Creating Kanaky: Indigeneity, Youth and the Cultural Politics of The
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Creating Kanaky: Indigeneity, Youth and the Cultural Politics of the Possible by Tate Augusta LeFevre A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology New York University September 2013 ______________________ Fred R. Myers © Tate Augusta LeFevre All Rights Reserved, 2013 iii Dedicated to my mother, Cora Bennett-LeFevre ✥ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There is no way to adequately express my gratitude to the many, many people who made this dissertation possible. First and foremost, I thank my Kanak interlocutors in Nouméa for their patience, support, care and insight. Thank you for trusting me, putting up with me and sharing your lives with me during my time in New Caledonia (and even now that I’ve returned to New York City). I want to especially thank Hassan Xulue for his wisdom, friendship and enthusiasm. I feel incredibly honored by Hassan’s faith in my project as well as his belief that this work could in some way help the struggle of the Kanak people. It is my intense hope that this might be true. Astro, Mado, Alice, Eric, Lesse, Kazi and Nico; not only did you help me understand more than I ever could have otherwise about what it means to be a young Kanak person living in Nouméa, you were fantastic friends, confidants and in many cases co-conspirators throughout my time in New Caledonia. I want to also express my gratitude to Ybal Khan, Adèle Fainicka, Florenda Nirikani, Jean-Philippe Tjibaou and Darewa Dianou for their kindness, generosity and keen perceptions on life and politics in New Caledonia. I am exceedingly grateful to the members of the groups Extreme, Blue Hau, Résurrection, UBC and Black Pearl/ Association Groupe de Jeunesse du Pacifique. I also want to take this opportunity to once again recognize and thank Umun Hnamano and his family in the tribu de Hnathalo, in Lifou as well as all the members of the Troupe du Wetr for welcoming me into their home and lives almost ten years ago as a clueless twenty year-old with poor French skills. If it had not v been for your kindness and generosity way back in 2003, I might have never returned to New Caledonia, let alone pursue a Ph.D. To the countless others who spoke with me, taught me, guided me, or generally tolerated my presence during my fieldwork in New Caledonia, Oleti atra qatr! Several institutions provided the financial support necessary to complete this project. I received write-up funding from an NYU Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship. My dissertation fieldwork was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (Award ID # 0961956). I was also honored to receive an Annette B. Weiner Fellowship from the NYU Anthropology Department. Additionally, the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group generously funded my travel to and from New Caledonia, and has provided additional support throughout this project. I am very grateful to Edvard Hviding and the others at the University of Bergen for including me as part of their intellectual community. Preliminary dissertation research was funded by the NYU GSAS Summer Pre-doctoral Fellowship and the Anthropology Department’s Annette Weiner Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship. This project could not have happened without the sharp insights, unwavering intellectual and moral support and good humor of my advisor Fred Myers. I have gained much as an anthropologist and as a person from working with Fred, both in the context of coursework and casual conversation. Bambi Schieffelin has been an invaluable mentor throughout this entire process, and has been incredibly generous with her time, intellectual guidance, advice and the wonderful licorice she often keeps vi in her office. I want to thank Haidy Geismar for the innumerable ways that she has helped to shape this project, for her confidence in me, and for asking tough questions like, “what is this dissertation really about?” Susan Rogers has offered me invaluable support and guidance from the very beginning, and our conversations have always helped point me in useful directions. I feel very lucky to have had Faye Ginsburg as an interlocutor and advisor. Her courses (and writing) on the anthropology of media and indigenous media continue to shape how I approach representation, indigeneity and social activism in my own research. I want to also thank the all of the faculty and students in the Department of Anthropology at NYU for an exceedingly collegial and intellectually vibrant atmosphere. Finishing this project took a long time, but I sure had some great people to keep me company. I don’t know what I’d do without my fellow Melanesianist in the house, Barbara Andersen. Noah Pleshet, Matt Spigelman, Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, Anna Wilking, Lee Douglas, Becca Howes-Mischel, April Strickland, Robert Chang, Hyejin Nah, Pilar Rau and Eugenia Kisin have all been fantastic friends and sounding boards. New(er)-comers Tyler Zoanni and Desiree Barron are so great, they almost make me want to stay in grad school longer! (almost). I must however, single out my partner in crime, Alison Cool, above all others. My friendship with Alison kept me (mostly) sane throughout the long process of learning how to be an anthropologist and getting a Ph.D. She is incredibly thoughtful, generous, brilliant and really good with plants. I am so lucky that she has been along with me for this ride. vii Outside of 25 Waverly Place, I want to thank my friends Sarah Thomas and Jacquee Novak. Both helped keep my spirits up, served as excellent advisors and motivational speakers, and deserve substantial credit for the fact that I made it through to the end. I also want to thank Eleanor Kleiber, Pacific librarian extraordinaire. Eleanor made living in Nouméa feel a lot more like home for both me and Chris, and she was nice enough (as the only other human being in New Caledonia who couldn’t drive stick) to lend me her car for two months while she worked in Fiji. I also thank another Pacific librarian extraordinaire, Kathy Creely, for the help and advice she has provided to me throughout this project, as well as for connecting me with many of her friends in Nouméa. I would like to thank Paige West for her intellectual and professional support and encouragement and her interest in my project. Additionally, I owe Benoît Trépied a great debt for assisting and advising me at many points during my development as an anthropologist of New Caledonia. Much credit is also due to the anthropology department at Dartmouth College, where I studied as an undergraduate. I especially thank Robert Welsch for helping to guide me to the project that would eventually inspire my dissertation research. Finally, I want to thank my family for their emotional support and encouragement, for believing in me and for making me who I am today. To my brother Isaac, you are terrible at returning text messages, but you have always been there for me when I really needed you, whether to listen to me complain, give me a hug or make me a drink. Ever since I decided as a weird twelve-year-old kid that I might want to be an anthropologist, my parents—Adam LeFevre and Cora Bennett- viii LeFevre—have always supported me, pushed me, and helped me believe that with luck and hard work, I could achieve what I set out to do. From a very young age, they sparked and fed my curiosity about the world, and encouraged me to go out and learn more. I know my mom was proud of me for beginning a Ph.D. in anthropology, and I wish she could be here to see me finish. Her joie de vivre, tenacity and wry perspective on the world inspire not only this dissertation, but my life. Chris Plehal stuck with by me for this entire adventure. In the summer of 2003, he drove all night from Dartmouth to New Paltz, suddently appearing outside the window of my childhood bedroom (and totally freaking me out), to say goodbye and offer some last words of encouragement before I traveled to New Caledonia for the first time to conduct fieldwork for my undergraduate thesis. He has been there for all the ups and downs of eight years of gradschool. Most amazingly, he joined me in Nouméa for the entirety of my dissertation fieldwork. Chris believed in me when I didn’t and was patient with me when things got hard. This dissertation would not exist without his love, wit and encouragement. ix ABSTRACT This dissertation considers the ways that settler state structures generate, even as they constrain, indigeneity, difference and resistance. I approach these issues in New Caledonia, the Melanesian archipelago and French settler colony. In 2014, the population will vote in a referendum on independence from France. Drawing on fourteen months of fieldwork in Nouméa, New Caledonia, I examine how Kanak youth negotiate political uncertainty and social dislocation through involvement in cultural production—particularly music and dance groups— officially registered as “associations” under French law. The representations of Kanak culture created by these groups not only reflect but also constitute the social world of indigeneity in a French settler-colony where a Republican model of citizenship often serves to suppress cultural difference. Though associations are French structures for organizing culture and animating civic life, Kanak use them in ways that subvert state hegemony, pushing indigenous difference into the public sphere and asserting alternative models of citizenship centered on links to place, attachment to particular cultural practices (la coutume) and relational forms of identity. Mobilizing the representations of Kanak culture produced within associations, young people position themselves strategically in relation to the French state, the Melanesian region, global indigeneity and each other.