Autonomy, indigeneity, citizenship: The unfinished business of decolonization in the French South Pacific

Abstract

Abstract In the last 30 years, the entropic forces of decolonization have led the French State to grant their last territories still held in the South Pacific a significant dose of selfgovernment, thus allowing them to take some distance from the once all-powerful centre. Today, France is looking for an honourable conclusion to its antipodean colonial romance. The fate of two dissimilar territories is at stake: New Caledonia, originally intended as a colony of settlement, is the country of the indigenous Kanaks, and still home to a sizeable minority descended from the French settlers, while French Polynesia is composed of a number of islands scattered across a vast expanse of the Pacific, and dominated by a population of Polynesian descent. The prospect of a civil war in New Caledonia in the mid-1980s led the French government to negotiate a settlement introducing considerable constitutional change. In contrast, in French Polynesia the drawn-out political struggle between those demanding independence and the partisans of increased autonomy within the French Republic has turned into a stalemate. To add insult to injury in the eyes of the French government, the United Nations (UN) has recently re-inscribed French Polynesia on the list of the last countries to be decolonized. This article will focus on one hand on the administrative ‘overseas’ framework defining the French dependencies in the South Pacific, and on the other hand on the ambiguities of the French official discourse on citizenship in these former colonies. It will examine how the debate on the status of the Pacific territories has been restructured around autonomy versus independence, and citizenship versus indigeneity. The issue of recognition of diversity will also be addressed in a French national context where indifference and ignorance generally prevail towards such distant exotic lands.