Tjibaou’s Kanak: ethnic identity as New Caledonia prepares its future

Abstract

On 11 May 2014, New Caledonia elected its fourth, and final, local Congress under the historic 1998 Noumea Accord. There was no Australian media coverage of that election, nor of a violent protest at the end of May just out of Noumea, when Kanak protesters shot and injured two French gendarmes. Indeed, few Australians are aware that our closest neighbour just two hours flying time off the east coast of Queensland is France, in its Pacific possession, New Caledonia. One reason for this is that the French, along with the local pro-France and pro-independence groups who were engaged in a bloody civil war only 25 years ago, successfully negotiated a series of agreements ending the violence of the 1980s and postponing a sensitive self-determination vote in return for a promised schedule of handovers of responsibilities by 2014. These agreements, the 1988 Matignon/Oudinot Accords and the 1998 Noumea Accord, have so far presided over a long period of peace and prosperity, keeping the French collectivity out of the regional and Australian newspapers.