Wisdom of the Ancestors

The traditional Kanak case (Fr.) or house is part of the Centre Culturel Goa ma Bwarhat, a museum founded by Jean-Marie Tjibaou—leader of the Kanaky independence movement—in his hometown of Hienghène, Kanaky/New Caledonia. Goa and Bwarhat are the two traditional families/chiefdoms of the land the Center is on; the author met with Joseph Bourate, an elder of the Bwarhat namesake family of the Centre. Photo by CD Green.

WHY MUSEUM POLITICS MATTER

BY CD GREEN

BURIED IN THE LUSH AND GREEN MOUNTAINS

of northern New Caledonia—named by colonizers after the verdant ranges of Scotland—I was sitting across from elder Joseph Bourate, a tribal leader of the Indigenous Kanak peoples. He spoke to me about his friend about whom I’d been asking for my dissertation research: “Jean-Marie Tjibaou fought for it. To say: here is a people who have had practices over time, old practices, which we can look at and that our children must then look at, in order to have a sense of pride. To say: this people exists. By putting the cultural memories in front of their eyes. Like Westerners, we too have our history. This thought is to get out to the Kanak people: ‘You are part of the stories of the world.’”

Jean-Marie Tjibaou had been assassinated in 1989, over 30 years earlier, but his legacy is still strong in Kanaky/New Caledonia. His leadership of the independence movement in the 1980s culminated in an agreement that allowed for a referendum on independence from France, as well as support for majority Kanak communities. In his efforts towards Kanak sovereignty, Tjibaou had recognized a significant issue holding the Kanak peoples back: the ways the public understood them through museums.

The identities of Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by museum interpretations all over the world. In many cases, non-Indigenous people might never meet Indigenous peoples living in the borders of their own country. For Tjibaou, this meant representation of Kanak identity in museums needed to be out of the hands of the French Caledonian colonizers and into the hands of the Kanak.

In his hometown of Hienghène, Tjibaou created the Centre Culturel Goa ma Bwarhat, where I was sitting discussing his impact with one of the elders of the namesake families of the museum (Bourate). I was there to understand what Tjibaou’s teachings could tell us about the ways that heritage and identity representation of Indigenous peoples by non-Indigenous interpreters is always political.

From their very beginnings, museums have always claimed to be apolitical. They represent science and research—in other words, facts. What Tjibaou and other Indigenous scholars and intellectuals have consistently shown us is that there is no such thing as apolitical representation. Representation of identities is always

Far left: Temporary exhibition space at the Centre Culturel with displays about the Kanaky. Left: Statue of Tjibaou with the Kanaky flag draped around his shoulder, which overlooks the Centre Culturel Tjibaou just northeast of the city of Nouméa. Photos by CD Green.

done in ways that reflect and adhere to the political aspirations of those doing the representing.

This is perhaps why the insights of Tjibaou were taken up by white communities after he was assassinated. Before his assassination, Tjibaou, as the leader of the Kanaky independence movement, was a signatory to the June 1988 Matignon Agreements arranged under the aegis of the French government, approved by referendum, which provided that New Caledonian residents would be allowed to vote for self-determination in 1998. In the time leading up to the 1998 referendum, white communities fearing forced deportation (albeit falsely) from a country their ancestors had lived in for generation began to build museums that highlighted the contributions of both free and forced colonizers (i.e. penal colonists) to the archipelago. These museums show that the white communities understood the need to control representation of their heritage to maintain political control of their own future.

Ultimately, the independence referendum due in 1998 was pushed to 2018 under the Nouméa Accord and turned into three potential referenda, which did take place in 2018, 2020, and 2021. In the first two, votes for maintaining the status quo only narrowly outnumbered votes for independence, with turnouts of over 80 percent. The final referendum, though, held in 2021, was boycotted by predominantly Kanak pro-independence parties due to COVID hardships that disproportionately affected Kanak communities. This boycott greatly reduced voter turnout (around 44%), and the result that overwhelmingly supported remaining with France is being contested internationally by pro-independence politicians.

It remains to be seen how (non-)independence is resolved in Kanaky/New Caledonia. Since the death of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Kanak strategies for gaining sovereignty have primarily relied upon proving the economic viability of independence.

My research points toward a heritage-based strategy of self-determination that might yet be useful for local Kanak to accomplish their sovereignty goals. My aim is to demonstrate to Kanak activists, leaders, and museum professionals the power that their ancestor, Tjibaou, saw in museums to help their cause, a power that has now been widely co-opted in nonKanak communities. My hope is that this clarity will empower Kanak communities to use heritage in ways that advance their own aspirations, ultimately towards self-determination.

AUSTRALIA

NEW CALEDONIA (KANAKY)

NEW ZEALAND

Top: The author hiking Les Roches de la Ouaième, a trail just outside of Hienghène. Bottom: Map of Oceania; New Caledonia is about 755 nautical miles east of Australia’s coast, in the Coral Sea. Courtesy of the Nations Online Project.

Chris Green is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology interested in analyzing museums and monuments as sites of determination/self-determination of identities, especially Indigenous identities, towards understanding of how Indigenous self-determination might be better effected in the contemporary political landscape.