Incompatible Struggles? Reclaiming Indigenous Sovereignty and Political Sovereignty in Kanaky and/or New Caledonia

Abstract

The question of sovereignty in Kanaky and/or New Caledonia1 has been the central political issue for the people of the archipelago for nearly five decades. Over that period, the idea of restitution has matured for the Indigenous population of the territory, with the notion now taking on multiple meanings. The dominant strategy is to achieve sovereignty on a political level through a referendum in which a large part of the New Caledonian population votes (see the following discussion on voter eligibility). The first referendum provided for in the Nouméa Accord was held on 4 November 2018. The ‘no’ vote won 57.67 per cent to 43.33 per cent on the question of the territory’s accession to full sovereignty. Some among the Kanak population have been working in parallel on a plan to regain an alternative form of sovereignty: Indigenous sovereignty. After the run-up to the second referendum, which was also provided for in the Nouméa Accord and took place on 4 October 2020, it seems important to examine the relationship between these two conceptions of sovereignty and consider what is at stake. The ‘no’ won again, but the gap between the ‘no’ and ‘yes’ votes is narrowing. ‘No’ won by 54.26 per cent, while yes obtained 46.74 per cent of the expressed suffrage.2 This was a difference of 9970 voices between the ‘no’ and the ‘yes’ votes. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the Kanak vote. Figure 2 provides a breakdown of New Caledonia’s communities in the last two censuses.