Listening to repair: memories and self-definition of indigenous peoples today
Clara FILIPPI (UCLouvain PhD student in Belgium and French Polynesia university ) and
Jeanne DUPONT (Law student at New Caledonia University)
Speech by Clara Filippi:
New Caledonia: the weight of silence. How can the memory of the ‘Events’ period be passed on?
In the wake of communal violence, what accounts of history need to be recognised? When memories are painful, even unspeakable, when reconciliation is underway or seems unattainable, what meaning should be given to silences? New Caledonia, land of France for some, Kanak country for others, is not immune to questions of justice, memory, education or reparation linked to its colonial past. Just as one would speak of recurrences or relapses in the case of cancer, the period known as the ‘Events’ (1981-1989) and 13 May 2024 bear witness to this undigested colonial past - whose recent episodes, which are resurfacing in the present (or at least in what historians call the contemporary period), are akin to relapses linked to this ‘past that won't go away’.
Although no Truth Commission has yet been set up in New Caledonia, certain transitional justice mechanisms can nevertheless be identified. Following the Matignon-Oudinot (1988) and Nouméa (1998) Accords, which provided for the irreversible transfer of powers from Paris to Nouméa, including education, adapted school curricula and the publication of history and geography textbooks were introduced. However, many gaps remain. On the one hand, the archives are still closed, and on the other, a glaring observation by young New Caledonians sets the stage for this presentation: ‘we still don't know this history’. By focusing on the memory of the period known as the ‘Events’ (1891-1989), this paper examines the way in which this memory is transmitted in New Caledonian schools and raises the related silences in order to understand these transmission mechanisms. Following an analysis of school curricula, textbooks and numerous interviews, this paper attempts to understand the persistent silences and to open up a discussion on the observation made by the younger generations: ‘we don't know our history’.
Speech by Jeanne Dupont
Recognising without freezing: transitional justice and indigenous contemporaneity in New Caledonia
In post-colonial societies, recognition of indigenous peoples often oscillates between symbolic openness and institutional assignment. This paper examines this paradox using the concept of “indigenous contemporaneity” developed by anthropologist Sylvie Poirier, linking it to legal and memory trajectories in Canada, and to Kanak voices collected in New Caledonia. It highlights a central tension: can we recognise an identity without freezing it? Is it possible to make reparation without perpetuating the frameworks that produced the injustice?
Based on two themes - the legal objectification of cultures and the reappropriation of historical narratives - this text offers a critical reading of recognition mechanisms. It shows that the dominant legal frameworks tend to administer identities rather than embrace them. Aboriginal voices, whether First Nations in Canada or the Kanak people we interviewed, claim not only memory, but also the capacity to produce meaning and name reality from their own symbolic territories.
By also drawing on the distinction made by the political scientist Thierry Rodon between an ‘indigenous people’ and a ‘self-determining people’, this work reminds us that the Kanaks are not simply part of a cultural framework, but of an unfinished process of decolonisation. In this context, it calls for transitional justice not as a means of settling scores, but as a way of opening up new regimes of truth, speech and cohabitation. Because it links memory, recognition and structural transformation, this perspective makes it possible to rethink what non-colonial recognition could be.
