[ANU Pacific.Institute] Seminar at ANU on New Caledonia 29 November 2013

[Nicholas Mortimer]

Seminar: The institutionalisation of ‘Kanak identity’ in the New Caledonian Customary Senate and Kanak customary law

Presented by
Rowena Dickins Morrison

Where
ANU Centre for European Studies, 1 Liversidge St, Acton (Bld # 67c), The Australian National University

When
29 November 2013
12.30 - 2.00pm

Abstract
Colonised by France in 1853, New Caledonia is currently engaged in a process of ‘decolonisation’, as defined by the 1998 Noumea Accord. In 2014, the Accord will enter its final phase, during which one or more restricted-electorate self-determination referendums will be held. This period will be crucial, not only for the definition of the country’s relationship to France, but also for the country’s internal institutional structure and the balance established between the country’s Indigenous People and its non-indigenous communities. The current balance purports to be founded on the ‘full recognition of Kanak identity’, which is identified in the Noumea Accord as the necessary precondition for durable peace and stability, and the construction of a ‘common destiny’ shared by all New Caledonian citizens.

One of the means through which the Noumea Accord purports to realize the full recognition of Kanak identity is the transformation of the New Caledonian Customary Council into a ‘Customary Senate’. The Senate has a broad range of functions (administrative, consultative, propositional and legislative) in relation to matters concerning Kanak identity, but remains subordinate in key respects to the New Caledonian Congress and Government. This work-in-progress paper traces the genealogy of the Customary Senate and explores the political issues associated with its functions and legitimacy. It also discusses some of the issues surrounding the Customary Senate’s current focus on legal pluralism and its project to write down, and thus (further) institutionalise, Kanak customary law. What questions does this project raise in terms of the cross-cutting political and legal processes of institutionalising ‘Kanak identity’ in contemporary New Caledonia? What potential socio-political implications might these processes and the growth of legal pluralism have for the Noumea Accord’s pluri-ethnic ‘common destiny’ project?

Rowena Dickins Morrison is a Research Fellow at SOGIP (www.sogip.ehess.fr<http://www.sogip.ehess.fr/>) in the Laboratoire d’anthropologie des institutions et des organisations sociales, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies; and a Centre Visitor at CAEPR.
This event is co-hosted by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) and the ANU Centre for European Studies (ANUCES). ANUCES is an initiative involving four ANU Colleges (Arts and Social Sciences; Law; Business and Economics; and Asia and the Pacific) co-funded by the ANU and the European Union.
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