Les langues kanak, une histoire très politique

• Main Author: Françoise Roche
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses universitaires de la méditerranée 2017-03-01
• Series: Lengas
• Subjects: economic exclusion; linguistic disparagement; the “Events”; a new balance of power; Kanak languages and cultures teaching
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/lengas/1179

After sixty years of a very unbalanced postcolonial status quo, the Kanak people rebelled in the 1980’s to put an end to their exclusion from social, economic, and professional equal opportunities and to the loss of their ancestral land. Their languages and cultures were undervalued and disparaged, with a risk of disappearing. In the wake of the 1980’s « Events », the Kanak freedom fighters’ major claims were recorded in two historical Agreements (Matignon-Oudinot in 1988, and Nouméa in 1998), and then in the French State Constitution (in 1999). This led to a new balance of power for the benefit of the Kanak people, concerning politics, justice, and above all economic matters and land property. Besides, a large consideration was given to the safeguard and revitalisation of the Kanak languages and culture, allowing their introduction into the school curricula from kindergarten to upper education. But, as a faraway echo of past battles, political sticking points are still counteracting the implementation of this teaching.