Autonomy across oceans

Arno Chollet-Leakava was only a child when violence in New Caledonia reached its peak.

The so-called “events” of the 1980s left a mark on the young Wallisian.

The decade of political assassinations, protests over land distribution and nation-wide blockades did not appear out of nowhere.

More than a century of French colonisation, theft and exploitation on Indigenous Kanak soil was met with fierce resistance from Kanak militants.  

Chollet-Leakava was primary school aged in 1988 when the Ouvéa hostage massacre caught the world’s eye.

Members of the militant Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front killed four French police and took 23 hostage.

The subsequent military operation liberated the hostages but resulted in 19 Kanak deaths and 32 captives.  

The massacre proved a turning point and agreements followed, including the Noumea Accord in 1998.

The Accord set New Caledonia on the path to independence in the form of three referenda.

The first two referenda took place in 2018 and 2020 respectively with independence rejected on both occasions.

The final referendum will likely take place 12 December 2021 and will change the future of the country, regardless of the outcome.

Wallisians and Futunans have historically sided with the French ‘loyalist’ camp but Chollet-Leakava breaks with tradition.

He grew up in the Montravel area of Nouméa – home to a strong pro-independence Kanak population during the “events”.

Now in his forties, he is the spokesperson for Mouvement des Océaniens Indépendantistes, a pro-independence political party founded in 2019.

“It’s difficult to come out of that childhood and not be engaged,” he says.

Close neighbours

Wallisians and Futunans make up ten per cent of New Caledonia's population and occupy a unique position.

They too come from a country which was once a part of the French empire and, until 1961, the islands fell under the same administration as New Caledonia.

Following the second world war, the French state welcomed unskilled migrants from Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia to work in the mines.

The ore went to Japan while the processed nickel bars went primarily to France.

By the 1960s, nickel made up around 90 per cent of the territory’s export earnings.

France subsidised New Caledonia – partly for the national prestige – but the value of the nickel exports for the French state far outstripped its financial aid.

This ethnic dimension to labour politics exists still in New Caledonia today.

Around a third of the active working populations of the Kanak and the Wallisian and Futunan communities are labourers, compared to only ten per cent of European Caledonians who are more likely to work in white-collar industries.

Imagine chopping a whole bag of onions while swallowing dry chilli – that's a little what it feels like to inhale tear gas.

Pro-independence protesters were met with canister-wielding police when they took to the streets in objection to the sale of New Caledonia's Goro mine.

They feared that the sale could take one of the country's largest nickel deposits away from domestic control.

The scenes of burnt cars and blockades erected by both pro-independence and loyalist counter-protesters echoed those of the 1980s.

As it was during the "events", the nickel industry has continued to be at the centre of the debate on independence.

Pro-independence Kanak believe the nickel should be in the hands of New Caledonia's own people, but French and foreign business interests have consistently denied them this power.

Despite a peaceful 2020 referendum, these protests showed a country that was divided in two.

Power forward

Whether it be 1988 or 2021, the opposing camps on independence have barely moved.

So regardless of which result the final referendum returns, an important question remains:

How is it possible to find a concrete solution for the future of a country so deeply divided in two?

"In fact," Dr Pantz says, "that is the sole question which should exist in New Caledonia."

"When we look a bit at the key trends for the past forty years, we have two large blocks facing each other. We have a Kanak side and a non-Kanak side. We have those pro-independence against those anti-independence."

"We are really in a completely crystallised situation."

Dr Pantz laments how, during debates, the two sides are pitted against each other rather than permitted the breathing space to discuss the projects they have in common.

Chollet-Leakava believes that the opposing groups need to see each other as equals before mutual progress can occur.

"I speak French. I have learnt French history. But do you speak our languages? Do you know the history of our clans, of our chiefdoms? The answer is no." he says.

He is curious to learn from similar struggles in so-called Australia.

"We would like to know how Indigenous Australians are progressing. How are the policies towards Indigenous Australians evolving? Where are they?"

But whether he is protesting outside the Australian consulate on Invasion day or canvassing pro-independence votes, he suspects most activists come from a similar starting point to his own.

"Often it's the feeling of injustice that wakes things up."