Contested sites, land claims and economic development in Poum, New Caledonia

Abstract

Property relations are often ambiguous in postcolonial settings. Property is only considered as such if socially legitimate institutions sanction it. In indigenous communities, access to natural resources is frequently multidimensional and overlapping, subject to conflict and negotiation in a 'social arena'. Settler arrivals and new economic possibilities challenge these norms and extend the arena. The article analyses conflicts and negotiations in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in the light of its unique settler history and economic activity, focussing on the little-studied remote northern district of Poum on the Caledonian main island Grande Terre. In this region the descendants of British fishermen intermarried with the majority Kanak clans. We illustrate the interaction between customary conflicts, European settlement, struggles for independence, and a desire for economic development. Customary claims are in tension with the attractions of economic growth and service delivery, which has been slow in coming to Poum for reasons largely outside the control of local people.

The geopolitical ecology of New Caledonia: territorial re-ordering, mining, and Indigenous economic development

“…New Caledonia is a settler economy of 271,407 inhabitants (census 2019; ISEE 2020). It remains one of France's few 'settler economies', although there has been some devolution of powers since the 1980s (Kowasch et al 2015). It has had a relatively troubled history of conflict between francophone settlers and Kanak peoples 4 , since the mid-1800s.…”

“…Kanak operated a clan-based patrilocal society with livelihoods based largely on tropical agriculture, some hunting and fishing, and island (and initially, interisland) trade. Control of territory and land has major significance for the clans, whose identity was registered as an itinerary, as a series of places where families passed through and lived (Naepels 1998(Naepels , 2006Kowasch et al 2015). There were distinctive regional linguistic groupings, and small-scale inter-clan warfare was frequent.…”

“…Anglican and Marist Catholic missionaries and priests, American whalers, and British sea cucumber fishermen were on the islands preceding formal annexation of New Caledonia by France in 1853 (Kowasch and Batterbury 2015). There was also a lucrative trade in sandalwood (Santalum austrocaledonicum) from the 1840s and to a lesser extent, copra.…”

“…They found the Canadian mining company Falconbridge (later acquired by Xstrata, then Glencore) and agreed on a 51/49% shareholding model in their favor. The Koniambo nickel project was finally initiated in 1998 (under the Bercy agreement, a complex swap of mine titles, see Kowasch et al 2015) and it comprises mountaintop open cast nickel mining, and a new smelter powered by a coal-fired power station (Figures 1, 2). It was forecast to have a production capacity of 60,000 tonnes of ferronickel per year, and produced its first nickel ingots in 2013 (Kowasch 2017).…”

First law and the force of water: law, water, entitlement

“…Water re-grounds the settler sense of place, including the 'ground' of law and how it organises the sensible order of human practices. 10 The extralocal origin of law in the Anglo-settlements of Australia, New Zealand and North America is harder for settlers to perceive. The folly of thinking ourselves or our governing bodies capable of mastery is illustrated everywhere, from anthropogenic climate change to the techno-utopian responses to it, which continue to imagine ecologies, to use Bruno Latour's term, as discrete 'matters of fact'.…”