Colonial injustice and human rights in Kanak country (New Caledonia)
The example of New Caledonia’s Kanak, the very first inhabitants of this archipelago of the South Pacific conquered by France in 1853, shows that colonial violence has enduring effects on those on whom it has been inflicted, but also on those who exerted it in their interests and for the sake of “pacification” and “civilizing mission”. From the 1920s onwards, the Kanak challenged the pioneering ideology of conquest by elaborating a specific, very structured, and even sometimes epic, memory. This article investigates the projection of the Kanak values in connection with human rights in the contemporary world. How can we evolve from structural colonial injustice to a justice definitively not “colonial”? It advocates a deep comparative study of Oceanian values in relation to Western values that draw on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Keywords
- Kanak
- New Caledonia
- colonial violence
- memory
- justice
- human rights