New Caledonia (France) / All works
Essay
D'Ataï à l'indépendance
Not translated into English
Apollinaire Anova · 1984
Synopsis
Apollinaire Anova studies the history and psychology of the Kanak, and their economic, social, political and religious conditions under French colonisation. He returns to the insurrection of 1878 and to the figure of the high chief Ataï, whom he rereads, according to the anthropologist Alban Bensa, in a revolutionary sense, as the banner of a revolt against colonialism. He says he wants to tighten the bonds of friendship between Black and White Caledonians and the French of metropolitan France.
Context
Jean Guiart published two extracts of the dissertation, entitled Histoire et psychologie des Mélanésiens, in the Journal de la Société des Océanistes in 1969, after which the text remained forgotten. François Burck, a priest and future president of the Union calédonienne, published it in 1984 in Nouméa, with the Edipop press, under a new title, with a long introduction on the period from 1944 to 1966. Alban Bensa links its reading of Ataï to the nationalist movement of the late 1960s. Hamid Mokaddem and Bernard Gasser reissued it in 2005.
Who it is for
For reading the colonial history of New Caledonia as it was told, as early as 1965, by a Kanak priest trained in Paris.
Prizes and reception
Bernard Gasser describes the 1984 edition, which appeared a few months before the Kanak insurrection of November, as a “work of combat”.
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