We are not French, we are Kanak

In May, protests in support of Indigenous rights in Kanaky (New Caledonia) captured headlines around the world and reignited debate around the imperial legacies of European nations in the Pacific region.

Joseph Xulué is a Kanak-Sāmoan lawyer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Here, he talks to Teuila Fuatai about the ongoing fight for rights in his birthplace and father’s homeland.

 

When France colonises, it implants French views and ways of life on wherever it lands. Whatever, and whoever, was there before are replaced, and in many circumstances, killed off. You become French, according to France. And that is exactly how things have transpired in Kanaky.

Kanaky is not viewed as an island with a unique, Indigenous people and culture. In our own land, Kanaks are treated as a minority community group. Our school system is French, as is the healthcare system. The political system is French, and of course, the dominant language is French.

Yet Kanak people speak 28 different languages, as well as 11 dialects and one Creole language (Tayo spoken in Saint-Louis). These languages are not just separate dialects — they are whole and incomprehensible to each other. Throughout much of my life, and most of my father’s life, the New Caledonia government has done very little to support Kanak people in learning and speaking this rich array of Indigenous languages.

Only three Kanak languages (Drehu, L’ajië and Nengone) are taught in the education system. The importance of such teaching goes far beyond the transmission of Kanak languages and culture. Kanak languages, as mother tongues, are important tools for personal development and academic success. But even today, we don’t have any resources helping us to promote the use of our own languages.

In the school system, the commitment to being French is so far-reaching that even school terms are dictated by the northern hemisphere calendar. The big break happens in the middle of the year (rather than during the December to February period) corresponding to what happens in France. That means children are expected to attend school in the hottest months of the year when it’s pretty unbearable to be in the classroom.

Essentially, France’s approach to Kanaky is that we’re just another French province, part of its republic.

As it stands, the current political setup in Kanaky means domestic issues are largely decided by a government in New Caledonia, while foreign policy is dictated from France.

Nowhere within this arrangement is there space to genuinely recognise Kanak rights and needs. The New Caledonia government isn’t obligated to implement recommendations made by the Customary Senate, which was established under the Nouméa Accord, and first sat in 1999. It is composed of representatives from each of the eight customary areas of Kanaky, and is one institution in a long political fight to recognise custom as the foundation of Kanak society.

However, the senate is merely an advisory body. The recommendations made by this parliamentary advisory body, like the Waitangi Tribunal, are non-binding. The New Caledonia parliament also determines which proposed laws or policies can be considered by the Customary Senate in the first instance. This is despite Kanaks making up 40 percent of the population in Kanaky.

France annexed Kanaky in 1853, but it was not until after World War II that Kanaks were allowed to be French citizens. Even then, citizenship rights did not come with universal suffrage. The right to vote in our own land was only allocated to people who were considered to be of noble rank. Even today, voter enrolment requirements for passports or citizenship documents are barriers to participation because many Kanak people just don’t have these.

The end result is that Kanak perspectives and needs are not prioritised in significant policy decisions. That’s reflected in our disproportionately high unemployment rate, low education achievement levels and poor health outcomes. Overall, life outcomes for Kanak people in Kanaky, like Māori in Aotearoa, continue to be worse than our Kamadra (Pālagi) counterparts. One of the main Kamadra communities in Kanaky is known as the Caldoche — they are the descendants of the original French settlers (who were mainly prisoners sent to Kanaky to set up a penal colony) in New Caledonia. There are also more recent migrants from metropolitan France.

The ongoing lack of recognition for Kanak people’s needs and identity reflects France’s particular brand of imperialism.

The most recent set of protests in May this year occurred because France proposed changes to our voting laws that would decrease the influence of Kanak people in our elections. The electoral reform by the French state intended to allow some 25,000 mainly French migrants to vote during provincial elections scheduled to take place in December 2024.

Currently, to be eligible to vote, you have to be born in New Caledonia, or satisfy certain residency requirements. The proposed reform essentially makes it easier to satisfy these residency requirements. If implemented, a larger number of recent migrants and their descendants would be eligible to vote. That means, collectively, Kanaks would have even less say in our own governance than we do now.

So the protests were against forced provincial electoral reform undertaken by the French Senate and its National Assembly against the wishes of the independence movement.

France’s insistence on doing this, to make decisions for us without real consideration and consultation, has been a staple of its imperial rule.

So it is important to understand that, for Kanak people, our fight is about two distinct but related principles: independence and Indigenous Kanak sovereignty.

In its simplest form, independence is the removal of French involvement from all parts of governance in Kanaky. It involves the total transfer of power from France to our own government structures in Kanaky. When independence is achieved, France would have no say in the domestic and foreign affairs of Kanaky.

At the same time, we need to realise Kanak sovereignty. This is a separate issue to independence because the starting point is the rights of Kanaks as the Indigenous people of the land.

Ultimately, sovereignty for Kanak people means that decisions about the land, including how it’s used and how the resources are divvied up, are made by us, using our own Indigenous decision-making structures.

But there are some really significant reasons why France has no interest in our sovereignty and is so insistent on retaining power in our nation.

Kanaky is economically important to France. We’re one of the largest producers of nickel in the world. Our land is rich in other minerals too, including iron. The seabed around Kanaky is reportedly rich in minerals as well, and that is viewed as a potential future economic benefit to France.

Kanaky’s location in the South Pacific is also strategically significant for France, particularly in the current global climate. Through its territories like New Caledonia and Tahiti, France views itself as a Pacific nation. Emmanuel Macron has made that abundantly clear. It’s also reinforced through France’s Indo-Pacific strategy which outlines France’s commitment to upholding the international rules-based order in the region, as well as the “protection of its citizens and its sovereign territory” and support for human rights in the Pacific.

For Kanaky, that self-styled French mission has been ugly, violent and harmful.

In the late 1980s, France pursued aggressive anti-Kanak policies in Kanaky. That agenda and the response from Kanak people escalated to a point where Kanaky was on the verge of civil war.

The unrest and violence came to a head with the Ouvéa hostage crisis in 1988, when Kanak freedom fighters took a group of local gendarme hostage. In response, the French army killed 19 of the hostage-takers.

The Matignon Accords, which secured peace in Kanaky and laid a path for decolonisation and development over 10 years, were ushered in following this. It was signed by the French government and leaders of the major pro- and anti-independence parties in Kanaky, in June 1988.

I believe France only brokered this peace agreement because it realised that a situation like Ouvéa would occur again, and likely be worse, if something didn’t change.

My dad Antoine was in his late teens and early 20s during the 1980s protest movements. He and his siblings (eight altogether) were all involved. Like so many other young Kanaks, they’d had enough of the oppressive French regime and wanted to progress the fight for Kanak sovereignty. Kanak people were also encouraged by the revolutionary movements they’d seen in places like Libya and Cuba. They heard about Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and were inspired. Just like in Kanaky, these places and their people had felt the sting of colonial rule and oppression for too long.

My dad’s older brother Pierre was among a Kanak group that travelled to Libya around this time. Uncle Pierre went at the request of a Kanak political party known as the Kanak Liberation United Front or FULK. He was in Libya as the programme organiser for young Kanaks and was sent there for a host of training programmes that took place in 1984.

The FULK saw Gaddafi as an ally. Libya was ready to help train Kanaks and other groups to prepare themselves for independence. Kanaks were attracted to the prospect of a country run by the people, for the people. This form of politics aligned closely with Kanak ideals of customary governance.

Then, in 1998, at the conclusion of the 10-year period under the Matignon Accords, the Nouméa Accord was implemented. Under this agreement, France promised to grant increased political power to Kanaky and the Kanak people over a 20-year period. That hasn’t happened.

Now, 36 years after the Matignon Accords, and at the end of the 20-year period allocated under the Nouméa Accord for a so-called decolonisation process, we’ve been presented with another political manoeuvre from France that disregards Indigenous rights. And just like in the 1980s, it’s young people who are standing against it.

My dad, who lives in the wider Nouméa area, has had a particularly visceral reaction to these latest protests. In particular, seeing the further militarisation of Kanaky with the arrival of 3,500 Gendarme from France aimed at quelling the protests — which really meant young Kanaks arrested and imprisoned, and even sent to prisons in metropolitan France, nearly 17,000 kilometres away.

He remembers being one of those young Kanaks in the 1980s, being arrested by heavy-handed French law enforcement. He also sees the irony in how locally-formed and armed militia — mainly composed of Kamadra living in the residential suburbs of Nouméa, located in the south of the city — are protected by French law enforcement. The purpose of these militia and their roadblocks is touted as allowing citizens to protect their neighbourhoods, although it seems more likely that they stand in defiance to, and against, Kanak independence and sovereignty. Their actions are felt by many Kanaks as promoting racist ideologies against Kanak people, characterising us as thugs and violent militants.

At each and every stage of the historical and political developments in Kanaky, Kanaks had decisions made for us, rather than with us. Either we’re having something forced on us, or we have to make grave concessions about something that’s going to be decided for us, regardless.

You just have to look at the difference between the areas populated by Caldoche and more recent French settlers, and those populated by Kanak people, to see the inequities produced by the current system.

Caldoche and more recent French migrants tend to live in the South Province, which includes Nouméa. In this part of Kanaky, there’s an ongoing stream of development. For example, we see infrastructure projects like new buildings. Just recently, a massive shopping mall has gone up in the southern province, which brings money and business opportunities that benefit settler communities.

This type of development doesn’t tend to happen in areas where Kanaks live, which are around the North Province and in the Loyalty Islands, where my family are from.

We also know that when development does occur outside of the southern province, it tends to go towards business and economic interests that don’t benefit Kanak communities. For example, Lifou in the Loyalty Islands has a port where cruise ships dock. Over the years, the infrastructure and construction projects around the port have all tended to employ members of the settler community rather than Kanaks.

We’ve seen a similar employment pattern in the public sector. One of the ways France has encouraged migration from metropolitan France to Kanaky is through generous job offers in the public service and other essential industries like health and education. Even as the Accords process has progressed, we’ve never seen an influx of Kanak people in these roles. Even Kanaks who’ve gone to France, trained and come back with degrees, haven’t managed to land these jobs.

That systemic discrimination and inequity simply won’t be addressed under the current system.

More than that, it’s perpetuating the loyalty these settler groups have for France. We know they’re totally entrenched in the governance and societal structures France has imposed because, for so long, they’ve benefited from them.

They’ve also built an identity around New Caledonia, particularly the older settler communities. That goes back to the belief that they, or their ancestors, helped create the country they know as New Caledonia.

If we think about Kanak sovereignty, it has to go back to first principles. Kanak people never agreed to be annexed. And we never agreed to being forced on to reservations on our own land for the century that followed.

We never agreed to become French subjects. We never said that it was okay to mine the land for things like nickel and iron ore at the expense of our traditional ways of living.

What we’ve always said is this: We are not French. We are Kanak. Let us make our own decisions on our own land.

 

Joseph Xulué is a lawyer in Tāmaki Makaurau. His father’s family is from Hunëte on Lifou, one of the outer islands of Kanaky. His mother’s family is from Lufilufi and Fagamalo in Sāmoa. Joseph was born in Nouméa, Kanaky, and grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau. He is the first Kanak to complete a Master of Laws as a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School.

As told to Teuila Fuatai and made possible by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

E-Tangata, 2024