JEAN-MARIE T IBAOU Kanaky Pandanus Online Publications, Found at the Pandanus Books Web Site, Presents Additional Material Relating to This Book
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JEAN-MARIE T IBAOU Kanaky Pandanus Online Publications, found at the Pandanus Books web site, presents additional material relating to this book. www.pandanusbooks.com.au JEAN-MARIE TJIBAOU Kanaky JEAN�MARIE TJIBAOU Kanaky Writings translated by Helen Fraser and John Trotter From the original French La Presence Kanak Jean-Marie Tjibaou Edited by Alban Bensa and Eric Wittersheim First published by Editions Odile Jacob, 1996 PANDANUS BOOKS Research School of Pacificand Asian Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Cover: Jean-Marie Tjibaou salutes the Kanaky flag the first time it was flown for the provisional government, 1 December 1984. Photograph: Helen Fraser. ©Jean-Marie Tjibaou 2005 © Original publication. Editions Odile Jacob, 1996 This book is copyright in all countries subscribing ro the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Typeset in Garamond 10.75pt on 13pt and printed by Pirion, Canberra National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Tjibaou, J.-M. (Jean-Marie), 1937-. [La presence kanak. eng] Kanaky. Includes index. ISBN 1 74076 175 8. 1. New Caledonia - History - Autonomy and independence movements. 2. New Caledonia - Politics and government. I. Fraser, Helen. II. Trotter, John. III. Title. 995.97 Editorial inquiries please contact Pandanus Books on 02 6125 3269 www.pandanusbooks.com.au Published by Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Index compiled by Suzanne Ridley, Australian Writers Services Pandanus Books are distributed by UNIREPS, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052 Telephone 02 9664 0999 Fax 02 9664 5420 Production: Ian Templeman, Justine Molony and Emily Brissenden CONTENTS Preface xii Editors' Introduction xiv Translators' Introduction xxiv Letter fromJe an-Marie Tj ibaou xxxix PART ONE Raising our Heads (1974- 1976) Chapter 1: Why a Melanesian Festival? 3 Chapter 2: Melanesia 2000: A Political & Cultural Event 6 Chapter 3: Our Place in the Sun 19 Chapter 4: Traditional Society and the Search for 34 Melanesian Identity PART TWO Thinking Independence (March 1977-March 1984) Chapter 5: 'A People Between Tw o Worlds' 63 Chapter 6: The Right of the Kanak People 66 Chapter 7: Being Melanesian Today 73 Chapter 8: The Oceanian Way 90 Chapter 9: Indigenous Philosophy and Land 97 Chapter 10: On the Threshold of Power 101 Chapter 11: The Dangers of Development 104 Chapter 12: Independence and Responsibility 106 Chapter 13: Indigenous Legitimacy 112 Chapter 14: 'My Idea of Development' 115 Chapter 15: The Melanesian Cultural Renaissance in 124 New Caledonia PART THREE Kanaky en marche (November 1984-February 1986) Chapter 16: On Watch 137 Chapter 17: Oh Kanaky, My Country 143 Chapter 18: Facing our Identity 146 Chapter 19: Disappointment and Determination 162 Chapter 20: From Art to Politics 167 Chapter 21: Kanaky, France and Defence 186 PART FOUR Resisting (March 1986-June 1988) Chapter 22: Being Kanak 195 Chapter 23: The Strategy of Non-Violence 208 Chapter 24: The Regions, the Kanaks and the Struggle 211 Chapter 25: Will We Be the Last of the Mohicans? 219 Chapter 26: Hope in Black and White 224 Chapter 27: Portrait of a Colonised Person 238 PART FIVE Opening the Way (June 1988-May 1989) Chapter 28: Securing the Future 251 Chapter 29: Accords and Disaccords 255 Chapter 30: A Gamble that Reason Will Prevail 260 Chapter 31: Build to Decolonise 272 Chapter 3 2: The Fight Goes On 283 Chapter 33: Tradition Today 287 Chapter 34: The Dead Live On 294 Chronology 299 Acronyms 305 Glossary 308 Index 310 x ·. ·� roUVEA 21"5 ··�-:;Jl- <;) Tiga LIFOU MARE CORAL SEA ISLE 0 OF so 10 ))..PINES . �Vao 5 • 67" New Caledonia xi CHINA HAWAIIAN ISLANDS 20° l ····: ... �- o• NA°UR�- . ·!vE: - -- . \,, SOLOMON IS PAt�t� t "· -.. "'l\: ";·. SA.tfOA VANU TU \.: . A ·. 1 Flff J• ! ,! �J 20' -- --·NE}··�·�- -·r: E ! AUSTRALIA CALEDONIA 40° I 120° 140" 160' South West Pacific Ocean PREFAC E athered together here, as I wished it, are what Jean-Marie Tj ibaou has written and what he has said in interviews. This puGblication is the fruit of meticulous work by Alban Bensa and Eric Wittersheim. I thank them and with them all those who have helped and supported them in this undertaking. My desire was to make this testimony to the respect and constancy of Jean-Marie Tjibaou available to all of us who must pursue the struggle. May this book help the others, with whom we have decided to continue the journey we have begun, to understand why we are so resolved. Here then is the story of that man who, in his earliest childhood, left his tribal home Tiendanite to learn, to apprehend and compre hend the reality of injustice. After a short time in holy orders and studying in metropolitan France, his commitment became more urgent. He asked to be released from his vows, the better to serve his brothers. Kanak confidence had to be restored. In 1975, he succeeded in organising the Melanesia 2000 festival, a cultural manifestation which was to be the point of departure of a whole life devoted to the political futureof the country. The Kanak had to be able to live proudly in the land of his ances tors. The world had to know that Kanaky is the homeland of the Kanaks. So he travelled, he met the media, in France and throughout the world, and focussed media attention on this remaining scrap of French empire at the end of the earth. As President of the FLNKSl, Jean-Marie Tjibaou spoke with conviction xiii about what it was really like to be Kanak. He was facedwit h a wall of incomprehension. Then, since words were no longer enough, the Kanak people rose up in revolt, and it was the time of the 'events'2. The whole country was in flames. The army occupied our tribal homes and blood flowed. The man of peace had made a promise. He kept his word. In a Kanaky in flames and awash with tears there came the mission seeking dialogue. Jean-Marie Tj ibaou was throughout its main partner and he fought point by point to advance the demands of his people. The State came to acknowledge the incredible disequilibrium which existed between Noumea the European metropolis and the bush of the country folk and the Kanaks. The status of the country had to be reviewed. The year 1988 saw the crisis finally come to an end, with the signing of the Matignon Accords by Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Jacques Lafleur and the French State. A page was turned. A new era began. Tw o of the three Provinces are in the hands of the independentists. It is the step before independ ence. So this volume does not seek to revive the pain we have every one of us felt. It does include some very harsh words about certain people: made in a quite specific context, they reflect the bitterness of the struggle. It is my single hope that reading this life so entirely devoted to the Kanak people and the recognition of its rights will lead us to appreciate how farwe have all come and to make together the effortnecessa ry to achieve what we have set out to build: a new, more just and more open society. Marie-Claude Tjibaou February 1996 1 Translators' note: usual (French) acronym forthe Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front. See Glossary. 2 Tr anslators' note: the term usually used to describe the state of intermittent hostilities in New Caledonia between FLNKS supporters on the one hand and French security forces and some local opponents of the FLNKS on the other, between 1984 and 1988. EDITORS' INTRODUCTION ] ean--Marie Tjibaou, a mind open to the universal But politics have to do with the nature of human association, the contract of men with men. The politics of a country can only be an extension of its idea of human relationships. VS Naipaul1 ean-Marie Tjibaou (1936-1989) sped like a meteor through the close of the century. Still unknown to the French five years before Js death, he burst onto the international political scene and too quickly left it. His singular role in history has yet to be truly appreci ated, for lack of a proper understanding of the way the situation in New Caledonia developed; for lack also of being able to go directly to the words that this representative of a small Melanesian people chose to use in addressing his contemporaries. 'He is a man I respect, for whom words mean more than words,' wrote Frarn;ois Mitterrand2 about the man who, in the name of the Kanak people, went head to head with the French Government. The whole world remembers this always smiling and good-natured man as a fairand capable David who emerged fromhis little valley of Hienghene to take on, tenaciously but with great humility, the many different Goliaths the Kanaks foundblocking their path to emancipation. xv Tj ibaou's voice carried all the way to France because the Kanaks took the risk of physically opposing French colonial power. Rising above the noise and turmoil of the 'events' that swept through New Caledonia from 1984 to 1988, his message went beyond the immediate circumstances. Among the figures of anti-colonialism, Jean-Marie Tj ibaou occupies a special place, no doubt because New Caledonia came so late to the list of countries to be decolonised. Kanak indepen dentism found in him an entirely new kind of spokesman, one who sought to show the quality and wealth of Melanesian civilisation at the same time as deploring the lot of his people.