Native America Calling: New Caledonia at a crossroads

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Tensions are high in New Caledonia as the remote Pacific island nation’s Indigenous people are pushing for independence more than 170 years after the island was colonized by France.

At least 13 people have died in protests triggered in May when the French government attempted to institute voting changes that would bolster the political power of New Caledonia’s white settler communities at the expense of the Indigenous Kanak people. There’s been little progress in the four decades after the Kanak tried to force better recognition from New Caledonia’s political leaders aligned with Paris.

It’s a fight that has parallels to current and past struggles by Indigenous people in North America and elsewhere.

A Kanak totem on Pine Island in New Caledonia. Photo: sebastien P