People and Culture in Oceania, 33: 37-72, 2017 New Caledonia: Narratives of Kanak Identity as an Articulated Ensemble: Synchronic Approach and Diachronic Aim Junko Edo* The characteristic of the Kanak decolonization movement in New Caledonia lies in the revendication de l’identité kanak (demand for Kanak identity) as the recovery of rights of indigenous people. As identity is process, my main purpose is to see diachronically how Kanaks claimed their indigenous identity and struggled to recover their rights via their decolonization movement, and how they have achieved rights as a result of the struggle. As identity is multiple, the problematic of this diachronic aim is that it has to take a synchronic approach as methodology: in the relation between identity and discourse, Kanak identity is inseparably linked to the dimensions of nation, culture, and community as an articulated ensemble. Therefore, after theoretically introducing the synchronic approach, in the diachronic aim the paper represents the revendication de l’identité kanak from a macro-viewpoint, while demonstrating how the above 3 are interwoven as the ensemble through discourses of the people. Keywords: revendication de l’identité kanak, discourse, articulation, indigeneity, indigenous rights, autochtone (autochthone), narrative 1. Introduction As the map shows, New Caledonia is presently composed of the North Province (16 communes), the South Province (13) on the Grande Terre (literally big land), and the Loyalty Islands Province (3). Settled by Austronesian-speaking people from Southeast Asia about 4,000 years ago and annexed by France in 1853, it is a multi-ethnic society: as shown in the population tables, indigenous Melanesians, now called “Kanak,” presently make up about 40% of the total population of 245,580; Europeans, including descendants of settlers, called “caldoches,” 29%; Pacific Islanders 12%; Asians 3%; and others 16% (Institut de la Statistique et des Études Économiques Nouvelle-Calédonie [INSEE-ISEE], 2012 ). The decolonization movement began at the end of the 1960s, led by Melanesian students in France who had experienced the événements de Mai (events of May 1968) and paradoxically adopted “Canaque” (now “Kanak”), the derogatory term for indigenous people, as the symbol of * Retired: Formerly affiliated with the Faculty of Foreign Studies, Kyorin University, Tokyo. [e-mail: [email protected]] 38 J. Edo North Province Loyalty Islands Province Annual growth 1996-2009 decrease South Province (between 0% and -2%) slight increase (between 0% and 1%) middling increase (between 1% and 3%) large increase (between 3% and 6%) Map 1. Map of New Caledonia: Province and Communes (INSEE-ISEE, 2012) Table 1. Population Changes by Ethnic Community (INSEE-ISEE, 2012) 1963 1969 1976 1983 1989 1996 2009 Kanak 41,190 46,200 55,598 61,870 73,598 86,788 99,078 European 33,355 41,268 50,757 53,974 55,085 67,151 71,721 Wallisian, Futunan － － 9,571 12,174 14,186 17,763 21,262 Tahitian － － 6,391 5,570 4,750 5,171 4,985 Indonesian － － 5,111 5,319 5,191 5,003 3,985 Vietnamese － － 1,943 2,381 2,461 2,822 2,357 Ni-Vanuatu － － 1,050 1,212 1,683 2,244 2,327 Others 11,974 13,111 2,812 2,868 7,219 9,894 39,865 Total 86,519 100,579 133,233 145,368 164,173 196,836 245,580 Table 2. Population by Province in Relation to Ethnic Communities (2009) (INSEE-ISEE, 2012) Wallisian, Ni- Kanak European Tahitian Indonesian Vietnamese Others Total Futunan Vanuatu Loyalty Islands 16,847 341 25 14 7 1 13 188 17,266 Province North Province 33,312 5,753 336 247 445 44 132 4,868 39,700 South Province 48,919 65,627 20,901 4,724 3,533 2,312 2,182 34,809 161,115 New Caledonia 99,078 71,721 21,262 4,985 3,985 2,357 2,327 39,865 245,580 % 40 29 9 2 2 1 1 16 100 Narratives of Kanak Identity as an Articulated Ensemble 39 their identity. As this is followed by the revendication de l’identité kanak (Kanak identity claim), I see that the characteristics of the Kanak decolonization movement lie in this identity claim as the recovery of their rights. Therefore, I conducted research on the struggle for Kanak identity over many years by interviewing and collecting discourses of local people, including Kanak and Caledonians. This is because identity does not exist as a real entity, but is imagined in the minds of people, uttered by their voices and asserted in discursive practices. In order to conclude the research theme, I published a book in Japanese on narratives of Kanak identity (title in English: Kanak Identity in New Caledonia-Narratives of Nation, Community and Culture, Edo, 2015). This work was based on analysis of the discourses, recorded mainly in the late 1990s and the late 2000s in my fieldwork1 and transcribed as text. As identity is process, the main purpose of the book is to view diachronically how Kanaks claim their indigenous identity and struggle to recover their rights via their decolonization movement, and how they achieved the rights during the periods of the Matignon Accords and the present Nouméa Accord. The problematic of this diachronic aim, however, is that it has to take a synchronic approach as methodology, because in the relation between identity and discourse, Kanak identity is inseparably tied to the dimensions of nation, culture, and community. This was the fact immediately found at the very beginning of the fieldwork: when I questioned people in an unspecified way about “Kanak identity,” people began talking about identity based on clan at the community level, even though it emerged at an ethnicity level. I was reminded of the fact that their forebears lived on this land long before they were called Kanaks, and that what is more real to them is the community identity they share in living. However, when asked about Kanak identity vis-à-vis other ethnic communities, they talked about their culture as cultural identity on the ethnicity level, and when asked about it politically, referring to the revendication de l’identité kanak, they talked about the claim for rights of indigenous people in the context of independence, seeking a nation at the national level. As if unraveling tangled threads multi-dimensionally, I started tackling Kanak identity with key terms as clues to decode their identity struggle. Thus, my research was guided by their discursive practices while pursuing topics of Kanak identity dispersed in their discourses. Therefore, the book is a representation of narratives of Kanak Identity as an articulated ensemble of narratives of nation, culture, and community. Since there seems to be no narrative of Kanak identity interwoven diachronically and synchronically,2 it is a new, voluminous (660 pages in Japanese) representation. 1 My fieldwork on Kanak identity totals 7 periods in 1996-1998 and 2004-2007. If my initial fieldwork in 1986 and the second in 1991 are included, the number of interviewees reaches nearly 100 and that of interviews totals nearly 170. 2 Those written on Kanak identity can be found, such as Tjibaou, 1996, 2005; Bensa, 1990, 1995; and Leblic, 2007. 40 J. Edo As an attempt to give a partial glimpse of the book, first this paper theoretically introduces the synchronic approach, and second, it diachronically aims to elucidate the axis of the revendication de l’identité kanak as a historical struggle for indigenous rights. It then demonstrates how discourses of the people3 are interwoven as an ensemble in synchronic and diachronic contexts. 2. Synchronic Approach 2.1 Identity and Discourse Identity is a Western term, the concept of which originates from the Cartesian subject as cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). “Who am I?” is the basic and ontological question of identifying one’s entity. If the western tradition of identity treats the subject as a discrete individual, post-structuralists seek to deconstruct the subject and post-modernists’ analysis sees the subject as taking different intersubjective positions. This is akin to the traditional Oceanic view of identity. As Leenhardt describes Kanak personhood in Do Kamo, the self, located according to one’s position as a member of a kin group, is pluralistic by changing its identity in relation to others (Leenhardt, 1979: 153-156). A Kanak high school teacher describes how his individual identity is traditionally defined: “I am obliged to define myself in relation to my clan, in relation to the chiefdoms and other clans...Identity is the subject of us and not the subject of me” (October 1997). His way of identifying defines the subject of identity as not in the individual but the collective, and demonstrates that the clan and chiefdoms play a preponderant role in locating one’s identity according to hierarchical relations. That is, Kanak traditional identity on the community level lies in the clan through paternal descent from a common ancestor and the place from which the clan originates. The pluralistic self, by changing according to relationships with others, suggests that their episteme is to conceive of the world holistically in the web of relations. This recalls the Tylorean concept of culture as a “complex whole,” which corresponds to custom as the total way of indigenous life. In fact, a customary authority says that “Kanak identity is all-embracing...it is the style of collective life, coutume (custom)…the approach of Kanak is always holistic” (August 2007). He also comments, “The French human right is the right of only one person for a community” (September 2005). This shows that their claim to identity and rights is holistic and made in terms of the collectivity with the priority of the group over the individual.