Perceptions of Nature and Responses to Environmental Degradation in New Caledonia

Abstract

The history of the Kanak is inscribed in their landscape's features, which commemorate the passage and adventures of human and spiritual ancestors. Kanak speak of their natural surroundings as forming an essential part of their cultural heritage. Some young Kanak blame Western economic activities for environmental degradation, which they link to the loss of their culture. Kanak statements and actions concerning nature and the environment relate to their own definitions of those terms and the role of such concepts in defining their cultural identity. (Nature, environment, cultural identity, New Caledonia) ********** New Caledonia's indigenous people, the Kanak, are faced with multiple ideologies. Each of these belief systems influences Kanak statements and actions regarding threats to and conservation of their natural environment. This article addresses a part of this complexity by examining the influence of cultural identity on Kanak statements and actions concerning their physical environment. New Caledonia is a Melanesian archipelago in the subtropics, 1,500 kilometers east of Australia, administered by the French government (see Map). The main island, Grande Terre, is an uplifted piece of the Earth's crust, while the Loyalty Islands are raised coral atolls composed of flat central plateaux rising outward to limestone cliffs that drop to white coral sand beaches. In contrast, the main island is characterized by a central mountain chain that divides the luxuriantly vegetated east coast from the drier west coast, where cattle ranches neighbor Kanak villages. The territory's nickel deposits, and therefore its mines, are located on the main island. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Briefly visited and named by Captain Cook in 1774, New Caledonia's main island was forgotten by Europeans until 1843, when Catholic missionaries from France began working on the main island (Merle 1995). At the same time, traders rushed to exploit the archipelago's sandalwood stocks, which they rapidly depleted. Ten years later, France succeeded in annexing New Caledonia and set up a prison for deportees on the main island a decade afterwards. One of France's motives in creating a penal colony was to populate the territory with Europeans. At this time, administrators and colonists began to seize Kanak lands, often using as a pretext the revolts that had begun to break out across the main island. Through a policy known as cantonnement (confinement), the Kanak of Grande Terre saw their lands progressively taken from them and their villages displaced to infertile areas, home to unknown and sometimes hostile clans. On the west coast, those who were not forcibly removed from their lands were often obliged to move away when their yam gardens were trampled and consumed by colonists' cattle. Unlike the main island, the Loyalties were never extensively settled by Europeans. The coral atoll islands' physical environment made them unattractive to settlers; their rocky shores, lack of safe places to anchor, absence of mineral wealth, small size, and dearth of good soils all precluded mineral exploitation and the establishment of extensive agricultural or pastoral developments (MacFarlane 1873; Howe 1977; Guiart 1985; Henningham 1994). Also, in 1840, the London Missionary Society had established a presence on Mare, soon followed by work on Lifou and then Ouvea. Wishing to avoid disagreement with Britain, the French colonial administration largely pursued a policy of nonintervention in the Loyalties, eschewing the type of oppressive retaliation against the Kanak that was the norm on the main island (Howe 1977). In 1900, the French closed the Loyalties to any European settlement and declared them Native Reserves. In contrast to Grande Terre, where only about 38 per cent of the total population is of Melanesian origin, the Loyalty Islands' population remains 97 per cent Melanesian (ITSEE and INSEE 1997). People's statements and actions regarding the conservation of their natural environment, and even their definitions of these terms, are inevitably guided by their ways of understanding their physical surroundings. …