Indigenous Rights or National Independence: Paths of Self-Determination in New Caledonia

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.

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),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 referendum² was scheduled on 12 December 2021, “on the same issue and with the same electoral body” (Trépied 2018b).³

Given how close the votes were in 2018 and 2020,⁴ 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 2013.⁵ 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 1990s⁶ by participating 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 process⁷ and its questioning of the economic rebalancing policy prevailing since the 1990s,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 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 2001.⁹

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.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 francophone 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.

3 The Fabric of the French Nation

Another fundamental point is that the French constitutional framework does not recognize collective rights,¹¹ which has for a long time limited the emergence of claims on this basis such as claims of “rights as Indigenous peoples”.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.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).¹⁴ Even in the case of New Caledonia, where an exception to the 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 Littérama’ohi: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.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.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.¹⁸ The intention of French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer was explicit in a letter to his Secretary of State for DOM-TOM,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.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%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.²²

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 (LESP):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 minority²⁴ 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 2017,²⁵ 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.²⁶

In the end, 174,165 people were called to vote on the future of New Caledonia on 4 November 2018.²⁷ 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).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.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-Kanak joined the ranks of the independentists. What is interesting is that the results also confirmed that the Kanak’s drive for independence has not waned despite the improvement in their socio-economic conditions in recent decades and the diversification of their social trajectories (inclusion into the wage economy, increased schooling, urbanisation, etc.) (Trépied 2018b).

In the aftermath of both referendums, the independentists rushed to mobilise their supporters and were appealing to voters for the third referendum. One of the challenges for the independentists was to convince those who abstained in the 2020 referendum to vote – especially those from the Loyalty Islands (Maré, Lifou and Ouvéa), traditionally an independence stronghold populated almost exclusively by Kanak.³⁰ It was also certainly a matter of trying again to convince non-Kanak to join the pro-independence camp.

Taking into account the contextual elements described here, one thing was certain despite the optimism generated by the outcome of the 2018 and 2020 referendums and the position that the Kanak have acquired in recent decades within governance institutions: the path to full sovereignty was paved with obstacles, and the Kanak could hardly achieve this alone as they were 41.2% of the total population, which translates into 18,000 fewer votes than non-Kanak (Trépied 2018b). In addition, they were divided among themselves on the issue.³¹ This has been the whole point of a long period of reflection based around “common destiny” in recent years (Faugère and Merle 2010; Graille 2018; Le Meur 2017; Salaün and Vernaudon 2009).

This is also, in my view, one of the reasons for the exploration of an “Indigenous strategy” by a segment of the Kanak population. For a number of them, given their demographic context, it is a question of ensuring, at best, the recognition and consideration of their customs and languages as well as the existence of mechanisms guaranteeing their presence in various sectors and institutions in tomorrow’s New Caledonian society.

6 The New Era of the Nouméa Accord

The 1998 Nouméa Accord, “explicitly defined in its preamble as a ‘decolonisation Accord’” (Guyon and Trépied 2013, p. 109), has made possible the emergence of Indigenous claims in at least three ways. First, by paving the way for large-scale industrial mining operations as part of the economic rebalancing between the provinces, the Nouméa Accord raised unprecedented environmental concerns (see Chap. 8 by Kowasch and Merlin in this book).

Second, by officially recognising “Kanak identity” and strengthening the weight of customary authorities, lands and law, it initiated a set of measures to promote institutions and structures described as “customary”, including the creation of a Customary Senate (Guyon and Trépied 2013, p. 110). The Customary Senate – created by organic law 99-209 of 19 March 1999, to reflect upon institutional arrangements meant to take into account Kanak culture (Demmer 2018a) – has been behind a set of relatively new reflections and actions within the French Republic concerning the promotion of the teaching of Kanak languages and arts, the protection of intellectual property rights over traditional knowledge, but also the codification of customs in order to strengthen institutional legal pluralism (Demmer 2007; Demmer and Salomon 2017; Horowitz 2012). It should be noted that “since the 1990s, civil litigation between Kanak of customary status is decided by professional judges (almost all French metropolitan) and Kanak customary assessors (...), who explain what ‘custom’ provides and judge in its name” (Trépied 2018a, p. 66). The “customary status”, renamed by the Nouméa Accord, was called “special civil status” before 1998. It corresponds to the maintenance, after the extension of citizenship to the Kanak in 1946, of the civil status of “native subjects” in colonial times.³² This “differentialist” project (Demmer 2018a) was enshrined in the “Charter of the Kanak People: A Common Foundation of the Fundamental Values and Principles of Kanak Civilization”, adopted by a significant number of officially recognised Kanak customary authorities in April 2014, following a consultation process led by the Customary Senate.³³ In this Charter, the signatories – notably “[g]uided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted on 13 September 2007” (Preamble, p. 8) – strongly assert the collective rights of the Kanak people as New Caledonia’s Indigenous people, and affirm their commitment “to work for the affirmation of legal pluralism” (Preamble, p. 11). The Customary Senate has thus become the rear base of the Indigenous movement in New Caledonia.

Finally, by moving FLNKS activists into elected positions and management – the provincialisation of the New Caledonian archipelago has given them authority over the North and Loyalty Islands Provinces through the ballot box – the Nouméa Accord has reconfigured power relationships within the “Kanak people” and Kanak political representation. In recent years, some customary leaders have been critical of elected Kanak officials, saying they lack authority to speak on behalf of all Kanak people (for details, see Demmer and Salomon 2017). This excerpt from a press release by Rhéébù Nùù in May 2006, when it was still arguing against Goro Nickel and speaking as the representative of the customary authorities of the far south of New Caledonia³⁴ (see Chap. 8 by Kowasch and Merlin in this book), illustrates the conflict of legitimacy at work:

Ask yourself the question: which elected official, which president, which mayor, which political party will be able tomorrow to stand up and say stop to pollution, stop looting our wealth when the damage is done and when the factory is operational? [...] The elected officials have a partial responsibility corresponding to their mandate. Chiefdoms and clans will be accountable in more than a hundred years to their descendants and future generations.

If the dissensions might have decreased during the period of the referendums, in recent years, Demmer and Solomon (2017, p. 131–132) note that some customary authorities overtly criticise the Kanak elected officials whom they consider incapable of improving the lot of the Kanak people. Some of them “are rather hostile to the struggle for independence, which they accuse of causing a ‘loss of young people’s bearings’, and more broadly of having questioned a certain moral and political order in the [Kanak] community” (ibid 2017, p. 131–132). The 2014 Charter of the Kanak People clearly affirms that the legitimacy of customary authorities prevails over the legitimacy of democratically elected authorities (see Preamble, article 55, and chapter 3). Internal splits, however, are nothing new, and the French state has exploited them in the past. Back in the 1980s, the “Great Chiefs” Council, for example, was promoted by the French State and loyalist parties in opposition to independence. Some loyalist Kanak customary leaders were behind it: those who owed their power to the indirect administrative structures put in place during colonisation (for details, see Demmer 2016; Demmer and Salomon 2017).

7 Conclusion

The relevance of “Indigenous identity” and the “Indigenous strategy” in New Caledonia is a product of its unique colonial situation. Indigenous identity is largely relational and becomes – or does not – an attractive strategy in particular contexts of struggle. In the French territories of Oceania, the partial success of the Indigenous movement and the struggle for Indigenous rights are unique to the New Caledonian context. There is no equivalent in French Polynesia, for instance. French Polynesia’s history differs from New Caledonia’s in many respects. There is no such official recognition of Polynesian or Mā’ohi customs or of any kind of official “customary status” for the descendants of the Indigenous people. In civil matters, a large proportion of them have been formally subject to the Civil Code since 1880 and all of them since 1945 (for details, see Gagné et al. 2018). As I mentioned elsewhere (Gagné 2015, p. 389), in addition to the differences in timing, this may partly explain why the environmental concerns raised by nuclear testing in French Polynesia – in contrast with those caused by the new mining project of the 2000s in New Caledonia – have not worked as a catalyst for the formation of a strong Indigenous movement. This could also explain the very limited success in the political arena of people whose demands have centred on the reestablishment of customary institutions or the restoration of hereditary monarchy or chiefdoms, even if they enjoy a certain sympathy because of what they represent culturally. These initiatives are usually met with opposition since French Polynesians generally favour democratic legitimacy – beginning with the ballot box (e.g. see Gagné 2020, p. 152–153; Saura 2010, 2015). The exceptionalism of New Caledonia relative to French Polynesia also arises from its history of settlement, and the way it impacted on the demographic weight of the Kanak population in the archipelago through time. Kanak people now represents only 41.2% of New Caledonians. This situation is very different from that of the population of Indigenous origins in French Polynesia, which is almost 83%³⁵ of the population.

However, even if New Caledonia as a political entity began as a settler colony, the context in which the Kanak live also differs radically from the context of other groups that are emblematic of the category “Indigenous peoples”, especially in the States of the former British Empire in Oceania. Specifically, it is characterised by the particularities of French national political history and by the demographic weight of the Indigenous population. Both in Australia and New Zealand, the relatively low demographic weight of the Māori people (17,4% of the New Zealand Population, Stats NZ 2022) and of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (3.2% of the total Australian population, Census 2021) alone tends to make full sovereignty a solution that is difficult to envisage. This situation makes the path of the promotion and assertion of Indigenous rights all the more attractive.

To return to the third referendum held on 12 December 2021, the “No” to independence won a massive victory, with 96.49% of the votes cast, against a backdrop of a record low turnout.³⁶ This was the result of the call for “non-participation” by the pro-independence parties in the face of the French government’s refusal to postpone the third consultation, as they requested because of the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the archipelago hard from September 2021.³⁷ (see Chap. 18 by Fisher in this book) Because of its intransigence, the French state betrayed its commitments of more than 30 years to a peaceful and inclusive decolonisation, by organizing a referendum without the participation of a large part of the Kanak people. Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the referendum, the independentists did not recognise the outcome as legitimate.

After what can be considered a failure of the self-determination process set up by the Matignon-Oudinot and Nouméa Accords, what’s next for New Caledonia? As provided for in the Nouméa Accord, in the event of a third “No” victory, “political partners will meet to examine the situation thus created”. At the time of writing, discussions, in which the independentists finally agreed to participate, are currently underway with a view to arriving at an institutional project for New Caledonia within France. Negotiations took place in 2023 but are not resolved. The aim is now to establish a new status for New Caledonia by March 2024, but the possible unfreezing of the electorate body and restrictions on the right to self-determination are among the stumbling blocks in the negotiations. Does this mean that New Caledonia is necessarily done with independence? Will the Indigenous strategies end up being essential or could new convergences between both strategies emerge? Interestingly, until now, the struggles for independence in New Caledonia have coexisted with the Indigenous strategy which, according to the UN frameworks on Indigenous rights, allows for the development of areas of sovereignty within the institutions of the colonial situation. It remains to be seen if and how this dual strategy of self-determination, which reveals a certain ambivalence concerning decolonisation, will influence the future of the Kanak people and of New Caledonia as a whole. Is it not even possible to imagine that new paths to self-determination could emerge?