Colonial Legacies and Indigeneity in France's Overseas Territories: Kanaks of New Caledonia, Amerindians of Guyana and Ma'ohi of Polynesia in the Face of Two Institutions of the French Republic (Justice, School). – AUTOCHTOM

We have adopted a twofold comparative method, comparing three places (New Caledonia, French Polynesia and French Guyana) and two institutions (Justice and School). Our analysis focuses on ‘points of contact’ between institutions and individuals, at the crossroads of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, following two complementary approaches:
- The top–down analysis of institutional mechanisms and apparatuses, through which we examine: the historical development and transformation of state schooling and state justice for indigenous populations; the current ways in which the school and justice systems take indigenous specificities into account; and the tensions, problems and conflicts raised by the question of the local ‘adaptation’ of state schools and justice.
- The bottom–up analysis of indigenous experiences, through which we study: the historical traces of indigenous ‘agency’ with respect to school and justice; indigenous receptions, (re)appropriations and contemporary uses of school and the justice system; and alternative means of resolving disputes (justice) and transmitting knowledge (school) outside institutional frameworks.
We are thus conducting six case studies in the field (on school and justice in New Caledonia, French Polynesia and French Guyana), which form the basis of our comparative analysis. Rather than imposing a single research framework on these case studies, we are privileging locally adapted research that sheds light on the same general research questions from different angles.

In French Guiana, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia, justice and education experts generally tackle the issue of colonial legacies only in terms of the contemporary “adaptation” of these institutions to indigenous cultures. However, the recognition of indigenous cultures within the justice systems of these three territories is extremely variable, being closely tied to specific local contexts and individuals, and, in practical terms, it raises serious issues associated with the tensions between culturalism and assimilationism. Regarding indigenous cultures and “colonial schools” (schools before 1946), rather than being assimilationist, the colonial education systems established in the three territories were in fact based on the differentiation of groups, and were consequently fully “adapted” to “native culture” (and subordination). This contradicts the contemporary assertions of those promoting “alternative” schools and education for indigenous peoples today, and calls the broader notion of the “postcolonial” into question.

Whereas Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia were usually «forgotten« in the French debates on colonial legacies in the early 2010s, the collective research we led on these territories between 2014 and 2018 through the AUTOCHTOM project gained a wide academic audience on national and international scales (especially in Latin America where our collective work on France's Overseas Territories echoed many of the local concerns on indigenous issues). We initiatied broader public discussions in these three territories as well as in the academic field, and the members of our team now appear as important researchers and experts on colonial legacies in the French context, both in metropolitan France and in the Overseas Territories. We were asked to participate to many discussions in the local and national media, and with several central government institutions in Paris (National Prison Administration, National Consultative Commission on Human Rights). The involvement of our team in these public debates increased steadily throughout the four years of our project, as a consequence of the recent political developments in the three territories (from French Polynesia being added to the UN Decolonization List, to the general strike in Guiana in the spring 2017, to the upcoming referendum on self-determination in New Caledonia in November 2018).

The AUTOCHTOM project led to 47 scientific publications, 70 scientific presentations and 50 dissemination initiatives, including numerous public lectures and media interviews in French Guiana, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. Among the major collective outputs are: 4 sessions in international conferences, 2 study days, 1 edited collective book, 2 special issues in academic journals, as well as an international closing conference, from which most papers will be published in a future collective book.

Often reduced to the debates on the memory of slavery, the question of the ‘colonial legacy’ in France’s Overseas territories also relates to the situation of the formerly colonized native people, now citizens, who have remained under French sovereignty following the wave of decolonization in the 1960s. The people concerned are the Mahorais of Mayotte, the Islanders of Wallis and Futuna, the Amerindians of Guyana, the Kanaks of New Caledonia and the Ma'ohi of French Polynesia. These last three groups also claim and assert the political and legal category of ‘indigenous peoples’ as it has emerged in international law over the last thirty years.

Seen from the metropolitan ‘centre’, the marginality of indigenous people within Overseas territories that are themselves intrinsically peripheral stands in contrast to the periodic eruption of violent episodes: conflicts from 1984 to 1988 in New Caledonia, riots in Faa’a-Tahiti (1995), Cayenne (1996) and Noumea (2009), the Guyanese movement against the ‘pwofitasyon’ (2008-09), and so on. Beyond their conjunctural character, these events reveal structural social tensions also attested by numerous indicators (high cost of living, unemployment, poverty, underperformance at school, rate of incarceration, illiteracy, etc.).

According to both academic research and common sense, the etiology of this situation involves the heritage of the colonial past in a paradoxical manner, being either presented as constituting the principal explanatory element of contemporary problems, or entirely obliterated and considered as irrelevant in light of the decades which separate us from the time of the colonies. In both cases, no empirical analysis is used to support these overarching discourses. Moreover, no attention is given to the evolution since the accession to the status of Overseas Department (Guyana) or Overseas Territory (New Caledonia, Polynesia) in 1946 of the social relations established during the colonial period. How can we understand the continuities and the ruptures between the native condition in the colonial era and the indigenous condition today? What are the concrete modalities of the transmission of a ‘passive’ colonial condition from one generation to another?

Our research aims to respond to these questions through a comparative analysis of the relationship of the ‘indigenous peoples of the Republic’ to the (post)colonial State, based on empirically grounded ethnographical and socio-historical case studies. Our field of investigation is restricted to two key institutions, often invoked but rarely analyzed, that Amerindians, Kanak and Ma'ohi confront: school and the justice system. These two administrations are at once fundamental to the historical definition of the native condition and central to the contemporary experiences of indigenous people.

In addition to the originality of this double comparative method (comparing three places and two institutions) is the innovative character of a project based on the fine-grained study of the ‘points of contact’ between institutions and individuals, at the crossroads of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, following two approaches: the first based on the representations and practices of the educational and judicial administrations with respect to these ‘indigenous publics’ (from the top down); and the second based on the experiences and strategies of individuals confronted by these institutional apparatuses (from the bottom up).

Our analytical ambition gives rise to an comparative research package with a collective organizational structure. Our team brings together six researchers between 34 and 42 years of age from a variety of disciplinary horizons (Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, History), who are not only specialists in (post)colonial studies as well as in the research of judicial and educational institutions, but who are also equipped with substantial fieldwork experience in Guyana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia.