni?*” can be translated with “Can you do?” *Inu thuni co yeno* means that I know how to learn well. Etymologically, *ni* is “the fact” (what is done)—an Indigenous treasure and wealth (Dubois 1980). When a child is at the *thu-ni* stage, it means that he or she is able to learn and to initiate reasoning. Gradually, according to the tasks and responsibilities he or she receives, he or she builds up the *Ngome nata* stage. During this progression among peers, the child learns to strengthen his or her modes of reasoning by linking several types of social knowledge. In Nengone, *Ngome* designates the being or a person (*Ngome* as an emphatic form playing the role of increment, which increases the value of a constant). *Nata* is a mature person, normally the qualification of a religious man. *Ngome nata* means intelligent, skillful, and good at war. The expression *bane yeno ngomenata* can be translated as teaching wisdom.

The *ngome nata* status corresponds to the school situation of a student at the end of the third year at primary school. And it will evolve until the early years of university. The term *yanata* refers to the expression of skill level.

*Ya* is different from *Ye*. *Ye* = to say, *yeye* = to read. *Ye*, which attaches, *ye-edin* (the wood which attaches the outrigger to the main hull of the dugout). *Yeiwe re koe* (wood that attaches to the outrigger). *Yara*: implies repetitive. *Ya* = to lead, to guide. *Nata*: mature, right, right side, history, experience. *Ya* = contracted form of *yawe* = therefore, or again. According to Dubois (1969), *yanata* is constructed from the *Ya* of *yawe*. The *yanata* is the one who is able to tutor and function as a transducer. This function of *yanata* was used many times at Sunday schools by Protestants and in community schools by the old instructors. The student Bob Teddy remembers that, in school, “there was one teacher, and it was a one-room schoolhouse. We had a very long bench, and we were at the very back of the classroom. You could hardly see what was happening on the blackboard. We learned more by repetition, and it was all done orally. There was a big guy who knew a bit more than us, and he helped us to learn by repeating what was on the board” (this is the role of the transducer).

A person is said to be *yanata* because he or she overcomes the slightest difficulties that arise in the school career to build the stage of *ngome nata*. *Yanata* can also be understood in terms of conditions, positions, and circumstances. The condition of *yanata* (Fig. 14.5) may constitute a benchmark for measuring the progress of *ngome nata*. Assessments can be undertaken at different levels to determine the degree of mastery of these cognate skills. When a person is said to be *yanata*, it is because he or she possesses and uses sub-skills to achieve or strengthen the main ones. Also he or she has, in an autonomous way, the capacity to use discernment and to assist students, in the sense of tutoring. The *yanata* child is mostly described as “clever” or “autonomous.” It is also the one who learns to cross boundaries. In Nengone, knowledge is caught.

<figure><img src="image_76.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.5** Children’s intellectual development and learning strategies. (Source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>
To accentuate the development of *ngome nata*, adults begin to entrust youth with discursive acts. Youth begin to handle speech in the form of discourse and learn to control both cognitive and kinesthetic stress. By extension, autonomy is strengthened. Jokes are used to soften these moments when they learn to handle adult speech.

To sum up, the environment initiates children to leave behind the appearances of immediate experience. The school thus reinforces this “escape” to other spaces, which are attributed to the scholar known as *Waetea*. The term “Waetea” comes from “*Wa*” meaning “end” or “old,” “*ete*” meaning “stone,” and “*a*” meaning “to shout” or “te declaim” (Dubois 1951). An intelligent person in Maré language is called *Ngome nata*. As for the scholar, he is called *Waetea*. *Natas* elders, pastors in the Protestant world, Catholic seminarians, and some elders who manage the affairs of large chieftaincies were often referred to as *Waetea*. Language can therefore help to reconcile the different worlds of “intelligence.”

The expressions *thu-ni*, *ngome nata*, *nata*, and *yanata* are very close to the field of metacognitive psychology, referring to the schemas developed by Piaget (1967) and affirmed and extended by Vergnaud (1990) and Vergnaud and Récopé (2000). Such cognitive perspectives gradually draw the contours of *Waetea*, and this way of thinking about ontological elements by cultivating and using discernment when it comes to discussing and analyzing alliances or agreements in custom.

## 14.18 Space: The Multiplexing of the *Aengeni hnameneng*

I have conducted participant-observation in customary ceremonies. This fieldwork practice puts the researcher in direct contact with custom, in this case a wedding on Maré island in which the *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony takes place (see Fig. 14.6). The *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony shows that the groom’s house is an important part of the Maraean wedding. It can last a whole day. The fieldwork showed how customary practices are thought, and permeate the social context.

At the *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony, yam gifts from paternal and maternal siblings and from allied clans are arranged in a circle evolving toward the main gift from the groom. This shows how the clans are interdependent and linked by filiation, alliance, and exchanges. The construction of filiations and alliances is reformulated at every customary ceremony, and this is also can be used in a transposition to education.

At the *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony, we can observe a strong presence of acting, seeing, and saying (speech) in terms of practices and strategies. This conceptual trilogy of transmission in Kanak social life is similar to Bruner’s (1960) work on cognitive development in education. Bruner highlights mental strategies that social actors put into interaction in their cultural environment. Such strategies are also expressed at customary ceremonies, included as metaphors

<figure><img src="image_77.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.6** Socio-ethnological space of the *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony. (Credit and source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>
in customary discourses. Several bundles (paternal, mater-
nal, etc.) channel various simultaneous information (the son
on the paternal side, son on the maternal side, nephew of,
from the clan of, etc.).

The *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony, which occurs in the presence of the bride’s family, is thus organized as a form of communication system where modes (dialogal) and systems of operation (connections) function simultaneously. They sketch the contours of a sociological cartography of the groom’s family. The genealogical cartography is spatialized through the hierarchical presence of the yam gifts. This spa- tialized expression is the interface of what the groom’s (inter-relational) house represents.

The interconnections between clan geographical relations
are organized in a mode called “multiplexing” (Fig. 14.7).
The “multiplexing” mode translates the relationship con-
cerning close family members and other affiliates (siblings,
agnate, cognate), concerns (relationships, political geogra-
phy, allies, resident, and co-resident), and modes of upbring-
ing (values, rights, spiral). Everybody is interconnected in a
social network illustrated by various contributions of gifts
for the ceremony.

The *Aengeni hnameneng* ceremony (Fig. 14.7 and 14.8) is a space where gifts to share are first gathered, then positioned, and finally synthesized before being returned to each identified group (unit) entitled to receive shares.

In short, the Kanak custom of *Aengeni hnameneng* on Maré island is organized in a multiplex mode. The development of the concept “multiplexing” was mentioned on local radio stations that announce deaths in families. The messages reveal the interconnections of clans, families, and individuals. Spatialized custom relationships are therefore preserved, maintained, and reiterated when clans are placed in a position of customary contractualization.

14.19 Culture in the New Caledonian
Educational World

This cultural relationships and modes of thinking out-
lined above can be of great interest to the world of education.
Bruner (1960) uses a metaphorical spiral configuration to
signify the modes of thinking linked to culture and particu-
larly the relationships to pedagogy and learning. Abstraction
is constructed in a spiral according to three stages for trans-
missions of customary knowledge, noted by Britt-Mari
(1985): doing (practical action), seeing (image), and saying
(words). This is unsurprising for those with knowledge of
cognitive strategies.

Referring to Bruner (1960), Britt-Mari (1985) points out
that the three modes complement each other and that their
interaction is crucial for learning. Bruner's spiral identifies

<figure><img src="image_78.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.7** The multiplexing of the *Aengeni hnameneng*. (Credit and source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_79.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.8** Schematic—multiplexing—in *Aengeni hnameneng* custom. (Source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>

different phases of knowledge acquisition. By moving from one mode of representation to another and by absorbing data in different modes and in different contexts, thinking evolves toward greater abstraction. The conversion of knowledge into a form that can be transmitted to learners is therefore linked to the structuring of knowledge, and to respect for the modes of representation. “The limits of intellectual development” depend on the way “a culture helps an individual to use intellectual potential” (Britt-Mari 1985, p. 53) leading to the geometry term of “fractal” (Fig. 14.9a-c).

The fieldwork carried out by archeologists shows the materiality of the spiral figure (Fig. 14.9a) expressed on ancient Kanak petroglyphs (Fig. 14.9b, c). There is also an inventory that was carried out by Sand and Monin (2015) in Païta district in southern New Caledonia, which shows the numerous expressions of axial, radial, and bilateral symmetries exposing a fractal geometry (Fig. 14.9a). It is not uncommon to see the expression of the spiral in social practices. Spiral configurations thus also appear in traditional mourning ceremonies. We can again draw on this customary knowledge for transposition into formal education. Figure 14.9b also shows how school children discover with enthusiasm this sociohistorical heritage.

## 14.20 Modes of Transmission: “Doing-Seeing-Saying”

In 2019, I applied the practice-image-speech trilogy at a training session in a Kanak community. For the transmission of cultural knowledge, family and clan members use the conceptual succession as presented in Fig. 14.10. First, there is the observation of a “Do” (*Kuca*) performed by an expert. Then someone performs “under the gaze of...” (*Goeën*). This moment is crucial since the performer attempts a realization according to a constructed and memorized representation. The assistants observing can participate through giving advice. Representations, proposals for modeling, and algo-

rithms appear. The last step consists in fixing the knowledge through the word (“Saying”). This is also a crucial moment because the knowledge is rooted, accompanied by jokes. Hilarity and irony support the cultural transmission.

In 2013, some trainee teachers benefited from such a training session. In an interview, Julia Duparc highlighted that this “immersion” in a customary context in the North Province for a week was a great adventure (Interview with Julia Duparc 2013). It allowed the discovery of teaching conditions in several municipalities and to understand the realities in community schools, “lost in the greenery.” This training course also brought teacher candidates closer together: living together for five days created links that could result in greater collaboration in training and in the preparation of classroom lessons. The purpose of this trip was to immerse participants in living and teaching conditions where the expression of Kanak culture is much more prevalent than in the New Caledonian capital, Nouméa. Duparc argued that they all benefitted from experience, and the meetings were very touching, whether it was with the inspector, the school directors, the teachers, and the students, but also with the chiefs and their families who spend time exchanging ideas and even welcoming the teacher candidates in their homes. In the opinion of Duparc, the course is essential to get an experience and a feeling for the working conditions in schools well beyond the greater Nouméa area and the South Province in general. It should be repeated for future classes of teacher candidates (Interview with Julia Duparc 2013).

Following these different examples of customary knowledge transposition, we can see how Kanak society is organized and maintains social links. Customary practices constantly update these relationships. The permanent update and recreation of relationships by referring back to experiences already accomplished, is at the center of social and cultural construction. The different examples have shown how the social world assiduously uses analogical processes and modes of reasoning. In our opinion, this is of great pedagogical interest.
a

BOULOUPARIS • PAÏTA • NOUMÉA

<figure><img src="image_80.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.9 (a–c)** The spiral and fractal configuration in a plural context: Geographical inventory of petroglyph sites (Païta region, South Province) (left), school children discover the petroglyph site of Necharihouen in the Ponérihouen valley (right above), example of a</figcaption></figure>

b

<figure><img src="image_81.png" /></figure>

c

<figure><img src="image_82.png" /><figcaption>spiral on a slab (Tchamba community, North Province) (right below). Sources: Sand and Monin 2015 (left), Sand et al. 2008 (right above), (right below)</figcaption></figure>

## 14.21 The Yam Calendar

Our last example took place in 2022. This yam calendar (Fig. 14.11) was developed by trainee teachers in their second year. The exercise was to transpose the yam calendar and the Gregorian calendar. They were able to translate, through the yam calendar, both the Gregorian annual chronology, the symbolism of plants and animals corresponding to the development of the tuber, and the physiological modifications of the fauna and flora.

The teacher candidates greatly appreciated this course. On the one hand, it allowed them to experience the expression of the EFCKs in context. The interactions developed

from the cultural activities strengthened mutual and interpersonal relationships. Many of them discovered potentialities (sculptures and arts) and data collection that could be used in the classroom when teaching about Kanak languages and cultures.

The acquisition of new conceptual tools from Kanak cultures revealed the ability of these young teachers to master and evolve their representations and mental constructs. The situation of cultural dualism is not only rich, but it is also a way to push beyond one's own limits and to apply principles of social inclusion.

This kind of project, in which interesting outcomes emerge from school and adult education, helps to draw new
<figure><img src="image_83.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.10** Training session “doing-seeing-saying” on weaving practice. (Credit and source: Wadrawane 2021)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_84.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 14.11** Yam calendar developed by second year trainee teachers. Tutorials during the first year university diploma course at the Teacher Training Institute of New Caledonia (IFMNC-UNC). (Credit and trans-</figcaption></figure>

lation: Larissa Robert “L’igname, patrimoine d’avenir,” cartography: Kowasch 2023)
contours of an emancipated and decolonised school.
Referring to Elie Poigoune (Interview on 1 May 2001), I
argue that we should make schooling better than it is now
(see also Wadrawane 2010). It is therefore necessary to con-
tinue to nurture creativity and innovative intelligence on a
human scale (Bensa 2010). It is imperative to co-construct
educational references to develop New Caledonian citizen-
ship, a mark of the “double footprint.”

14.22 Conclusion

On 7 September 2011, the program “Comité 30 ans Pierre Declercq” was broadcast on Radio Djidoo, the local pro-independence radio station. Afterwards, Gérard Sarda, a senior government official and member of the local section of the League of Human Rights, emphasized: “This formidable humor of everyday life, very frequently practiced by Kanaks to such an extent that it is undoubtedly constitutive for you, has a resilience function.” Illouz (2000, p. 195) noted that we can associate the power of humour with the Nengoné language, so that Maréans pass without transition “from serious mutism to hilarious prolixity.” This society has the art of discerning the interlocutor and strategically accommodating solemnity and self-mockery. The hilarity and the irony were undoubtedly good companions of Kanak people during the lack of balance and violence under colonial rule.

During the 1980s, the independence supporters derided Republican schools as colonial, and many supported the more radical alternative, the EPKs. Even if the attempt to readjust the school system by demanding recognition of Kanak knowledge and ways of thinking was aborted when many EPKs disbanded after a few months or years, the introduction of elements of Kanak culture has since occurred. Currently, New Caledonian and French State educational institutions are attempting to work alongside each other.

The clumsy and sometimes fatal arguments that are still
produced today around the teaching of culture, and particu-
larly Kanak languages, show the lack of understanding of the
relationship between Indigenous cultures and learning. The
EPKs confirmed didactic relationships which are now
thought to be fundamental. The EPKs cannot be reduced to
simple instances of the struggle of Kanak people against
educational domination. If New Caledonian society is
truly aware of their insights, it will then be possible to estab-
lish a more inclusive school that, through its curricula, will
impel the foundations of a true “common destiny” contribut-
ing to a New Caledonian citizenship. The EFCK programme
is taking this forward.

Alongside political and trade union activists, social and
cultural actors, Kanak and non-Kanak teachers are invited to
seize these schooling principles, in an institution of transmis-
sion and transformation, to re-establish new philosophi-

cal positions. Culture can be reinterpreted, reconstructed,
and taught, beginning with the foundations of Kanak and
Oceanian civilizations in order to train future citizens of the
country that will endure the end of the Nouméa Accord.
Youth will be central to developing a new social and scholas-
tic imaginary. But this perspective will depend on the will-
ingness of adults and elders to accept the creation of new
social links for the realization of a New Caledonian
citizenship.

**Acknowledgments** I am very grateful to the editors Matthias Kowasch and Simon Batterbury for launching this book on the geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky and to Martha Macintyre and Simon Batterbury for English corrections and proof reading, which helped to improve the chapter.

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Part VI

Small-Scale Politics and Gender Questions
Abstract

This chapter explores women's engagement in politics in New Caledonia over time. Despite widespread resistance to western conceptualisations of feminism, women's organising in New Caledonia has a long history. Although women's movement has historically been fragmented along ethnic and ideological lines, a strong women's coalition emerged during the debate over the French parity laws. Activists from both the pro-independence and loyalist sides of politics campaigned strongly to ensure the parity laws would be implemented in the territory. These laws, and the advocacy from local women's groups, have ensured that since 2004 women have been represented in New Caledonian politics in near-equal numbers to men. Men still dominate key positions of political power, and in the complex political environment of New Caledonia, gender is just one political identity among many, making issues of representation fraught. Yet women's increased access to politics has had a substantive impact in New Caledonia: enabling the articulation of diverse viewpoints, enhancing women's status as leaders and increasing attention paid to key gender policy issues. Building on a long history of women's participation in decision-making, collective action and political activism in the territory, the parity laws have created an expanded political sphere for women.

Keywords

Politics · New Caledonia · Parity · Gender quotas ·
Feminism

**15.1 Introduction**

New Caledonia is just one of six *collectivités* outside of Europe under the control of France, along with five *départements*. This collection of overseas territories gives France an expansive global footprint across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, as well as the largest exclusive economic zone in the world (Fisher 2013). The political statuses of these *collectivités* and *départements* are complicated, with as many different arrangements as there are territories (Mrgudovic 2012). Yet New Caledonia is especially distinctive politically in the French sphere of influence, given its unique status under the French constitution as a special collectivity.

It is also distinctive within the Pacific Islands region, not least due to its consistently high levels of women’s political representation, paralleled only by French Polynesia. The French parity laws, as implemented in New Caledonia, offer unprecedented access to political institutions and positions for women, even within the confines of masculinised customary and formal power structures. Close to half of the seats in New Caledonia’s three Provincial Assemblies and Congress are held by women, and the number of women in politics is also high in the other French Pacific territories of French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna. Elsewhere in the region, women’s political representation lags behind. As of April 2020, women occupied just 6% of seats in the legislatures of the independent Pacific, and the only three countries in the world with no women in the national parliaments – Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Federated States of Micronesia – were all Pacific neighbours (IPU 2020).

New Caledonia could be described from a political science perspective as a polarised polity. The primary political cleavage is around the issue of independence from France (see Chauchat 2017; Forrest and Kowasch 2016). A referendum on the issue was held in November 2018, resulting in a relatively narrow defeat for the independence option (Chauchat 2019; Maclellan 2019b). In a second referendum

<footnote>K. Baker (✉)
Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
e-mail: kerryn.baker@anu.edu.au</footnote>
in October 2020, the proportion of pro-independence votes increased further, although at 46.74%, it was still short of a majority (Fisher 2020). A third referendum in December 2021 was largely boycotted by pro-independence voters, leaving the question of New Caledonia's future political status unsettled.

The independence debate in New Caledonia is largely – albeit simplistically – conceptualised along ethnic lines, with the Indigenous Kanak population the strongest supporters of independence, while the settler populations, and in particular those of European descent, more likely to support remaining with France. Yet within these two broad pro- and anti-independence camps, there is significant diversity of perspectives, informed by different experiences of colonisation, ethnicity, class and other identities and individualities. These differences can perhaps be seen in the intense fragmentation of New Caledonian politics beyond simple pro- and anti-independence groupings (see Maclellan 2005, 2015).

In this complex political environment, the parity laws have meant more than a simple numerical increase in women's political representation. They have ensured a diversity of women's views and perspectives are represented within political institutions. That is not to say they have been a panacea; politics in New Caledonia, especially at its highest echelons, remains male-dominated. Yet in the context of the Pacific Islands region, with the lowest levels of women's representation in the world, the implementation of the parity laws has had a profound effect on politics.

This chapter will explore women's involvement in New Caledonian politics both before and after the introduction of the parity laws. The following section examines the history of women's political organising in New Caledonia. Then, women's representation in formal politics, including the introduction of the parity law, is discussed. The final section will look at the complexity of gender as a category of analysis in New Caledonia, using the lens of intersectionality (see Crenshaw 1991).

## 15.2 Feminisms, Anti-feminisms and Women's Organising in New Caledonia

Feminism as a movement has never been wholly embraced by women activists in New Caledonia. Alan Berman (2005) argues: "The feminist movement in New Caledonia is, for the most part, non-existent". This is largely because, for Kanak activists, feminism is seen as linked to Global North agendas and potentially detracting from the wider goals of the nationalist movement. In the Pacific Islands, feminism is often perceived as a western construct and not especially relevant to the Pacific context (George 2010). Where feminism is articulated in the region, it is often linked to maternal nar-

ratives and imagery, while western feminism is seen as individualistic or even anti-family (George 2010; Leckie 2002). Pacific feminism is also closely linked to Christian values (Jolly 2000), understandable in a region where the overwhelming majority of the population identifies as Christian and where Christian-based women's organisations are viewed as much more acceptable to the wider community than secular groups (Monson 2013). Yet for the most part, feminism is seen as an unhelpful framing, too far removed from Pacific realities and values to be of use to Pacific women activists and the women's movement more broadly.

This is not to say that there are no localised articulations of a feminist agenda. In Berman's work, he noted that while numerous high-profile Kanak women leaders he interviewed rejected the label feminist, some were more open to it. This latter group included prominent pro-independence activist and former Vice-President of New Caledonia Déwé Gorodey who stated in an interview: "I think it's through ignorance that the term 'feminist' is not adopted here" (quoted in Berman 2005). An Indigenous feminist movement does exist in New Caledonia. One of the founding groups of the *Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste* (FLNKS), historically the dominant political faction on the pro-independence side, was the Group of Kanak and Exploited Women in Struggle (GFKEL). Led by Sussana Ounei, the GFKEL was explicitly a radical feminist organisation that was set up in response to the failure of PALIKA, one of the largest groups within the FLNKS, to establish a women's section (Salomon and Hamelin 2008). While the group became defunct in the late 1980s, its existence proves the presence of a feminist agenda in the nationalist movement (Baker 2019; Chappell 2013). The radical, yet short-lived, overtly feminist dimension of the nationalist movement was succeeded by well-subscribed and politically active women's associations throughout the country (Salomon and Hamelin 2008).

Younger women, many of whom had been educated abroad, were critical in the establishment of politically active religious and secular women's groups in the 1960s and 1970s. These educated young women often held leadership positions in the newly formed groups (Paini 2003). These groups were an important space for activism, but they were clearly modelled on Western social and religious structures (Beboko-Beccalossi 2017). Thus, influences from overseas were keenly felt in women's activist spaces in New Caledonia, as in men's and mixed groups (see Chappell 2013).

Historically in the Pacific Islands region, much of women's organisation occurred through religious channels and networks (see Douglas 2003). This was also true of New Caledonia: "Religion undoubtedly provided a stimulus for the formation of [women's] groups and collective moments" (Beboko-Beccalossi 2017, p. 183). Religion in New Caledonia as elsewhere in the Pacific has been thoroughly
indigenised (Paini 2017). Christianity, along with culture, is critical to self-identity for many Kanak people; religion and custom are interrelated and act to reinforce even as they transform one another (Eriksen 2008; Keesing 1989).

Church women's groups take on significant importance in communities and are often highly respected. While they may have apparently conservative agendas (Jolly 1991), Christian women's groups across various denominations have nevertheless important forces for development activity, social activism and collective mobilisation, especially in rural areas (Pollard 2003; Scheyvens 2003). Church-based women's groups provide space for women to organise collective action and to build leadership skills and experience. This element of church women's organisations is not unique to the Pacific region; in Europe and the United States, Christian women's associations were commonly at the forefront of early women's rights activism (see Douglas 2003; McCammon and Campbell 2002). Collectivism and social organisation, often most effective when conducted through church women's groups, are important strategies where women are excluded from most positions and spheres of political power.

Women also became increasingly visible in government agencies from the 1980s (Beboko-Beccalossi 2017). This institutionalised the women's movement to an extent. In academic scholarship, institutionalisation is traditionally treated as the death knell for a social movement, but Merrindahl Andrew (2019) argues this is too simplistic. In New Caledonia, the correlation between increased women's representation and strengthened women's policy machinery (discussed below) shows the dynamism of interactions between the women's movement and the state.

As demonstrated, even if feminism remains a highly contested concept in New Caledonia, there is evidence of widespread effective women's organisation inside and outside government structures. The women's movement insofar as it exists in New Caledonia, however, is still affected by underlying political currents and divisions. One early example of this polarity was the creation of the *Conseil des Femmes de Nouvelle Calédonie* (CFNC) in 1983. Initially established as an umbrella organisation for women's associations in New Caledonia, open to groups with memberships of all ethnicity, rising ethnic tensions soon affected its work:

> Soon after the country was deep in rivalries and resentments, different ethnic groups regarded each other with suspicion, and the two main political alliances fought like bitter enemies. Such a climate of tension inflamed people's minds, and eventually it infiltrated within the women's council. Many among the association leaders ceased taking part in the meetings, and those who did attend brought with them proposals that were biased by their political sympathies (Beboko-Beccalossi 2017, p. 187).

In 1989, the CFNC became the Council of Melanesian Women of New Caledonia and later the Federation of Melanesian Women's Associations of New Caledonia

(Beboko-Beccalossi 2017). The experience of the CFNC shows the challenges in establishing a cross-partisan women's movement across the pro- and anti-independence divide.

## 15.3 Women in New Caledonian Politics

The under-representation of women in New Caledonian politics until the turn of the twenty-first century was profound. This was particularly acute for Kanak women, described by Berman (2005) as “token participants historically in the political affairs of New Caledonia”. From the establishment of the Territorial Assembly of New Caledonia in the 1950s until 1999, there were no female members (Berman 2005; Drage 1995). In 1999, the first post-Nouméa Accord elections were held, although the parity laws were not yet implemented. In that election, nine women were elected. This number included four Kanak women. While women's representation at the municipal level was slightly higher than at territorial level, it was still extremely low. In 1998, out of 700 councillors, only around 20 were Kanak women (Berman 2005).

In 1999, a series of constitutional amendments were passed in France, colloquially known as the parity laws. These laws ostensibly mandated gender parity in political representation. Since the passage of the parity laws, women's representation in the French National Assembly and Senate has increased; as of April 2020, two out of every five delegates to the National Assembly and a third of the Senate are women (IPU 2020). Full parity has yet to be achieved, however, and this is largely due to a lack of political will on the part of political parties, many of which elect to pay financial penalties rather than appoint equal numbers of women and men as candidates (see Murray 2007). While the laws were passed in France, it was expected that they would apply in all overseas territories. Furthermore, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna, parity would be more strictly enforced than in mainland France because of the electoral system used, list proportional representation. In this system, according to parity, lists must be made up of equal numbers of women and men in alternating order; if parity on the list was not achieved, instead of financial penalties, the party would simply not be registered to contest elections. In each of the French Pacific territories, there were attempts to delay or block the implementation of the parity laws (see Baker 2019).

In New Caledonia, Simon Loueckhote, at the time a member of the French Senate for New Caledonia as well as the Speaker of the New Caledonian Congress, proposed an amendment to delay implementation of the parity laws in the territory until 2007. Arguments against the parity laws in New Caledonia coalesced around three key themes: that women, and especially Kanak women, were not prepared to
enter politics; that the laws would detrimentally affect Kanak culture and custom; and that the laws were colonially imposed and should be opposed on those grounds (Berman 2005). As evident by the arguments used, male political leaders attempted to situate the parity laws within wider debates on independence and on the protection of Kanak culture, traditions and ways of life, in order to delegitimise them.

The parity laws were presented as a colonial imposition and as a distraction for the pro-independence movement. When the Loueckhote amendment was put forward, a spokesman for the pro-independence group *Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste* (FLNKS) criticised parity as a threat to the independence movement:

> The political arm of the FLNKS ... regrets that during this heated debate, certain politicians have hoped that the law on parity would apply “ipso facto” in our country, thus calling into questions the will for decolonisation and self-government sanctioned by the Nouméa Accord (quoted in Claudel 2000, p. 2).

Nicole Waïa, a Kanak woman leader who was a member of the Congress at the time, questioned the idea that the parity laws were a threat to the decolonisation process: “How does the fight for parity between men and women harm the process of decolonisation? For me, decolonisation should result in advancement, change, progress” (Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes 2000, p. 8). Other supporters of parity countered that this law was no different to other French laws imposed on New Caledonia in the post-colonial era (Berman 2005). These include laws relating to gender that are far more liberal than those of New Caledonia's independent Pacific neighbours, notably regarding access to abortion, as well as same-sex marriage and adoption.

Opponents of the parity law also portrayed the move as a threat to traditional gender roles and, by extension, to Kanak values and culture. Members of the Customary Senate, an advisory body made up of Kanak elders, voiced fears that the parity laws would cause societal problems for the Kanak population (Berman 2005). César Qenegei, a Kanak public figure, argued that parity would disrupt the Melanesian way of life (Fléaux 2000). This attempt to frame parity as anti-theretical to custom was resisted by many prominent Kanak women (Baker 2019).

The Loueckhote amendment was publicly condemned by women, as well as some men, from both sides of politics. Protests were held in the capital of Nouméa and other towns, and a petition to the French Minister of the Interior in support of the implementation of the parity laws gathered 1600 signatures. The strength of the pro-parity movement in New Caledonia was notable, but equally so were the sources of support for parity. The parity laws debate was a unifier of women in New Caledonia (Berman 2005). A genuine cross-partisan political movement emerged to oppose the Loueckhote amendment and ensure the parity laws were

applied in the territory. This in itself was notable, given the historic difficult in creating a united women's movement in New Caledonia, as seen by the CFNC experience (Beboko-Beccalossi 2017). Ultimately, the Loueckhote amendment was withdrawn, and parity was first implemented in the 2004 territorial elections.

The immediate effect of the introduction of parity was the numerical increase in women's representation. In the 2004 election, the number of women in politics in New Caledonia increased substantially. Women won 47% of the seats in the Congress and up to 50% of the seats in each of the three provincial assemblies (Chappell 2005; Maclellan 2005). Furthermore, Marie-Noëlle Thémereau – leader of the *Avenir Ensemble* party and an outspoken proponent of parity – was elected as the first female President of New Caledonia. Thémereau, formerly a member of the right-wing and firmly anti-independence *Rassemblement pour une Calédonie dans la République* (RPCR), had joined the more centre-right and “reconciliatory” party (Chanter 2006, p. 150) in 2001. During her tenure as leader, *Avenir Ensemble* became the RPCR's main contender for dominance in the loyalist political sphere. Gorodey, who had been Vice-President since 2001, was re-appointed in her post.

The initial gains of parity in terms of women's representation in the legislatures have been maintained. In the 2019 elections, women won 25 out of 54 seats in the Congress (46%), seven out of 14 seats in the Loyalty Islands Provincial Assembly (50%), ten out of 22 seats in the Northern Provincial Assembly (45%) and 19 out of 40 seats in the Southern Provincial Assembly (47.5%). Women were underrepresented at the heads of party lists in the 2019 elections; of the lists that won at least one seat, women headed one of four in the Loyalty Islands, zero of three in North Province and one of four in South Province (République Française 2019). This accounts for the slight over-representation of men in the Congress as well as in the Northern and Southern Provincial Assemblies, while the two female-headed lists returned even numbers of elected members – and thus even numbers of male and female representatives – four of the male-headed lists returned odd numbers.

The parity laws have indeed resulted in near-parity in political representation in New Caledonia. In terms of women's political leadership, however, progress in the post-parity era has been less impressive. In 2019, one of the female-headed lists, the hardline anti-independence grouping *Avenir en confiance*, whose list was headed by Sonia Backès of *Les Républicains calédoniens*, won the most seats, winning half the seats in the Southern Provincial Assembly and 18 seats in the Congress. After negotiations in the power-sharing government were concluded, however, Thierry Santa, head of the *Rassemblement-Les Républicains* party and another key figure in the *Avenir en confiance* coalition, was elected president. The vice-president was Gilbert Tyuienon of the
pro-independence UC-FLNKS – both are men. Only two of the 11 members (18%) of the government are women.

While there have been two female presidents of New Caledonia since the parity laws were introduced – Thémereau and Cynthia Ligeard – neither served a full term. The Thémereau administration had a rocky start, with members of her former party resigning from government just hours after she was confirmed in the position, thus bringing down the government. Both Thémereau and Gorodey were eventually reinstated in their positions, but Berman (2005) cites this incident as evidence that the political climate for women in high-level political positions remained “very chilly” even after parity was introduced. Thémereau resigned as President in 2007 and was replaced by another Avenir Ensemble politician, Harold Martin. Ligeard won the presidency following the 2014 election, but her administration lasted less than 6 months. The political turmoil faced by both Thémereau and Ligeard stemmed from disputes among the anti-independence parties.

Despite this mixed report card on the political advances won by parity, there has been noticeable progress in terms of the substantive representation of women and women's interests. Studies have found that issues of women's rights were paid more attention in political debate in New Caledonia after parity was introduced (Bargel et al. 2010; George 2013, 2015). This turn has had substantive impacts, notably in the provision of more funding for women's policy machinery since the introduction of the parity laws and in new measures to support women's educational opportunities and economic empowerment.

One noticeable shift has been in renewed attention from the government to the issue of violence against women. This is a major issue in New Caledonia, as elsewhere in the world; a 2017 study reported that one in five women in the territory had experienced spousal violence in the past year (Rivière and Ronai 2017). Political actors including Déwé Gorodey have been instrumental in driving the government's agenda on this issue. Recent progress in this area has included additional government funding for civil society organisations working to combat violence against women, the creation of an emergency telephone line for victims of sexual and domestic violence and the provision of emergency accommodation (Gouvernement de la Nouvelle-Calédonie 2019).

Parity was an exogenous process in New Caledonia – imposed externally from the French “métropole”, in a debate that paid limited attention to how it may be perceived and implemented in overseas territorial contexts (see Baker 2014). Nevertheless, women in New Caledonia took control of the parity laws debate in the territory, firstly to defeat the Loueckhote amendment and ensure the laws were introduced and secondly to utilise a newfound strength in numbers to promote women’s issues on the policy agenda. The women’s movement that arose in support of the parity movement in New Caledonia is perhaps especially notable in the context

of the complicated ethnic and nationalist politics of the territory, as discussed more below.

## 15.4 Intersecting Identities

Gender as a political identity cannot be considered in a vacuum. In the Pacific Islands, as in all other regions of the world, “historical, cultural and special specificities complicate an understanding of women’s agencies and alert us to the dilemma of treating the category ‘women’ either as unified or as infinitely fragmented” (Leckie 2002, p. 175). While issues such as women’s underrepresentation in politics, maternal health and violence against women cut across distinctions of ethnicity, culture and class, they do not affect all groups equally. Intersectionality is an analytical tool that highlights how the marginalisation of groups and individuals can be compounded through overlapping forms and types of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and other social identities (see Crenshaw 1991; Smooth 2011).

The politics of intersecting identities can be especially fraught in the contexts of nationalist movements, as in New Caledonia. Resistance movements with male-dominated leadership hierarchies can treat women’s issues an unimportant or even as a distraction to the cause (Horowitz 2017). The specific struggles of women are subsumed within a wider movement, and explicit attention to them is seen as divisive, with political movements in this way echoing the gender blindness of state structures they are fighting against: “indigenous women fall between the edifice of rights constructed by … states and political movements” (Radcliffe 2002, p. 149).

While nationalist movements may be inconsiderate of gender issues, the broader feminist movement is seen as uninterested in issues of nationalism and Indigenous rights. Writing of her experiences in the Hawaiian nationalist movement, Haunani-Kay Trask (1996) positions Western feminism as diametrically opposed to Indigenous rights: “More than a feminist, I am a nationalist”. This is reflected in the New Caledonian context in a quote from Marie-Paul Tourte (in Berman 2005):

> I think feminist is understood to mean fight against men. Kanak women want a balance. They think the struggle for independence, for Kanaky, necessitates unity among the Kanak people; division must be avoided ... Because we're in a colonial situation, I think that Kanak women subordinate their own internal problems to the struggle against colonialism.

In his writing, Jean-Marie Tjibaou (2005) – the celebrated Kanak pro-independence leader who was assassinated in 1989 – emphasised the role Kanak women had to play in the nationalist movement. He articulates the role of women as mothers and custodians of culture:
It is they who give the single co-extensive gift of life and blood, the one through the other. The father gives name, rank and social status, but the child, boy or girl, will always remember the cord which ties him to the mother's clan ... the women of Caledonia, like all the mothers of the world, give life at birth and again every moment of the daily round (Tjibaou 2005, p. 28)

He notes the key role played by women's associations in standing against alcoholism, violence against women and other societal ills and in promoting Kanak culture. He credits these associations with the original idea to hold a festival of Melanesian art, which became Melanesia 2000 (Tjibaou 2005). The festival, the first of its kind in New Caledonia, was held in Nouméa in September 1975 under the direction of a committee led by Tjibaou and was a turning point in the revitalisation of Kanak cultural identity and the creation of a unified Kanak political voice. Women were active in the conceptualisation and organisation of the festival, as well as performing (see Graille 2016).

As detailed above, women asserted themselves within the Kanak nationalist movement both in collaboration with men and in separate affiliated organisations, including the GFKEL. In many ways, the nationalist movement was an opportunity for women to engage more fully in the political space. Yet many female nationalist activists articulated a perceived tension between fighting for the nationalist cause and promoting a women's rights agenda (see Berman 2005). On the anti-independence side, too, politically active women need to position themselves in relation to their social identities, not just gender, but other cross-cutting identities such as class that complicate an already fragmented political system (Chanter 2006) and make issues of representation more fraught. In the 2014 territorial election, women headed the three most conservative of six lists registered in the South Province; in 2019 again, the most conservative list was headed by a woman (Maclellan 2015, 2019a). These tensions reflect the complexities of navigating intersectional identities for political women.

## 15.5 Conclusion

Women's political representation is often highlighted as an issue, yet the claim that half of the world's population has any kind of collective basis for mobilisation and representation has commonly been resisted, by both men and women. Nonetheless, there are strong cases to be made for the need for women to be represented and to represent women's issues in political institutions. Young (2002) claims that women share a social status as a result of structural inequalities, and this shared status informs their contribution to politics. Phillips (1995, 1998) makes the case that women have shared interests that are formed from the lived experience of being a

woman and that women are uniquely qualified to represent these interests in politics. It can certainly be argued, as by Carol Kidu, one of the few women to be elected to the Papua New Guinea Parliament, that "when there is only less than 1% of half the population in Parliament, it is not a representative democracy" (quoted in Garrett 2013).

Gender is, of course, not the only or even the most important identity that shapes political consciousness and action. As I have shown in other research related to women voters in the Pacific Islands (Baker 2018), men are afforded a complex calculation taking into account their various identities and allegiances, while women are often expected to vote on, and are heavily criticised for not voting on, gendered lines. In New Caledonia, there is a diversity of perspectives among women (and men) informed by different experiences of colonisation, ethnicity, class, the exacerbating divisions with the pro- and anti-independence movements and a myriad other identities and factors.

Despite this diversity and despite the deep political cleavage of independence that still defines New Caledonian politics, common ground was found by women in the debate around the implementation of the parity laws in the territory. This political alliance of women from across the political divide was arguably short-lived (Baker 2019). Nevertheless, it demonstrated commonalities in women's experiences of being excluded from formal politics, and the existence of a shared women's political agenda, at least in terms of descriptive representation. Women are now present in New Caledonia's formal political institutions in remarkable numbers, both in terms of historical representation in the territory and from a global perspective; if New Caledonia were to be included on the Inter-Parliamentary Union's list of women's representation, which only includes independent countries, it would place among the highest-performing countries in the world (IPU 2020).

Men still dominate key positions of political power in New Caledonia. Yet the parity laws have provided space for women's interests to be represented, articulated and (equally importantly) funded through policy machinery and initiatives on violence against women and women's economic empowerment, among other issues. Women's increased access to political positions has enhanced their status in communities and empowered them to challenge their lack of access to other institutions – notably, through a campaign instigated by female politicians and Kanak women's groups to open membership of the Customary Senate to women (Naisseline 2005; Salomon and Hamelin 2008).

In the Pacific Islands region, women are mostly underrepresented as representatives in legislatures. Where they are the sole female representative, they are tasked with representing all women as a group; where there is a small cohort, they are often criticised for not working together (Baker
2018; George 2015). As the number of female representa-
tives increases, the expectations associated with the role
become easier to manage (Baker 2018; Corbett and Liki
2015). This, among other reasons, is why numerical increases
in women's representation are important; women are better
served when there is a range of backgrounds, perspectives
and lived experiences represented in political institutions.
What the parity laws have accomplished in New Caledonia is
to create unprecedented space for such a diversity of views to
be represented.

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## Abstract

The sessions of the Ouvéa local council attract the ethnographer's attention because of the discrepancy between their discussions and local daily life on the island. On the one hand, these sessions look like any other local council sessions, including those of metropolitan France. But on the other, they also present various peculiarities characteristic of Ouvéa's social and cultural context.

As elsewhere in the world, the organisation of political power observed and experienced during local council sessions is not simple. On the contrary, it exhibits hybrid characteristics from both a French institutional republican political world and from the so-called Kanak customary political universe. This chapter explores what J.-M. Tjibaou named “colonisation within the Republic” (Tjibaou, La présence Kanak. O. Jacob, Paris, 1996) by exploring this aspect of hybridity in a case study based on a long-term ethnography of local political practices and, more particularly, of the local council sessions held between 2007 and 2010.

## Keywords

Political anthropology · New Caledonia · Ouvéa · Local council · Autonomous political arena

## 16.1 Introduction

The sessions of the Ouvéa local council attract the attention of ethnographers because of the discrepancy between their deliberations and local daily life on the island. On the one hand, these sessions look like any other local council ses-

sions, such as those of metropolitan France, but on the other, they also present various peculiarities characteristic of Ouvéa's social and cultural context. This particular “political spot” (Abélès 2007, p. 13), the local council, is occupied by men with customary responsibilities and high status, along with women who, by definition, have no such responsibilities. The customary political organisation of Kanak chiefdoms, which includes both councils and the council of elders, is characterised by a strict distinction between men, who have a monopoly concerning public speaking, and women who, while not necessarily excluded from political knowledge, have no place in the so-called political life of the chiefdom (Nayral 2018). There are also other men who do not belong to the first category of prestigious, fairly powerful men. This recent and particular configuration of the local council, as well as the political practices observed during these meetings, call into question the relationships between Kanak custom and French republican institutions, which both possess their own forms of political organisation. As elsewhere in the world, the organisation of political power observed and experienced during local council sessions is not simple. On the contrary, it exhibits hybrid characteristics from both an institutional republican political world and from the so-called customary political universe.

This chapter seeks to analyse the way in which hybridity can emerge from different levels of organisation and control within the territorial community of Ouvéa. It explores a case study based on observations of local council sessions held between 2007 and 2010. Although these observations are thus slightly dated, they remain relevant and useful because the general local political situation regarding local councils is much the same now as it was a decade ago and the current mayor held the same role in 2010. In order to introduce the situation in 2010, the chapter will first summarise how Kanak people have progressively become part of Caledonian “municipalities” (local councils) since the end of the *code de l'indigénat* (“native regulations”) system in 1946.

<footnote>M. Nayral (✉)
University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France
e-mail: melissa.nayral@gmail.com</footnote>
## 16.2 From Being “Indigenous” to Becoming a Member of the Local Council (Conseiller Municipal)

### 16.2.1 Citizenship and Republican Elections

From the arrival of the French administration in New Caledonia in 1853, Indigenous Kanak people and Europeans were treated differently. However, these differences were only formalised in 1887 with the creation of a system of administrative law codified as the Native Regulations (*Indigénat* in French), which made a distinction between citizens and indigenous non-citizens. As in Algeria or Cochin China where this regime also existed, Caledonian “native non-citizens”, in other words Kanak people, were subjected to French sovereignty but could not vote. This discriminatory political system had a criminal equivalent as well as a civil jurisdiction, which also made a distinction between citizens and “natives” who remained subject to their own traditions and customs. “Citizens” and “native non-citizens” were therefore differentiated by a triple discrimination affecting political rights and criminal and civil law. However, the official definition of the “native” (*indigène*) only appeared in 1915.

In 1946, while the civil distinction remained, the other two distinctions, political and criminal, were removed (Merle 2004). It was then, in 1946, with the abolition of the “Native Regulations” (*Code de l’indigénat*), that the Kanak started to be considered as “natives from New Caledonia” and therefore began to be able to participate in elections for the very first time. It should be noted that the electorate at this time only included 10% of those Kanak people old enough to vote. In 1951, this figure increased to 60%, before finally reaching 100% in 1956 (Kurtovitch 1999). We should also add that the 1956 elections saw a high participation of Kanak people (Soriano 2000a, p. 243). However, this participation was not simple even for Kanak leaders themselves. Soriano, who has done in-depth analysis of this phenomenon, writes that, due to their hold over the Kanak population, it was the mission schools that actually controlled this process (Soriano 2000b, p. 88). He stresses the missions’ influence over the Kanaks’ electoral mobilisation, considering that “it is on the one hand, what made people vote massively, and on the other hand, what made people vote upon its elite’s recommendations” (Soriano 2000a, p. 251). It was the fear of a rising local communist movement that led both the Catholic and Protestant Churches to ensure that Kanak people entered politics. UICALO (Union of Indigenous Caledonians Going for Freedom within Order (UICALO) and the Association of French Caledonian and Loyaltian Indigenous

People (AICLF),<fnref n="1" /> two missionary-inspired parapolitical organisations (Kurtovitch 1999), were the most prominent movements. As Wittersheim has also written, “churches are what encouraged and set up the natives’ participation in politics” (Wittersheim 2003, p. 64). In addition, Trépied stressed the “social control practiced by collective structures (chiefdoms, churches, clans)” and emphasised the role of churches in controlling “the Melanesians’ vote” (Trépied 2007, p. 59; 69). My research has not allowed me to do such an analysis in Ouvéa; however, I would like to underline how close political and religious local networks are to each other, to the extent that they are embedded in one another. I would also like to highlight that, in New Caledonia, all the Christian churches have always played a big part in daily life, just as they do in the territory’s republican political life.

As mentioned above, during the 1950s and 1960s, the missions encouraged Kanak people to actively participate in republican elections, which led over time to a form of “great respect for democratic institutions” (Wittersheim 2006, p. 101). From this period on, Kanak gradually became involved in republican institutions, in an institutional logic that they abandoned in the 1970s when they radically protested against the entire colonial situation. When the Matignon Accords were signed in 1988, “once and for all, Melanesian leaders became involved in the republican system” (Soriano 2000b, p. 91–92) but this time from a different perspective.

### 16.2.2 The Municipality of Ouvéa

In New Caledonia, the first municipal commissions were created in 1879 on the main island Grande Terre, and only French citizens were allowed to take part in them. In 1953, these municipal commissions were opened up to mainland Kanak people, and at the same time, regional commissions (the equivalent of the municipal commissions mentioned above with a different name) were created in the Loyalty Islands, including Ouvéa. However, the first elections did not take place until a year later, in 1954. In 1961, both municipal and regional commissions became “municipalities”. In 1969, with the 3 January 69-5 law, 32 of the 33 current councils of New Caledonia, including that of Ouvéa, were given a new administrative and legal statute, evolving towards the status of “full exercise municipality”. This term meant that it was

<footnote n="1">¹UICALO: Union des Indigènes Calédoniens Amis de la Liberté dans l'Ordre; AICLF: Association des Indigènes Calédoniens et Loyaltiens Français.</footnote>
(and still is) a civil territory where French common law was – and still is – applicable (Trépied 2007).<fnref n="2" />

In 1990,<fnref n="3" /> the financial and administrative authority of France over the municipalities was abolished and taken over by New Caledonia. They now have the same rights as French municipalities, except in relation to laws concerning economic development, and territorial planning and development. They have autonomy in public finances, which come under the jurisdiction of a larger institution: the provinces.

Like French municipalities, those of New Caledonia are legal entities with their own budget and subject to public law. Local councils consequently have considerable decision-making power. In spite of this, it should not be forgotten that since 1999,<fnref n="4" /> all New Caledonian municipalities have come under the authority of one or other of the three local provinces, that for Ouvéa being the Loyalty Island Province, each with its own substantial budget.<fnref n="5" /> That is why some very important decisions related to Ouvéa are taken in the neighbouring island of Lifou, the administrative centre of the province. As in France, all the municipalities of New Caledonia, as republican territorial collectivities, are free to manage their own affairs through an elected board: the *Conseil Municipal* (local council). Once elected by the population, the board elects from among its members a mayor and his or her councillors. As a government official, the mayor can sometimes have specific roles, in particular regarding the management of the registry office and military matters.

The municipality of Ouvéa had 3401 inhabitants at the last census (ISEE 20192019), most of whom are Kanak. Unlike Kone on Grande Terre, where challenging and contested colonial relationships progressively led the Kanak to political power (Trépied 2007, p. 60), since its first mandate in 1954, the local council of Ouvéa has always been run by Kanak teams, most of them affiliated to the pro-independence political party *Union Calédonienne* (UC). (Archives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (Nouméa) n.d.).

It is nonetheless difficult to rigorously investigate these political affiliations in much detail, since local records on this topic are lacking. Firstly, the local council building was burnt down during the “events of Ouvéa” in 1988, a paroxysmal episode in the biggest social and political crisis ever faced by New Caledonia, and the records stored there since the 1950s were hence entirely destroyed. Secondly, Ouvéa’s

local council has been working in a new building since 2009, and moving from the old building to the new one has caused problems regarding the storage of about ten boxes containing amongst other things the registers of births, marriages and deaths and election results. Consequently, besides oral memory and digital information,<fnref n="6" /> the only official written documents available today in Ouvéa are the municipal registers written during local council sessions since 21 February 1987. These registers, which often have blank pages, only mention UC (pro-independence party) mandates, apart from 2002 to 2008 mandate held by PALIKA (another pro-independence political party, which has been running the council since 2014). Before proceeding with this analysis, it should be pointed out that though the interviews and observations conducted in various situations (meetings, councillors’ office, information desk, election campaign, etc.) constitute the core of the ethnographic material, these analyses are supported by a certain number of official documents, as well as posters, electoral lists, election results and many files from the 97 W series of the Nouméa archives. Amongst these is correspondence between the local police and both local and French authorities, along with letters sent by missionaries. However, all these documents provide us with little information concerning the socio-historical trajectories of the local council’s elected members.

The name of Ouvéa immediately evokes the sociopolitical crisis of the 1980s and “the Ouvéa cave affair”, which lead to the death of 19 Kanak activists in the course of a military intervention, followed by the assassination of the Kanak independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou a year later. We could almost say that Ouvéa is a political issue in itself. However, as this appears to be something of a paradox, the island was neglected by public policies for long periods, and the geographer Faurie (2011) has demonstrated how the public authorities never bothered about the economic development of Ouvéa until its inscription as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. In other words, if everything related to Ouvéa appears highly political, in some way or other, it also seems that everything is always viewed through the distorting prism of the so-called “Events” of the 1980s, which end up acting as a screen between the role they still play in everyday life on the island and everything else that is at stake locally.

Focusing on the municipality of Ouvéa and on its local council is therefore relevant, not so much in order to distinguish what is at stake on this scale regarding the destiny of

<footnote n="2">²The commune of Nouméa was created on 8 March 1879.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Law N°90-1247, 1990, 29 December.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴19 March 1999 law.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵The municipality of Poya is however an exception to the rule as its territory is spread over both the North and the South Provinces (since 1989). ISEE, 2014.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Wikipedia for instance provides a list of all mayors of the council: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouv%C3%A9a (website visited 10/12/2020) which matches official Republican administrative records.</footnote>
New Caledonia or even the Loyalty Island Province but
rather to understand and to propose a new way of under-
standing how this local republican institution operates in a
Kanak context, in which customary ideology occupies a key
place but is not the only level of identification. As mentioned
earlier, Ouvéa's local council implements protocol practices
that somehow make it seem alien to local daily life while at
the same time being steeped in customary norms.

16.3 The Local Council

The local council (*Conseil Municipal*) of Ouvéa meets about four times a year, in the new council building located in Hwadrilla, in the north of the island's central district. This building is part of what I call the island's “administrative centre”. The place is not referred to as such locally, but it is where the Loyalty Island building, the local library, the bank, the customary council building and the airline sales office are found alongside each other. For this reason, there is free public transport to this administrative centre, and many people make their way there in order to complete administrative formalities (birth, death and marriage registrations, plane ticket purchases, banking, etc.). This place, which I perceived methodologically as a “neutral”, favourable place for meetings, can also be described as a “spot for politics” (Abélès 2007, p. 13). Here people can run into each other, in particular people who do not routinely interact with one another: people from the north and the centre, European residents, administrative staff, tourists and local councillors who have working facilities there where anyone can meet with them.

All of the elected members of the local council gather in
this building on a regular basis. Their meetings always take
place in the council room, on the building's ground floor.
This large room has rather expensive, modern furniture (a
very long oval table around which there are about 30 large
comfortable seats) and is always excessively air-conditioned.
This is significant in a situation where the vast majority of
local houses have no running water and some of them no
power either. At the back of the room, there are four chairs in
case anyone else attends the meetings. The council secretary
delivers session convocations to the councillors by hand.
Sessions are usually planned to start at 10 am but seldom do.
They often start a lot later, when they are not postponed due
to the lack of the required quorum (half of the elected mem-
bers plus one):

It is 10:30, and they need two more members to reach the
required quorum. The session cannot start. The mayor suggests
that those who never show up to local council sessions resign
from their functions. Joking, he adds: "We are going to hire staff
specifically in order to pick them up from home and bring them
here! We're gonna have to, you know!" (Fieldwork diary, local
council, 27 September 2010)

Of the five sessions that I attended in full between 2009 and
2010, three had to be convened a second time due to the fail-
ure to gather the required quorum on the initial day. Moreover,
from 1987 to 2010 period, I noted 127 postponed sessions
out of around 250, that is to say roughly 50.8%, and the sec-
ond sessions sometimes had only a few participants. These
elements are sufficient to realise that local council sessions
are not a priority for members except for a few deeply
involved individuals: the mayor and one or two of his coun-
cillors. This is in contrast to what happens in customary life
where at the time of weddings, funerals or any other type of
ceremony, whether to attend is not even up for discussion.
People are expected to do so, and they do. This observation
indicates an initial distinction among the elected members of
the council themselves. On the one hand, we have the "ordi-
nary members", the grassroots, and on the other hand mem-
bers whose habits and attitudes are closer to those of
"professional politicians" (Lagroye 1994, p. 5).

16.4 The Institution’s Considerable Role
in Ideologies and Practices

16.4.1 The Importance of Protocol

In the local council room, the councillors' behaviour during sessions displays specific norms that cannot be observed in any other context in Ouvéa. For example, the dress rules for attending a session differ significantly from those that apply in daily life. This difference is especially noticeable among the "professional politicians" already mentioned. The mayor and general secretary wear trousers and buttoned up shirts, and every single time I attended the sessions and unlike everyone else, they were wearing closed shoes (the annual average temperature on the island is around 27 °C). A few other men also wear buttoned up shirts for the occasion although we know their daily clothes are more likely to be shorts, shirts and sandals or no shoes at all.

Yet this is not the case for all council members, and
among those I call “professional politicians” most dress for
sessions just as they would in any other context. It could be
suggested that the solemnity of the moment is what makes
people dress up, but it should be pointed out that in other
solemn moments, like weddings or funerals for instance,
appropriate clothing does not necessarily imply wearing
Western clothes. However, this is what people do at
these local council sessions.

Moreover, the high-ranking councillors spend a long time
greeting every single person already in the room. They also
usually walk in with briefcases, diaries and pens, and some
of them arrive straight from their flight from Nouméa: sev-
eral members of the Ouvéa local council, all of whom belong
to the analytical category of “professional politicians”
(Lagroye 1994), no longer live on the island on a daily basis but base themselves in the Nouméa urban area. This is the case, for example, for the former mayor, B. Ounou. The fact that the mayor of Ouvéa did not live or lives only part of the time in his municipality seems to bother no one in Ouvéa. This situation might appear surprising as the mayor is thus in some respects positioned outside the municipality in which he occupies the highest office.

The general secretary and the mayor, whose offices are both on the first floor of the council building, generally walk into the room when there are already a few people present and their entrance usually signals the start of the session. When they enter the room, everyone stops talking. The secretary, who is carrying documents, follows the mayor, and the youngest member of the council is asked to confirm the councillors' presence:

S. Poumeli walks into the room, holding the council register and the list of councillors. The mayor whispers to her "S., you should check the list now". He starts talking.

10.25 am, the mayor: "I think we will soon be able to start. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Today we are going to deal with questions previously debated in the financial working group. I am going to ask the youngest member of our assembly to check the list. [...]"

(Fieldwork diary, 4 October 2010, session)

The mayor considers that the youngest member of the council has to start her apprenticeship in political life doing easy tasks and leaves her little alternative. During local council sessions, most of the councillors' speech is punctuated by references to "Sir, Mr Mayor, Mrs X the councillor in charge of this or that working group" etc. The behaviour and the way people speak to each other during council sessions are so different from what happens in everyday life that one can almost forget that this is taking place in Ouvéa. In daily life, it is very unusual to hear people speak French; people do not use the formal terms of reference in talking to one another, and when someone calls out to somebody else, only first names or kinship address terms are used (cousin, sister, mother etc.) and never their civil status (Mr, Miss etc.), as here.

Since 2001, the Ouvéa local council has also included women. Apart from the first and second councillors (in the council hierarchy), all the other women, wearing missionary or island dresses, always sit next to each other, directly opposite the men, who also sit next to each other. At customary events or during mass, men and women also sit in separate places. Here, at the council, their conversations are always whispered, in *Iaai* or *Fagauvea* (the two local languages) although, as mentioned earlier, local council sessions take place in French. These women councillors only speak according to certain modalities, and this is what makes them appear pushed aside during the discussions, which mostly happen on the men's side of the table and, more specifically,

at the end of the table where the mayor and the "professional politicians" are seated.

When discussing a particular council session with one of these women, I asked her why, in her opinion, no requests had been made by the working group on women's issues, and she said: "We do everything, we pray, we do weddings, but we never make requests" (Interview with M.A, 23/6/2009, Hwadrilla, Ouvéa).

With this statement, the councillor shows that women are strongly committed to custom – as she said “we pray, we do weddings” – to the detriment sometimes of their other social positions such as being a member of and actively participating in the life of the local council, for example by making requests. For these women councillors, other social roles come second to custom and the church, when they are not completely ignored. All these observations concerning behavior during local council sessions reveal a primary dividing line between councillors belonging to the “professional politicians” category on the one hand and, on the other hand, the ordinary members, the grassroots, on whom republican norms have less influence. This situation no longer sounds so surprising once we consider what Garrigou (2002) has written about the inevitable professionalisation of the political body, which is accompanied by the mastering of political strategies and appropriate behavior such as the ones described above.

### 16.4.2 The Mayor's Authority: Concerning New Elites

Maurice Tillewa was mayor of Ouvéa from 2008 to 2014 and has been elected once more in 2020 after a mandate held by Boniface Hounou between 2014 and 2020 (who was also elected mayor from 2002 to 2008). M. Tillewa is about 50 years old and comes from Banutr in the island's central district. As a professional nurse, he began as a health educator in Ouvéa before becoming a fully qualified nurse at the small local clinic (in Hulup) for five years. He was then trained to take higher responsibilities and was appointed local manager of the whole clinic. He did this until July 2010, before becoming the head of the Loyalty Islands Province delegation in Ouvéa. He describes himself as “one of the first political militants”. He joined the UC political party in 1988, immediately after “the Events”. He explains that he got involved in politics at the age of 25, as a strong supporter of Simon Loueckhotte (a well-known politician from the island whose opinions tend to the right and who was a long-term senator in the French Senate between 1992 and 2011), one his mother’s close cousins. Tillewa says he got onto the council without having planned it. He says:
Well, in a way, I am the mayor, but it was never my plan. Three years ago, I wasn't even going to be up for election, and the party, I would say, was somehow lacking new leaders, especially here in Ouvéa. Hence, they needed someone to boost the list so as to, you know... therefore they asked my opinion on this. And in the end, I agreed. [...] Between two or three in the morning, I was asked, here Maurice, since you have a job with a lot of responsibility at the health centre, I was asked, Maurice, would you mind leading the list? Well, I said, ok then, why not? And actually, hum... no later than ten minutes afterwards, the meeting was over [he laughs] (Interview with Maurice Tillewa, mayor of Ouvéa, 22/10/2010, Hwadrilla, Ouvéa).

The mayor of Ouvéa has a good deal of social, academic and professional capital, unlike most people of his generation from Ouvéa who have never studied or had long-term high responsibility jobs. In light of these aspects, he clearly belongs to the sociological category of new elites. During local council sessions, he appears as an important and powerful character, whom people hardly ever contradict and to whom they show respect. For example, when the list of councillors is being checked, it is he who answers for those present. He also moderates and monopolises discussions during the sessions:

The second topic of the day regards public funding for non-profit organisations. The mayor starts listing various cases that still need dealing with:

The mayor: "C., can you please briefly present what's been discussed during the sessions of the working-group on culture".

C.: "Thank you Mr Mayor. As for the cultural and business..."

The mayor makes comments.

(Fieldwork diary, 4 October 2010 session)

Debates are supposed to be held during working group meetings, which take place before each local council session. So, during the sessions, the mayor very briefly jumps from one case to another without suggesting any form of discussion. Then, he asks a councillor to read out the proceedings:

The mayor: "Here, ladies and gentlemen, are there any objections? [nobody answers.] If there is no objection, we will then consider that all the councillors accept this. I am therefore going to ask Miss S. Poumeli to read out the proceedings".

S. Poumeli struggles to read the pre-written, typed up document, which only concerns budget figures (Chapter 65, article 65, 74 etc.). The very slow rhythm starts to annoy the mayor enough for him to interrupt her firmly.

The mayor: "Here, give that to me, I'll continue reading it out". He reads louder, faster and more distinctly. He finishes. No one says anything.

(Fieldwork diary, 27 September 2010)

Indeed, during the local council sessions, the mayor moderates the discussion, deciding who can speak and when and also when it is time for him to do so.

The mayor: "What about teaching, Mrs Gagne? I believe Nathalie has given you instructions".

J. Gagne: "Thank you Mr Mayor. First of all, the students..."

The mayor: [he interrupts her] "Start by reading what is already in the proceedings, that way it is easier for us to take notes".

J. Gagne begins to read the requests that are already in the proceedings. The mayor interrupts her again, starts speaking and continues reading that same document.

(Fieldwork diary, 4 October 2010)

As these two extracts from my fieldwork diary show, the mayor frequently interrupts women councillors, something he rarely does with male councillors. Moreover, since he speaks a great deal during the sessions, he in fact imposes a pace, characterised by a quite vertiginous decision-making rhythm.

The mayor: "Public funding for the non-profit organisation of Saint Paul tribe".

[He looks up. No one says anything. He then turns to a councillor from Saint Paul community.]

The mayor: "Mr Waisselotte, the non-profit cultural organisation? Is it active?"

G. Waisselotte: "Hum, yes, yes".

The mayor: "So! Here. 100,000 francs<fnref n="7" /> for the non-profit cultural organisation of the Saint Paul community. Are there any objections? It's ok then. About providing funds to the non-profit organisation of Loyalty Island students.... Well, ok we'll give them 100,000 francs".

[He looks up. No one says anything]

The mayor: "Ok, approved".

(Fieldwork diary, 4 October 2010)

These two extracts raise several questions. The first has to do with the lack of debate and discussion during sessions. The example above could lead us to believe that giving public funds to non-profit organisations is of no importance – which is true in a way since Caledonian municipalities have relatively large budgets – but it should also be understood that there are hardly more debates on other topics.

Local council sessions therefore appear to be mere formalities. Indeed, since the topics under discussion hardly ever generate any conflict, these sessions look more like rubber stamps of approval than real democratic spaces for debate. This realisation leads us to put the power of local councils into perspective. Although they are in charge of various domains, local councils remain subordinate to the customary authorities for everything concerning land. Therefore, it can also be speculated that there are other places where real debate takes place: in political party meetings and the mayor's office, as well as in the sessions held by the different working groups. Moreover, local council sessions prove to be areas where several dividing lines appear. The first concerns the standards of behaviour specific to this context and they have a variable influence over people. Certain external signs of compliance with the institution's norms (vocabulary, clothing, attitudes etc.) are obvious. This is particularly the case for the "professional politicians" who stand in contrast here with the "ordinary councillors", the grassroots. Unlike the former, the ordinary councillors do not dis-

<footnote n="7">⁷834,73 €. The current local currency of New Caledonia is indexed on the European currency Euro (€).</footnote>
play these outer “institutional” signs conforming to
institutional norms. However, these norms still have an influ-
ence over the “ordinary councillors” since not mastering
them marginalises the latter. The second opposes two logics
in the same sphere: the logic of the institution and that of
custom. As I mentioned earlier, the mayor interrupts people.
This practice, obviously tolerated and frequent during ses-
sions, is nonetheless totally prohibited in customary life
where it is on the contrary considered an affront to custom. A
possible explanation of this situation would seem to be
Lagroye’s hypothesis that “electoral legitimacy does
empower” (Lagroye 1994, p. 10). This is precisely what hap-
pens with the mayor who, in daily life, is not overly prescrip-
tive and yet in local council sessions can ask someone to
speak or not or even speak whenever he thinks it is necessary.
We can therefore theorise that, in this case, it is specifically
his status of mayor that empowers him to behave thus with-
out hurting or frustrating anybody. Likewise, during local
council sessions the decision-making rhythm is extremely
fast, which again is in strong contrast with customary
processes. For in custom, decisions always require speeches
of several minutes that must never be interrupted. When
someone’s words give rise to a question, it is hardly ever
asked directly, and the same could be said about answers to
specific questions.

Hence, the discussions taking place during local council
sessions differ considerably from customary practices. They
are so different that sometimes they are their exact opposite.
However, and in spite of all these differences, local council
sessions also reveal a big influence both of and on customary
ways of acting.

16.5 The Influence of Custom

16.5.1 Some Hybrid Files: The Airport Extension

In Kanak New Caledonia, very much as elsewhere in the
South Pacific region, custom requires any piece of land given
to remain given for ever (Ponsonnet and Travési 2015). As
the mayor of Ouvéa explains himself:

M.T.: “We [the municipality of Ouvéa], we don’t own the land.
We don’t. Unlike the other councils… of the territory, on Grande
Terre [...]”.

M.N.: “So when the council negotiates land with one particular chiefdom and the elders agree to give that piece of land, does it remain the chiefdom’s property?”

M.T.: “Well... There is a customary act [a legally approved document] in which it is stated that the use of that piece of land has been given to the municipality”.

M.N.: “Does this agreement mention for how long?”

M.T.: “No, there is no such thing as duration”.
(Interview with M. Tillewa, mayor of Ouvéa, 22/10/2010,
Hwadrilla, Ouvéa.)

These legally approved documents are much like life-long
leases and therefore imply that the use of the piece of land
given no longer belongs to its original "owner". Likewise,
they mean that people who inherit that same piece of land
will not be able to cancel their ancestor's contracts.
Nonetheless, such situations do exist:

M.T.: “What you need to know now is that even when customary authorities agree to give a piece of land, sooner or later this piece of land is always claimed. This is a bit the case for the extension of the airport. We are currently working on the writing of a new customary act although years ago, the elders, they had already agreed but now, the young disagree! And they are protesting against the agreement that has already been signed. So, we have to rewrite an agreement. And in order to do that we have to discuss it again. And this is what we are currently working on”.

M.N.: “Talking about this specific case of the airport’s exten-
sion. Can an agreement be broken?”

M.T.: “[...] Well, the airport stays. But its extension is what we are discussing again. Years ago, they agreed to give a piece of land in order to build an airport but now we are being asked to renegotiate it. But this piece of land has already been given! In 1959 they’d already agreed to its potential extension because they thought it would become a big airport, but the young, they disagree, they disagree and they want to break the agreement. So we’re discussing it”.

(Interview with M. Tillewa, mayor of Ouvéa, 22/10/2010, Hwadrilla, Ouvéa)

The problems regarding the question of the airport require
us to look deeper into the conflict and to try and under-
stand why the mayor is so angry when talking about it. In
Ouvéa, the airport, just like the port, is managed by the
Loyalty Islands Province. The province is also in charge
of the main road linking all the places under its jurisdic-
tion: the airport, the health centre, the province's local
building and the port.

In 2010, the province decided to start extensive renova-
tion work on a portion of the main road. Since there are no
road construction materials or trucks on the island, it was
decided to have them brought by a special cargo boat.
Bringing rollers, pneumatic drills, sand, etc. to such a small
island is very expensive, so in order to reduce costs, the
province agreed to take advantage of having all this avail-
able and to also start extending the airport, a project planned
in a legal document signed back in 1959. The land for the
extension belonged to various clans from the community of
Hulup. People from the province arranged a meeting in
order to inform them about the building work to come. But,
far from agreeing to this, they found the project useless and
extremely expensive. This is when the mayor came into the
picture. In him, the province saw a very suitable mediator,
and this is how he became responsible for the airport exten-
sion issue. He was instructed to go and negotiate, with the
help of the “Iaai customary council” (an institutionalised
council of elders), for the plots of land required for the
extension so that work could start on this once the road was
finished. As a French collectivity, the municipality is enti-
tled to subsidies, which must be spent within a certain time. If not, they are deferred (rarely) or withdrawn (most of the time). Anger expressed by the mayor was in fact due to the fear of losing the public money designated for the airport extension, which would lead to everyone giving up the project definitively. The mayor was in a difficult position since when renegotiating for this land, he had to deal with custom and its way of managing land on the one hand and, on the other, the French state, based on radically different fundamentals. He also had to get the work started or the budget would be withdrawn. In this specific case, custom as a legal system appears far more flexible than the French legal system.

## 16.5.2 Occupation of Space and Ways of Speaking

The seating arrangements of the councillors remind us very much of what happens in customary contexts: men on one side, women on the other. The few, but rather long, speeches always end with “*oleti*” or “*de na guati*”, both expressions used to end speeches in customary contexts. They could be translated literally by “here, I’ve finished” or “well, I’ve finished now”. When they are pronounced, these words always call for a group “oleti” (thank you) from all those who have listened to the speech, just as in a customary context. Moreover, the speakers very often use other expressions employed in customary contexts. They speak in French most of the time, but sometimes they also speak in the *Iaai* or *Fagauvea* language, especially when their French is not too good:

> A discussion begins about security in the local high schools and the fact that some parents have requested that a security company be hired to keep an eye on the buildings during weekends and school holidays. For the very first time in the session, a man (who is angry too) starts speaking. He wants to express his disagreement with the parents' request. His French is not very good, and his sentences are regularly punctuated with expressions and words in *Fagauvea*.

> P.I.: "Please forgive me for raising my voice, but where is the community police? The chiefs? People no longer show respect to anything or anyone. That's all I wanted to say, thank you".
> 
> (Fieldwork, 20 March 2009 session)

In this example and just as he would be expected to do in a customary context, the councillor apologises for “raising his voice” before saying what he has to say and ends his very short speech with “that’s all”, which is the French equivalent of “*de na*” in *Fagauvea*, his mother tongue. All these elements show the prevalence of customary habits within the space of the Council sessions.

## 16.5.3 Customary “Gifts” and Hierarchy

Besides forms of behaviours and speech, which are also those used in customary contexts, it should be noted that “customary gifts” are also frequent during local council sessions. Visitors (researchers, people from the province, etc.) who wish to introduce themselves to the team before starting their own work may make these, or sometimes even, they may be made by council members themselves. This happened on 4 October 2010: M. Wea, one of the local councillors, had only just come back from the shooting of the movie “Rebellion” (released in 2012, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz) on Anaa island in French Polynesia:

> Maki Wea wishes to present a gift to the local council to thank the municipality for backing this project and also to say “hello” to everyone still on the island [the shooting of the movie was still going on]. He wants to try and create a twin-island partnership with the people from Anaa island in French Polynesia. He speaks in *Iaai*. While he’s speaking, everybody looks at the ground. He ends with “*oleti*”. The people are still looking at the ground and reply with a group “*oleti*”.

> The mayor briefly thanks him for his gesture and passes the gift [a piece of fabric and a bank note] to old Cyriaque without saying anything more. The old man stands up, takes the gift and starts thanking the donor for it. Meanwhile, everyone is quiet and looking down. The old man extends thanks for the gift on behalf of all the councillors, the mayor, the “19 and their families”. Everyone says “*oleti*”.

> (Fieldwork diary, 4 October 2010 session)

In situations like this, the gift, a piece of cotton fabric and a bank note, is always presented to the mayor first. However, despite holding the highest office on the island, he was fairly “young”, around 50 years old, and does not belong to a prestigious clan or have a high-ranking position within his clan. Hence, when he is given a customary “gift” during a local council session like the one mentioned above, he does not keep it himself but passes it on to what the customary hierarchy considers a “greater person”, someone older, who then extends thanks for the gift, out loud, on behalf of the members of the local council. In such situations, it is obvious that the customary hierarchy is the norm of reference for everyone, even the “professional politicians”.

Moreover, the language used also changes, and people almost always express thanks for “gifts” presented in such contexts in *Iaai* or *Fagauvea* (depending on the mother tongue of the person doing so). According to the situations, customary norms and habits can also have a certain influence on the way local councils operate as the following situation illustrates.

The role of custom is particularly evident when one looks at what women councillors can and cannot do. One of them talked to me about her role in setting things up for the Festival of Melanesian Arts in October 2010:
C.A.: "The mayor said 'Christiane you have to do this!' It's true that it is my job after all! But it is also true that [...] the people who do the work are older men, so for me [...] We Kanak people are not allowed to speak to an older man, but it's my job! This is what I have to do".

M.N.: "So, you're not allowed to speak to an older man but if you have to do so as a councillor then people tolerate it?"

C.A.: "Precisely".

M.N.: "But this is hard for you, isn't it?"

C.A.: "Yes, it is very hard, when I'd finished with the festival, well, I went down there to give them a customary thank you gift, because ... they are older men you know! And I cannot tell them what to do! But it is my responsibility, this is what I have to do. It is my working group's responsibility! So, when I'd finished with it, well I went to them and apologized. Because when they did the work, I was above them, I was put above them, but when they finished, well, I thanked them. [...] They did everything I asked them to do! At first, they were meant to build big tents. And then, the mayor came to me and said 'they have to use steel sheets'. Therefore, they used steel sheets. It meant I was bothering them you know. They are older men, remember! But I went to them and apologized, it was to show them that they are a lot more important than me [...] to apologize [...] for having asked them to do this, when they are older men, like fathers you know".

(Interview with C. A., 11/10/2010, Hwadrilla, Ouvéa)

The woman councillor describes the very difficult position she ended up in before and after the festival, due to her responsibilities as a councillor. On the one hand, as a councillor, she was in charge of supervising tent-building, but, on the other hand, this status put her in a doubly difficult position of domination, being both young and a woman. This situation clearly stems from the specific social relation mechanisms prevailing in daily life, which once more reminds us of what Lagroye (1994, p. 7) has written about the behaviours elected representatives can be led to have: "One social relationship configuration cannot be substituted for another according to a system which seeks to reduce social forms, but [...] progressively, partly, new social relationship systems are appearing and affecting all groups in various ways".

As a Kanak woman, she says, a woman councillor must not give orders to older men, to people whom the customary hierarchy system considers higher on the social scale. To find a solution to this issue, the woman councillor decided to make a choice, which she elucidates very clearly and which must be stressed since she could also have decided not to do this at all: to do what she had to as a councillor even if this led to a difficult position for a Kanak woman but, once the work was done, to go to these older men and apologise for giving them tasks. This woman councillor's behaviour clearly echoes with Lagroye's argument regarding new the emergence of new relationship systems that, amongst other things, can include multimodal ways of addressing to one another depending on which social position is considered (Lagroye 1994, p. 13).

By apologizing, the women councillor tells the older men she is well aware of the customary hierarchy, especially in regard to those who are "above her". This case is a typical example of the real difficulties that women councillors have to face when forced to deal with two different social statuses. This situation is also obvious during local council sessions:

C.A.: "Personally, I do try to motivate them! [women who attempt to speak out during meetings]. I tell them that men always being above us in the hierarchy is not a good thing! We women also have to be as high as them, both men and women, or even higher than them, we might as well [she laughs]. But at the same time, we have to remember that, we are women! So, in order to speak out, I believe that...when I speak out during meetings, I know it's good when there are only women ... only women. But when men are there too, that's when I...." [silence]
M.N.: "When there are men, is it harder?"

C.A.: "It's not harder, but there are men I mean, and I am way lower than them. The mayor, I respect him. But he's lower than my husband even! But I respect him, because, he holds the highest public office (position?) on the island".

(Interview with C. A., le 11-10-2010, Hwadrilla, Ouvéa)

As we can see once again, seniority and the male/female hierarchy both have a very big influence on the practices in council sessions and on the job of "local councillor". Within this job, these two hierarchies thus apply: "There is no doubt that being a local councillor, is first modelled by the configuration of specific social relations in a certain place, at a certain time. The ways a mayor acts, as 'part of an elite', 'an entrepreneur', are the result of the dominant social relations system of his society, of conceptions of what is legitimate and required, and of socially valorized practices in all their forms" (Lagroye 1994, p. 6-7).

We now understand that in spite of exhibiting norms (fast decision-making, interrupting people etc.) that we never see anywhere on the island, or in Kanak New Caledonia in general, local council sessions do not ignore social obligations that apply in everyone's ordinary daily life and are dictated by the ideology of custom. Indeed, these appear to be the basis of the power relationships and interests characterizing this new political arena being formed in the context of the local council institutions and by the practices of the elected representatives, the councilors. As Lagroye (1994, p. 8) writes concerning their behavior:

> "We are therefore looking at a real sedimentation mechanism, through which role prescriptions matching successively both social relations and knowledge systems coexist, one characteristic of a politician's job being the management of these coexisting systems on a day-to-day basis".

> And, it is precisely this sedimentation mechanism that ends up empowering the mayor and gains him special respect even during customary events:

> M. T.: "Personally, I would say that yes, it makes a difference being the mayor. It changes things. Yes. People see you differently. In the end, they look at you differently because you are the
mayor of the island. He is in charge of the whole population. I mainly notice that coming from older people, I can feel the respect owed to the person holding the highest public office".

M. N.: "How would you say they express this respect? [...]"

M.T.: "They call me Mr Mayor ... yup ... when younger people, people my age, well, they call me by my first name!"

(Interview with M. Tillewa, mayor of Ouvéa, 22/10/2010, Hwadrilla, Ouvéa.)

In other words, in spite of custom being unanimously considered the foundation of both the social and political life of Ouvéa and in spite of achieving independence for New Caledonia being a goal for an extremely large majority of people on the island, this does not preclude continued recognition of republican institutions and of the state more generally. This paradox reminds us of the argument of Bazin who considered that "State machinery is a trap in which everyone gets caught without understanding how it happened" (Bazin 1988, p. 711). This also introduces new questions, this time regarding the presence of pro-independence elected representatives within republican institutions and what Jean-Marie Tjibaou used to call "decolonisation within the Republic" (Tjibaou in Wittersheim 2003, p. 19).

## 16.6 Pro-Independence Elected Representatives and Decolonisation

Concerning the "State machinery" project (Bazin 1988, p. 711) in New Caledonia, Wittersheim (2006, p. 128-129) notes: "Yes, State projects of all sorts, are necessarily confronted with local and regional powers but in the case of Kanak New Caledonia, the idea of a Melanesian independent state itself is still only a young ideology, and social strategies find their roots in customary political systems". In saying so, Wittersheim points out that regarding New Caledonia, any political issue is, at least partially, ruled by custom and more specifically, its political system from which emerge specific social strategies.

The local council of Ouvéa is therefore a typical case study of the implementation of the "social strategies" quoted above from Wittersheim's work. It would seem that we are currently witnessing, at the heart of this republican institution, the local council, the ongoing process of the construction of a Kanak political arena, which oscillates between customary rules on the one hand and republican protocols on the other. Since New Caledonia is not yet fully decolonised, the importance of this political arena needs to be stressed. Indeed, Republican institutions have proved to be the main place for Kanak people to express their political demands more recently along with international opportunities such as the United Nations (Demmer 2007; Fischer 2013, 2019; Forrest and Kowasch 2016):

Since French people became citizens in 1946 and able to vote in 1951, they have only been given the chance to express their opinion (pro-independence, pro-autonomy, or other) within republican institutions (municipalities, territorial assembly, provinces) which set a frame for French politics in an arena that makes the expression of a native nationalism very hard (Wittersheim 2006, p. 114).

As mentioned earlier, the Kanak entered republican institutions via the missions, before turning their back on these institutions and protesting against them during the 1970s and 1980s. Since the Matignon Accords were signed in 1988, pro-independence Kanak activists have decided in favour of "decolonisation within the Republic", which has led them to once more become involved in republican institutions in order to change things from the inside. This echoes the work of Lefebvre on socialist politicians at the start of the twentieth century and that of Mischi, who focused on communist politicians (Lefebvre 2004; Mischi 2002). Both authors explored, for each of the political parties studied, the presence of revolutionaries within republican institutions and their ability (or inability) to subvert the institution from within. Their analyses tend to prove that in the end it is the institution, due precisely to the fact that it is an institution, which ultimately subverts the revolutionaries. In New Caledonia, the political strategies aimed at building an independent state using French republican institutions to do so is still the current general strategy of most pro-independence Kanak (Tjibaou, 1996). Not surprisingly, this remains a significant challenge. To what extent can Kanak customary norms prevail when acting within an institution which, as shown here, is organised around different hierarchies and norms?

## 16.7 Conclusion

This study of Ouvéa local council, a Republican institution imported directly from France, shows that two forms of organisation and exercise of local power are embedded within one another. In his work on Kone in the north of Grande Terre, Trépied (2007) demonstrated that, after the end of the Native Regulations, the first Kanak elected representatives all belonged to prestigious clans and most of them were chiefs. After the 1960s, however, this recruiting logic disappeared and was replaced by another one still in use today based on the possession of academic, intellectual and economic capital (ibid). The sessions of the Ouvéa local council and the political character of the mayor both show that the current situation in Ouvéa remains very much the same. For the mayor between 2008 and 2014, like both his predecessor and successor,<fnref n="8" /> had a university education and a long-term job with considerable responsibilities.

<footnote n="8">⁸B. Hounou, who was mayor between 2002 and 2008, was re-elected in 2014.</footnote>
Moreover, during the sessions, the influence of protocol generates “behaviour repertoires” (Lagroye 1994, p. 7), which are not observable anywhere else on the island and are instead those of professional politicians. This analytic category leads us to operate a distinction between “professional politicians” and “ordinary local councilors”. If both are still expected to respond to customary norms in certain customary contexts, customary norms and logics seem to be of greater importance for so-called “ordinary local councillors” than any others. Questioning the embedding of these two logics within the same “place of politics” leads us to the idea of the ongoing construction process of an autonomous political arena. This process, on which local councillors work day after day, is in that sense far from being just an extension of custom. As I have tried to demonstrate, it can generate specific practices and behaviours in that political arena.

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Part VII

Decolonisation and Political Independence
<figure><img src="image_86.png" /></figure>

**Abstract**

In New Caledonia, national independence is still on the agenda, but the “Indigenous strategy” – which relates to the global Indigenous movement and UN norms regarding Indigenous rights – is also being explored with a view to furthering decolonisation. The latter is, however, relatively new in the struggle to regain sovereignty and occupies a marginal place in the political field of this French territory. This chapter seeks to explain why arguing for the particular colonial situation of the territory and the demography of the Indigenous population has led them to pursue dual strategies towards self-determination.

**Keywords**

Decolonisation · Sovereignty · Indigenous rights · New Caledonia · Kanak

## 17.1 Introduction

From the end of the Second World War among the colonies of European powers, movements to recover sovereignty and political independence (full sovereignty under international law) began in earnest. Indeed, if the colonial moment denied sovereignty, decolonisation tried to recover it, and the independent or sovereign state is, in theory at least, the exact antithesis of the colonial dependent state (Gagné and Salaün 2017, p. 18). The “traditional” path of decolonisation in Oceania, as in Africa or Asia, was the creation of sovereign states, beginning relatively late with the independence of Samoa in 1962, followed by Nauru in 1968, Tonga in 1970,

Fiji in 1970, Papua New Guinea in 1975, Tuvalu in 1978, the Solomon Islands in 1978, Kiribati in 1979, Vanuatu in 1980, then the Marshall Islands in 1990 and the Federated States of Micronesia in 1990.

Historically, in New Caledonia, a territory annexed by the French colonial Empire in 1853, the leaders of what became in 1979 the Independence Front (FI) and, in 1984, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) promoted socialist Kanak independence. The 1988 Matignon-Oudinot Accords, which ended the violent period known as “les Événements” (the Events),<fnref n="1" /> included a referendum on self-determination. The 1998 Nouméa Accord, which was incorporated into the French Constitution, extended the first Accord and proposed an original mode of decolonisation, based on a timetable setting the gradual and irreversible transfer of French state powers to local representative institutions. This process could lead, at term, to full independence after a local consultation on the handover of sovereign powers (defence, public order, currency, justice, foreign affairs), which would signify New Caledonia’s accession to full sovereignty. A first referendum was held on 4 November 2018, and the No vote prevailed. Given the victory of the “No” in the first referendum, the Accord provided for a second one. It took place on 4 October 2020. Since the result was negative again, a third and controversial referendum<fnref n="2" /> was scheduled

<footnote>N. Gagné (✉)
Laval University, Québec, QC, Canada
e-mail: natacha.gagne@ant.ulaval.ca</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹“The Events” refers to the violent uprisings that shook the territory and the insurrectionary climate that took hold between November 1984 and May 1988 and that saw independentists opposed loyalists, the latter being loyal to the Republic and therefore in favour of keeping New Caledonia in the French Republic.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²According to the Organic Act 99–209 relating to New Caledonia, in order to take place, a third referendum had to be requested by one third of the elected representatives of the New Caledonia Congress, that is to say 18 of the 54 members. On 8 April 2021, a coalition of 26 independence representatives asked the French State to hold a third referendum.</footnote>
on 12 December 2021, “on the same issue and with the same electoral body” (Trépied 2018b).<fnref n="3" />

Given how close the votes were in 2018 and 2020,<fnref n="4" /> path to national independence was still on the agenda, en route to the third referendum (see Chap. 18 by Fisher in this book). Moves in that direction in France’s other large Pacific territory, French Polynesia, have also continued – it is on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories administered by the Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24), added at the initiative of independentists in 2013.<fnref n="5" /> Despite this, the accession to full sovereignty seems to be less evident today for these French territories where decolonisation remains “unfinished”. Other options are on the table, such as free association with France (an independence-association or independence with partnership) or the “Indigenous strategy” in reference to the world Indigenous movement and UN Indigenous rights instrument. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 provides for various forms of internal self-determination for Indigenous peoples, since it emphasises the principle of territorial integrity of sovereign states. The Indigenous rights path is relatively new in the struggle to regain sovereignty in New Caledonia. A very small number of community leaders, in particular, began to explore the possibilities offered by this strategy in the early 1990s<fnref n="6" /> by partici-

pating only irregularly in United Nations meeting about Indigenous rights. At the beginning of the 2000s, the construction at the southern end of the main island of New Caledonia of a new nickel processing plant (first known as Goro Nickel and, after 2008 until more recently known as Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie), with its polluting acid refining process<fnref n="7" /> and its questioning of the economic rebalancing policy prevailing since the 1990s,<fnref n="8" /> was a defining moment in claiming Indigenous Kanak rights. The Kanak environmental organisation Rhéébù Nùù – which means “Eye of the country” – was created in 2001 (Leblic 2018a; see also Chap. 8 by Kowasch and Merlin in this book) specifically in connection with the new processing plant to represent the environmental and economic interests of the Indigenous people of New Caledonia’s Great South region. By 2005, the Indigenous Natural Resources Management Committee (CAUGERN) extended Indigenous actions across the country. The claims focused on guarantees about governance and ownership of resources, the duty to consult, and obtaining royalties for the Kanak Indigenous people (Demmer 2007). This “new Kanak strategy” (Demmer 2007) made several gains, with the support of various local and international organisations (see Demmer 2007; Horowitz 2012, 2017).

Why have self-assertion as Indigenous, and Indigenous rights claims emerged much later in the French territories of Oceania than in anglophone ones? Why have they occupied a marginal place in the political field of this French territory? The contexts in which the peoples of the French territories of Oceania like New Caledonia have struggled differ radically from those of other groups that have been seen as emblematic of the category “Indigenous peoples”, such as the First

<footnote n="3">³The date – chosen by the French state and announced by the Minister for Overseas France on 2 June 2021, after a week of discussions with New Caledonian elected officials in Paris – was not the subject of a consensus. The independentists wanted it to be held in fall 2022, closer to the end of the Nouméa Accord, and the loyalists were leaning towards a consultation in the fall of 2021, which is before another important electoral deadline, the presidential election of April 2022. See Chap. 18 by Fisher in this book for details on date selection and events in the months leading up to the third referendum.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴I will come back to the results of the three referendums later.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵The *Établissements Français de l'Océanie* (ÉFO, the former name of French Polynesia) were first placed on the UN list in 1946, at the same time as New Caledonia, and the two territories were removed in 1947 under pressure from the French government. New Caledonia was re-registered in 1986 as a non-self-governing territory (see Gonshor 2013; Regnault 2013).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Morin (2008) traces their first participation in the UN's work on the rights of Indigenous peoples back to 1993, the International Year of Indigenous Peoples. In New Caledonia, 1993 was also the year of the founding of the Association for the Celebration of the Year of the Indigenous People in Kanaky (ACAPIK), which in 1995 became the National Council for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (CNDPA) (Demmer 2007). Graff (2012, p. 75) attributes this first development of an “Indigenous strategy” to the divisions between Kanak independentists in the aftermath of the 1988 Matignon-Oudinot Accords. However, up until 2001 – that is until the UN meetings on Indigenous peoples came to New York with the creation of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – the presence of Kanak representatives was only sporadic (Graff 2012, p. 68). Like their Kanak counterparts, French Polynesian people came late to Indigenous rights meetings and only irregularly (see Gagné 2015; Morin 2008). An analysis of the local press, informal discussions and interviews with local actors in French Polynesia and New Caledonia shows that, beyond the small associations they represent, their work remained largely unknown on the local scene until 2002, in the case of New Caledonia, and until 2010, in the French Polynesian case.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Acid is used under pressure to extract nickel and cobalt from the ore. The resulting liquid residues are released at sea. Following a few industrial accidents (notably in 2009, 2010 and 2014), acid leaks affected the fauna and flora of a stream and part of the lagoon.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸After the period of the “Events”, the Kanak backed up their independence claims with assertions that the nickel sector should be locally controlled. Since the 1980s, a “mining nationalism” movement has developed, in which nickel is seen as “the economic tool of political emancipation” (Le Meur 2017, p. 41). The Bercy Accord officially recognized the “mining precondition”, which brought the mining issue into the negotiation of decolonisation, on 1 February 1998. Although mining nationalism first aimed at a North/South economic rebalancing, it has gradually broadened its reach so as to support the country’s emancipation through “the nationalization of the nickel resource (...) by ensuring that the dividends reaped by companies benefit New Caledonia rather than the French State or private shareholders” (Demmer 2018b, p. 42). At the start of the 2000s, the “Southern Processing Plant” project was clearly in contradiction with this movement since this project did not provide for mining royalties for the local populations and the provinces only held 5% of the shares of the new factory. This situation helped to create local dissatisfaction. For more on mining nationalism and the developments to which it gave rise in New Caledonia, see, among other, Batterbury et al. (2020), Demmer (2017, 2018b), Demmer et al. (2018), Kowasch (2018), Le Meur (2017) and Chap. 9 by Demmer in this book. In 2020 and with the approach of a possible third referendum, the nickel issue once again came to the fore in the context of the sale of the Southern Processing Plant to the Swiss group Trafigura.</footnote>
Nations and Inuit of the Americas, New Zealand Māori and Australia’s First Peoples. I will focus here on four main factors, which help us to understand the particular colonial situation of these territories, focusing on the situation of New Caledonia: the “enclavement” of the French territories of Oceania, peculiarities relating to the construction of the French nation, the colonial heritage – particularly with regard to the settlement policies of New Caledonia – as well as the original measures put in place by the Nouméa Accord. As we shall see, the relevance of the “Indigenous strategy” to the colonized populations is not self-evident. This chapter intends to shed some light on this situation thanks to the understanding acquired over the years through literature reviews, media surveys, informal discussions and semi-directed interviews with research participants during regular fieldtrips to Oceania since 2001.<fnref n="9" />

## 17.2 "Franconesia" or the Great Colonial Division of Oceania

While “Indigenous” mobilisations began in the 1970s in New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii, people in the French territories of Oceania did not participate and remained isolated from their regional environment. As the historian Jean Chesneaux (1987, p. 53) explains, “[t]he colonial domination had an effect of enclave, of dissociation from the natural regional environment” in a space he calls Franconesia. This was due in part to the very great control exercised by the French state over local governance until the 1970s, through the direct administration of the governor in French Polynesia and, in the case of New Caledonia, to the power exercised by representatives of European origin.<fnref n="10" />

It has also been due to an economic and political orientation toward metropolitan France and the rather widespread lack of fluency in English, which has become the dominant language in the region. The installation of the Pacific Experimentation Centre (CEP) in French Polynesia and the nuclear bomb tests, from 1966 to 1996, also accentuated isolation from anglophone neighbours (Barrillot and Doom 2005; Kahn 2011; Regnault 2005). France and its nationals have been the subject of a wave of significant protests across the Pacific and internationally. Over the years, participants in my research emphasised that regional opposition to “French nuclear colonialism” has had a strong effect on the Indigenous populations of the French territories of Oceania, including on their travel and networking. There were some franco-

phone contributors to regional movements, whether faith-based, ecumenical, environmental or anti-nuclear, and exchanges took place from time to time, but they were rather sporadic. France's nuclear testing accentuated the isolationism of its territories, deepening the colonial division of Oceania, which already had the effect of breaking the pan-Oceanic trading networks and restructuring economic and political relations towards the logic of the French and British colonial empires.

## 17.3 The Fabric of the French Nation

Another fundamental point is that the French constitutional framework does not recognize collective rights,<fnref n="11" /> which has for a long time limited the emergence of claims on this basis such as claims of “rights as Indigenous peoples”.<fnref n="12" /> Indeed, there is no precedent for asserting collective rights, for example, in the name of prior occupation of the land. This difficulty with collective rights is not new, but was evident in the ambiguous position of French state representatives in the pre-vote debates for the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the Human Rights Council in 2006 and the UN General Assembly in 2007. In 2007, although he was in favour of the Declaration, the representative of the French state said that France had identified legal difficulties with its application. He specified that under the principle of indivisibility of the French Republic and in accordance with the principle of equality and its corollary, the principle of non-discrimination, collective rights cannot override individual rights.<fnref n="13" /> Benoît Trépied (2012) offers the following clarification regarding the noun “people”, which has a collective significance: “In the name of the indivisibility of the Republic, the Constitutional Council had already censored in 1991 the (...) reference to the ‘Corsican people, a component of the French people’”. Similarly, the state recognizes only “overseas populations” (constitutional revision of 28 March 2003) and, among them, “Indigenous populations” (see also Guyon and Trépied 2013, p. 98–99).<fnref n="14" /> Even in the case of New Caledonia, where an exception to the

<footnote n="9">⁹These include two stays in New Caledonia in 2006 and 2011, and twelve stays in French Polynesia between 2005 and 2023, totalizing more than 2 years of fieldwork in the French territories of Oceania. I also did fieldwork for more than 2 years in New Zealand between 2001 and 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰For details, see Moyrand (2012), Saura (2008) for French Polynesia and Kurtovitch (2003), Le Meur (2017), Soriano (2014), and Trépied (2010) for New Caledonia. For a summary, see Gonshor (2013).</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹Collective rights, also called group rights, are rights held by a group as a group, rather than by individuals.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states in its preamble “that Indigenous individuals are entitled without discrimination to all human rights recognized in international law, and that Indigenous peoples possess collective rights which are indispensable for their existence, well-being and integral development as peoples”. The declaration notably affirms their collective rights to “autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs” (Article 4) and “to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions” (article 5).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³See http://www.gitpa.org/Processus%20GITPA%202000/gitpa%20200-2-DDPPositionfrance.pdf. Accessed 22 Dec 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴For more on France's historical reluctance to recognise or even value any sub-national collective identity and on the idea of the indivisibility of the French Republic (see Gagné and Roustan 2019).</footnote>
indivisibility of the French Republic already exists – “since 1998 in fact, under the Nouméa Accord attached to Title XIII of the Constitution (Articles 76 and 77), the Republic officially recognizes the existence of the ‘Kanak people’ in New Caledonia” (Trépied 2012) – negotiations about power sharing are taking place between the French state and the local government, that is on a territorial basis with New Caledonia as a whole and not with the Kanak Indigenous people. I will come back to this last point later.

On closer inspection, the territorial anchoring of the principle of the equality of all citizens of the French Republic has unsuspected effects that make it possible to understand certain concerns of the populations of French overseas territories. Here is an example that is indicative of the ambiguity of the word “Indigenous” in this context. It is a text by the Polynesian poet Isidore Hiro, brother of the late poet and playwright Henri Hiro (1944–1990), a key player in the cultural revival movement in French Polynesia from the 1970s (see Saura 2008). This text appeared in 2011 in a special issue on indigeneity and Indigenous peoples of the journal *Littérarama’ohi*<fnref n="15" />

> From what I remember, it was in the late 1980s that I first heard the word “autochtone” [Indigenous]. What amazes me a lot is how widespread its use has been today. At the time, we could no longer understand who we were exactly, where we were and how we could relate to this new expression: “Indigenous”. Who really was this person called “autochtone”?... As I understand it, we were no longer Tahitians, we were no longer Paumotu, we were no longer Mangarevians, nor Marquisians, nor inhabitants of the Austral Islands, nor Maupiti, nor other people of the Leeward Islands, nor Maiào, nor “Moorenians”, this meant that we were no longer Maóhi but rather autochtones, that is people from this country... But who? ... Where do they come from? ... Who are their parents? ... All these questions are irrelevant, they were born in this country so, they are from this country, do not ask questions, do not try to understand, that’s it... But can we trust that? (Hiro 2011, p. 37)

Isidore Hiro is wary of the idea of an Indigenous identity since it is one imposed on them from the outside and which helps to erase difference.

For him, the ambiguity of the word “autochtone” is also, and perhaps most importantly, the fact that it can be used to identify two categories of people. In his text, he thus distinguishes between “autochtones natifs” (native Indigenous) and “autochtones de souche” (ancestral Indigenous). According to his definition, the autochtone natif is “someone who was born in our country. But what needs to be said is that it is not a person from this country but a person whose parents or ancestors came from outside” (ibid. 2011, p. 38). These are the descendants of people from metropolitan France (administrators and settlers) who came to settle in the colony and descendants of other foreign populations who also settled there. In contrast, the autochtone de souche is

“originally from this country, attached to the base of his land, connected to his ancestors by name since the dawn of time, for generations and generations to this day. This person has a connection to his/her land, a connection with his/her genealogy and is united with his/her country” (ibid. 2011, p. 38).

The distinction between these two categories is fundamental and, as can be seen, has important political implications. The key to understanding the distinction can be found in the French conception of citizenship and the public debates that surround it: French citizenship is based on the “right of the land” (jus soli). Being a citizen of the French Republic therefore means being a member of a political community, which officially has no ethnic basis and has nothing to do with ancestry and a “blood right” (jus sanguinis) (see, among others, Schnapper 1998; Weil 2008). Being a French citizen therefore implies the idea, in a certain sense, of being “Indigenous” in France, an idea that is heard in French public debates, especially with regard to immigration where a distinction is drawn between autochtones (natives, thus citizens) and immigrants.<fnref n="16" /> This idea is also perpetuated by (some) metropolitan French people who live in the overseas territories, as well as by their children who were born there and insist on their rights to be and live there, hence the need, for Isidore Hiro, to distinguish between two categories of “Indigenous” people.<fnref n="17" />

<footnote n="15">¹⁵A literary journal produced in Tahiti.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶In recent years, the far right in metropolitan France has used the term autochtones (Indigenous) in a completely different sense to express anti-immigration positions, distinguishing two classes of citizens: those of (ethnic) French origin – the autochtone – and those who are not. This distinction contravenes the principle of equality for all citizens of the French Republic. Indigeneity is often presented in France as a synonym for exclusion or even communitarianism, that is, ethnic isolationism or sectarianism, or even independence, and many are wary of it (Spitz 2011, p. 98). This mistrust also extends to the French oversea territories, even if a segment of the local population supports the positions of the extreme right in relation to immigrants. The high levels of intermarriage, particularly in French Polynesia, also makes such a dichotomization between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people more problematic. Knowing that independence, for segments of the population of the French territories of Oceania, is associated with political uncertainty, poverty, racism, exclusion and even civil unrest and armed conflict, as occurred in some states of Oceania since independence, indigeneity suffers from a negative perception on the part of the general public.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷I, for one, have not seen this distinction being made in the New Caledonian context. However, on the connection to land and to the country experienced as a substantial part of oneself among Caldoches, see Carteron (2015). As explained by Carteron (2015, p. 165), “[t]he word Caldoche designates Caledonians of European origin: descendants of settlers, but also long-established metropolitans and people of mixed European and other ancestry who are an integral part of the group by adopting its ideals and its lifestyle”.</footnote>
## 17.4 The Consequences of French Metropolitan Settlement Policies

The demographic weight of the people from metropolitan France (administrators and settlers) in the colony, which can be increased by the “import” of foreign populations (workers, convicts, etc.), appears fundamental in the configuration of the colonial situation as well as in the possibilities for exiting the colonial situation. New Caledonia was a settler colony from the 1800s in which the mass displacement of nationals from the French mainland was organized in order to form a new society, to the detriment of the Indigenous population that was set to disappear at some point in the future. In settler colonialism, settlers are there for good. It is therefore necessary to try, at best, to establish modalities of living together that are relatively satisfactory for all.

New Caledonia, like Algeria, “was conceived as early as the 1860s as a welcoming place for a French population” (Merle 2013, p. 50; see also Merle 2020). The policy of settlement was reaffirmed several times thereafter, in the 1950s for agricultural development (Graff 2017, p. 25), and again at the beginning of the nickel boom in the early 1970s, when the first signs of Kanak protest emerged.<fnref n="18" /> The intention of French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer was explicit in a letter to his Secretary of State for DOM-TOM,<fnref n="19" /> dated 19 July 1972:

> New Caledonia, a settlement, although doomed to multiracial variegation, is probably the last non-independent tropical territory in the world where a developed country can emigrate its nationals. We must therefore seize this ultimate opportunity to create an additional French-speaking country. The French presence in Caledonia can only be threatened, except by world war, by a nationalist claim of Indigenous populations supported by some potential allies in other ethnic communities from the Pacific. In the short and medium term, the mass immigration of French citizens from the overseas departments (La Réunion) should avoid this danger by maintaining and improving the ratio of communities.<fnref n="20" />

This last “wave of settlement significantly increased the population of New Caledonia, causing the Kanak people to [definitely] switch to a numerical minority” (Graff 2017, p. 26). Kanak people now account for just over 41%<fnref n="21" /> of New Caledonia’s total population.

In this context of minorisation, as early as 1975, the Kanak independentists called for a referendum on self-determination. In 1983, a first negotiation between the Independence Front (FI) and France took place in Nainville-les-Roches, which was also attended by parties representing non-independentists, mostly made up of people of European descent. At this time, the Kanak of the FI agreed to recognise that the “victims of history”, which are the descendants of convicts, settlers or mine workers from Asia or the Pacific, have the right to vote in a possible referendum on self-determination. This moment marked a turning point in at least two respects: the question arose as to who would vote, and as the anthropologist Stephanie Graff pointed out, there was a shift “from the question of the self-determination of the Kanak people to that of the entire territory of New Caledonia, since its entire population is concerned, ‘for historical reasons’” (ibid 2017, p. 27). In the statement that was drafted after this negotiation, the term “victims of history” was replaced by that, much more inclusive, of “other ethnicities”, which, according to Graff, was “the basis of all the future controversies over the definition of the electoral body” (ibid 2017, p. 28).

With the Matignon-Oudinot Accords in 1988, it was agreed that the “interested populations” in the future of the territory would be the only ones to be empowered to vote in the elections that would be decisive for the future of New Caledonia, which included elections to the Congress of New Caledonia and provincial assemblies as well as the vote of self-determination. The Nouméa Accord subsequently defined a “New Caledonian citizenship” (see Chap. 20 by Robertson in this book) that limited the “common destiny” and established “restrictions on the electoral body for elections to the country’s institutions and for final consultation” (Preamble to the Accord). The restriction of the electoral body for elections to the country’s institutions is a fundamental point of the Nouméa Accord on which the definition of citizenship of New Caledonia is based, which can be transformed into nationality if the consultation on full sovereignty leads to the independence of the territory.<fnref n="22" />

## 17.5 The Issue of the Electoral Body and the Referendums on Self-Determination

The criterion used to restrict the electoral body was the source of heated conflicts. Indeed, the independentists and non-independentists did not agree on the criterion of 10 years of continuous domiciliation in New Caledonia to be registered on the special electoral list for provincial elections

<footnote n="18">¹⁸More than 8000 French citizens from metropolitan France came to live in New Caledonia between 1969 and 1972 (Forrest and Kowasch 2016:6).</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹The DOM-TOM is the abbreviation for “overseas departments and territories”.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰Letter quoted on the following website: https://rebellyon.info/Kanaky-une-lettre-oubliee-de. Accessed 19 Dec 2023.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹People identifying as Kanak make up 41.2% of the population, those identifying as Europeans, 24%, those identifying as Wallisians and Futunians 8.3%, and those claiming to belong to other “communities” 8% (ISEE 2019).</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²²For more details on the three electoral lists existing in New Caledonia and the “transitional” disconnection between Caledonian citizenship and “French nationality” (see Chauchat 2008; Graff 2017).</footnote>
(LESP):<fnref n="23" /> the independentists defended the idea of a “frozen” electoral body comprising only those present in New Caledonia before the signing of the Nouméa Accord and able to justify a 10-year residence, while non-independence supporters [loyalists] proposed a “sliding” electoral body, including all those who can justify a continuous 10-year residence. On the independentist side, the important issue was to prevent immigration from further increasing the imbalance against the Kanak minority<fnref n="24" /> population. The Constitutional Act 2007-237 of 23 February 2007 finally established the freezing of the electoral body.

In view of the referendum that took place on 4 November 2018, the question of the electoral body was again the subject of debate. It was clear in Organic Law 99-209 of 19 March 1999, relating to New Caledonia that the question of independence would be decided by the electoral body made up of persons of customary civil status (the Kanak people), natives of New Caledonia as well as non-natives who may justify a 20-year continuous residence in New Caledonia by 31 December 2014, or who have been admitted to the consultation on 8 November 1998, which assumes to have been able to justify 10 years of residence on that date. However, various irregularities have been noted and denounced in recent years with regard to the Special Electoral Consultation List (LESC). One of these involved 20,000 Kanak who would not have been on the general electoral list (LEG, allowing voting in national elections, i.e. presidential, legislative and European elections), which is a prerequisite to vote in the referendum on self-determination. This situation was due to several factors: the fact that a number of Kanak people do not feel concerned about the French elections in general and have therefore never been included on the general list, the fact that young Kanak can be refused registration for lack of correct documentation, and the partisanship of members of the special administrative commissions (Graff 2017, p. 32–33; see also Chauchat 2016). A “political agreement” was finally reached after a meeting of the committee of signatories to the Nouméa Accord on 2 November 2017,<fnref n="25" /> which was approved some 20 days later by an unanimous vote (except two abstentions) of the New Caledonian Congress on the proposed amendment to the organic law. With the adoption of the Organic Law of 19 April 2018, on

the organisation of the consultation on the accession to full sovereignty of New Caledonia, about 11,000 natives of New Caledonia were added to the special list. This comprised 7000 through customary civil status and 4000 by ordinary civil status that could justify a three-year residency in New Caledonia.<fnref n="26" />

In the end, 174,165 people were called to vote on the future of New Caledonia on 4 November 2018.<fnref n="27" /> To the question “Do you want New Caledonia to gain full sovereignty and become independent”, 56.4% answered “No” and 43.6% “Yes” (see Chap. 18 by Fisher in this book). The difference between the two options was 18,000 votes. For the independentists, however, it was a first battle won since the polls and political commentators had predicted a landslide victory of “No” to the tune of 70% (Trépied 2018b).<fnref n="28" /> The historic turnout in the poll at 80.63% of the registered voters was also gratifying. Trépied (2018b) said that New Caledonians “have given unprecedented importance to the vote – no other local or national referendum has ever mobilised such a high proportion of voters in the archipelago”. For the second referendum that took place on 4 October 2020, 180,799 people were registered on the LESC.<fnref n="29" /> The turnout rose to 85.69%. The gap narrowed between the “Yes” and the “No” to independence. The “No” option won with only 53.26% of the vote. The gap between the two options was 9970 votes. This result gave the independentists more hope for a victory in the third referendum. In the days following this referendum, the situation was also pushing loyalist partisans to dialogue, especially the more moderate ones who wish to find a compromise governance solution.

After the 2018 referendum, Trépied also mentioned that “[t]he proponents of independence remain overwhelmingly Kanak and those of remaining in France in the majority non-Kanak” (Trépied 2018b). This conclusion is evident from the analysis of the results by commune. Those with a large majority of Kanak voters showed a strong majority in favour of full sovereignty, while those with a strong non-Kanak majority also voted overwhelmingly in favour of keeping New Caledonia in the Republic (for details, see Huc and Martin 2019; Gay 2019). This is still true in view of the results for 2020, but they might also suggest that some non-

<footnote n="23">²³See the Organic Act 99-209 of 19 March 1999, relating to New Caledonia.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴On the issues of “rebalancing” between communities, including in its demographic dimension, see Rallu who states that “the economic development induced by the Matignon-Oudinot Accords resulted in a net increase of 7670 male and 6370 female jobs between 1988 and 1996. But, according to the census, nearly 8000 net migrants, mainly Europeans and much fewer Wallisians, entered over the period” (2018, p. 399).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵Discontents nevertheless persisted among the New Caledonian population.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶See https://www.vie-publique.fr/actualite/dossier/nouvelle-caledonie/nouvelle-caledonie-referendum-autodetermination-du-4-novembre-2018.html. Accessed on 19 Dec 2023.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷Some 35,000 French citizens registered on the LEG and settled in the archipelago after 1994 did not meet the criteria to be registered on the LESC (Trépied 2018b).</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸For details on the polls and debates on the wording of the question (see Leblic 2018b).</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹The increase in the number of voters between 2018 and 2020 is mainly attributable to the registration of young people who have reached the age of majority, which represents approximately 3000 people per year (Lassauce 2020).</footnote>