Nova Caledônia

Finally today is the day to visit the cultural centre. Except apparently the busses don’t run at all on Sunday! Could’ve guessed that lol.

So taxi it is, even though it’s a bit pricey. I borrowed someone’s phone at the hostel to call a taxi and caught one over there for about 1500F. My taxi driver was an older French lady who was a big fan of the fact I had a Canadian accent lol. She asked me if I could feel the tension of the country, and honestly I could. You can kind of feel it everywhere. So we got talking about the recent political turmoils around independence and the recent riots.
As far as I understood, there was a last referendum on independence that happened during Covid, and the kanaks felt they couldn’t properly campaign due to their mourning traditions so decided to boycott the vote. Then the French government said they wanted to unilaterally allow anyone who lived in NC to vote, whereas right now it’s just those who have lived there for many generations or 10+ years. This would have greatly diluted the kanaky vote and so there was riots that turned quite violent in May. The country is still recovering from this and the curfew was just lifted a few months ago.
But my taxi driver’s take on it was quite interesting to hear. And I think a lot of the white inhabitants of New Caledonia feel this way. But she was basically saying that they’re all liars— there was the possibility to move the date of the vote, they knew they were going to lose the independence vote so boycotted, and basically have just been dishonest about their means etc. Which may be true but there were some very not so subtle tones of racism in all her explanations. The French already think they’re better than everyone. Add racism and generations of civil unrest into it and of course there’s so much subliminal racism and segregation. It’s a very interesting vibe and something I felt from most white people i talked to.

Anyway, the cultural centre was very cool and a neat highlight of Kanaky culture with different exhibits. It was founded by Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who was a pioneer in creating and promoting a Kanak identity after the atrocities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in NC. He set up a festival in the 80s highlighting kanaky culture, called Melanesia 2000, which was a huge success and really gave them a joint identity and voice. Politically, he led and helped found the main independentist movement of NC that still exists today and is almost single handedly responsible for the 30 years of peace NC had from the late 80s. But lots of radicals opposed what they viewed as his compromising with the white government, and he was assassinated by a fellow Kanak, disagreeing with an accord he had signed.

The cultural centre had a nice garden to walk though highlighting some of the 28 indigenous languages of NC, and a Kanak village with very tall thatched roof huts built in a traditional way.

I caught another taxi ride back, with not such political conversations, and cooked the last of my spaghettiLeia mais