The Struggle for Kanaky – Susanna Ounei-Small (1995)

From ‘Tok Blong Pasifik‘, June 1995, Victoria, BC

Susanna Ounei-Small is the Assistant Director, Decolonisation, at the Fiji-based Pacific Concerns Resource Centre. She is a Kanak with a long history in her people’s independence struggle.

France annexed New Caledonia on September 24, 1853, declaring the entire territory French national property. It justified the takeover on the following principle, as outlined by the French naval chief, du Bouzet:

“When a maritime power declares its sovereignty over a land not occupied by a civilised nation and possessed only by savage tribes, this takeover annuls all anterior[agreements] made by individuals with the occupants of the country. As a consequence [of this principle], the chiefs and the indigenous people of New Caledonia and its dependencies have never had and neither can they have the right to control, in all or in part, the ground occupied by them either communally or as private property.”

The Kanak country was placed in its entirety under French jurisdiction. This permitted the violent expropriation of Kanak lands and the imprisonment of Kanaks who struggled for freedom. The repression in New Caledonia began only about 60 years after the modern French state was established to uphold the principles of “freedom, equality and fraternity”. Though Kanaks were forced to submit to the authority of the French state, France was able to breach its constitution by denying to the Kanak people the rights and protections of citizens of the French Republic.

Beginning in 1854, Captain Tardy de Montravel went around the tribes to dictate French laws to the Kanak chiefs. The laws prohibited theft, adultery, dancing at night (the traditional pilou) and insubordination to a tribal chief or other government representative. Disobedience was met with punishment ranging from three days in jail to life imprisonment with hard labour.

The decree of 1860 ratified the expropriation of chiefs’ lands and gave the governor the power to appoint chiefs, dissolve tribes, dispossess Kanaks of their territory and expel insubordinate Kanaks from the colony. This decree, which remained in force until 1946, led to a reduction of the land available for Kanak agriculture and resulted in significant food shortages.

From 1847-1869 there were 40 separate revolts. These attacks were severely punished by military reprisals, the confiscation of more land and mass public executions of the rebels. Kanak resistance came to a head with the uprising led by Chief Atai in 1878, which saw numerous tribes join together in armed revolt. In a report on the revolt, General Trentinian stated that the abuses of land annexation meant the destruction of the traditional native life and blamed the French administration for the revolt.

The 1878 revolt was used as a pretext for the colonial administration to alienate more land and introduce more laws to control the Kanaks. A Native Law (code de l’indigenat) was introduced and stated that: “The Caledonian native has been excluded from the common law. He is to be submitted to the discipline of the colonial administration.”

In 1895, taxation of 10 francs per year was imposed on each Kanak. This represented an entire month’s earnings for Kanaks who worked for the Europeans.

By the turn of the century, the country was divided into 50 districts with 333 tribes. To maintain control over the Kanak population, small autonomous Kanak clans had been forced together into territorial tribes under the control of one “big chief”. This chief, chosen by the French Governor, had to rule people over which he had no customary authority and report to the French gendarmerie [paramilitary police]. The chiefs were responsible for taking “all necessary measures to see that public security and tranquility are not disturbed by the indigenous population” (decree of 9 August 1898).

Provoked by further losses of land and burning of villages to make way for settlers, the Kanaks rebelled again in 1917 under the leadership of Chief Noel. This resulted in deaths and reprisals, the final indignity being the triumphant display by the French of Noel’s head.

Estimates of the pre-colonial Kanak population range from 200,000-500,000. With the destructive effects of the killings, losses of land and deaths through disease (Tchoeaoua et al, 1985: 44), the Kanak population had fallen by 1926 to less than 27,000. It was believed that the race would eventually die out altogether.

Having gained total domination over the Kanak population, the colonial administration introduced a regime of forced labour. Every able bodied Kanak was required to provide twelve days unpaid labour each year, often on land held by French settlers. Tribal chiefs were required to enforce this rule on their people; those who refused were imprisoned or deported.

Law as Legitimation of Assimilation

By the 1940s, France was confident that the Kanak resistance had been crushed. The period from 1945-1969 was one of assimilation. France removed the formal legal barriers which discriminated against the Kanak people, but left the colonial structures — political, economic and social — in place. Colonial institutions, while legally open to Kanaks, effectively prevented Kanaks from gaining equal opportunities with the settler population. The broader question of regaining sovereignty was not discussed.

While law served a repressive function in the first colonial period, its role in the assimilationist period was to legitimise the colonial system. However, the consent which the new regime gained was firmly grounded on the terror of decades of state violence against the Kanaks.

The repressive Native Law was abolished in 1946 and Kanaks benefited from the postwar French constitution which guaranteed “equal access to state services and the exercise of rights and freedoms individually and collectively”. New Caledonia’s status was changed from a colony to an Overseas Territory. However, it was not until 1957 that Kanaks were granted the same rights as the settler population. In an attempt to block this liberalisation, local officials reported
to the French government that the Kanak population “has not yet reached an evolutionary stage which justifies its major participation in the public life of the territory.”

In general, however, the reforms of the postwar period represented the first improvement in the condition of the Kanak people since the French invasion. It was the first time they could live without the daily fear of direct physical violence. When challenged later by young people about why they were happy with such minor reforms, Kanak political leaders of that time reply: “What do you expect? We had only just been released from our chains.”

Undermining the Independence Movement

The modern Kanak independence movement began with the return of a Kanak student from France. Nidoish Naisseline, the son of a high chief, created a group called the Red Scarves and led a new generation of young people in militant action against colonial rule. In 1969, he was convicted for “inciting racial hatred”. In 1972, Naisseline was again sentenced to prison for saying to a police officer, “This is not France and I don’t care about your uniform. The man behind it is an imbecile.”

The Red Scarves attracted a big following around the ideas of revaluing Kanak culture, asserting power and reclaiming stolen Kanak land. The older generation in the other political parties had to adopt more radical policies to avoid losing support.

The first reaction of the colonial authorities was to try to repress the movement by sending police to attack every Red Scarves demonstration. However, in 1972 they announced what they saw as a more long-term solution to the threat posed by the new movement. The French Prime Minister, Pierre Messmer, declared:

“The French presence in New Caledonia can only be threatened …by a nationalist movement of the indigenous population supported by allies in other ethnic communities coming from the Pacific. In the short and medium term, massive immigration by French metropolitan citizens or people from overseas departments should allow this danger to be avoided…. In the long term, the indigenous nationalist movement will only be avoided if the communities of non Pacific origins represent a majority demographic mass.”

The settlement policy which followed kept the Kanak population in a minority position and enabled successive French administrations to claim that it would be “undemocratic” to give independence to New Caledonia because the majority of “New Caledonians” did not support it. Within four years of Messmer’s declaration, 15,000 new immigrants arrived in New Caledonia. Although the Kanak population increased more than 20% from 1969-76, it dropped from 45.9% of the total population to 41.78%.

Most new settlers were attracted to New Caledonia by the nickel boom. They were given employment ahead of Kanaks. The settlers saw only their individual situations and were unable to see how French imperialist interests were benefitting both from their labour power and their presence in New Caledonia.

When the demand for return of Kanak lands spread in the form of land occupations, France was forced to make concessions, proposing to buy land off settlers and hand it back to Kanak tribes. However, the concessions were not enough. Kanak people were demanding the return of all land as well as the political and economic means to develop it.

In 1983 the French Government, for the first time, recognised the Kanak people’s “innate and active rights” to independence. France agreed to the Kanak demand for a referendum on independence (though it has since begun to talk about “independence in association with France” — an “independence” in which France would retain its military presence and control over foreign policy). Since then, there has been an unresolvable conflict between the Kanak people and the French state over when this vote should be held and who should take part.

The Kanak people demanded that the referendum should be held immediately and be restricted to people with at least one parent born in New Caledonia. France has tried to postpone the referendum and allow all residents of New Caledonia to vote. Though France was prepared to violate its constitution during earlier colonial rule and also implemented a settlement strategy to outnumber the Kanak population, it now insists that the French constitution makes it impossible to limit the referendum to long-term residents of New Caledonia because this would breach the democratic constitutional rights of the new settlers.

The French position provoked the biggest Kanak uprising since 1917. The 1984 elections were boycotted by over 80% of the Kanak people, who also launched a militant campaign of disruption. During this campaign, a group of settlers ambushed and massacred a group of unarmed Kanaks. Although the settlers admitted what they had done, the colonial court found them not guilty of murder on the grounds that they acted in self defence.

Unable to end the Kanak revolt by persuasion, the “socialist” government and its army executed the Kanak resistance leader, Eloi Machoro, on 12 January 1985. The French state needed to remind the Kanak people that it alone had a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. By challenging that fact and French rule, Machoro had gone so far that he was not even allowed a legal trial.

The execution of Machoro contained Kanak resistance for three years, but another major uprising took place in 1988, protesting against another law being imposed by France, the “Pons Statute”. Machoro’s campaign had involved evicting settlers on the east coast of the mainland and it caused no deaths. But during the 1988 uprising, Kanaks from the island of Ouvea tried to occupy a gendarmerie [paramilitary police station], killing four gendarmes and fleeing into the bush with the remaining 30 gendarmes as hostages. The right-wing French Overseas Territories Minister, Bernard Pons, announced that the perpetrators would be dealt with to the full extent of his powers. Elite French troops were flown in from France. After pretending to negotiate, they attacked the Kanaks holding the hostages and killed 19 of them, including at least five who were executed after surrendering.

Within a few days of the massacre, Pons and his right-wing government had been replaced by the Socialist government of Michel Rocard. A few weeks later, Rocard concluded the Matignon Accords — an agreement between the leaders of the Kanak independence movement, the main settler party and the French Government — postponing the referendum on independence for 10 years and allowing all but a few of the settler population to vote. The agreement was a major backdown by the Kanak negotiators from the position they had maintained since 1985.

Rocard has since been hailed as a peacemaker. This view, however, ignores the fact that the Ouvea massacre and the Matignon Accords were carried out by the same French state. It represents the same interests, uses the same army led by the same generals and was even headed by the same “socialist”, President Mitterand. Rocard himself points out that the Matignon Accords are an attempt at ensuring a continued French presence in New Caledonia.

Independence No Less Likely Under Chirac

Some have argued that the recent election of conservative Jacques Chirac as the president of France, replacing Socialist President Mitterand, is a setback for the independence movement. However, though Chirac was prime minister at the time of the Ouvea massacre, Mitterand was president and just as guilty as his political opponents for the attack. The Matignon Accords fall well short of the independence that the Socialist Party had been promising Kanak people since 1979 and were designed to divide and demobilise the Kanak independence movement. Some pro-independence Kanaks, frustrated with the manoeuvrings of the Socialist Party, even endorsed Chirac’s candidacy. They took the view that at least we know where we stand with Chirac.

The Matignon Accords are giving France exactly what it wants in New Caledonia and Chirac will not do anything to disturb them. Independence is no less likely than it was under Mitterand’s presidency.

A quote from ‘Mémoires de Louise Michel‘ (1886)

“This scarf, hidden from all searches; this red scarf of the Commune was divided there into two pieces one night when two Canaques, before going to join their fellow insurgents against the whites, had wanted to say goodbye to me.”

Louise Michel