Statement on the occasion of the demonstrations in solidarity with the Kanak people – Daniel Guérin (1985)

Translated from the French of ‘Solidarité avec la lutte du peuple Kanak‘, by Lutter! (1985)

Now in my eighties, unable to move around, but an old anti-colonialist, I want, on this day, to express anew my full solidarity with the Kanak people struggling for their independence. A people I once came to know in Paris and Nouméa.

I denounce the obvious collusion between the metropolitan far-right and the most frenzied of the Caldoches [Euro-New-Caledonians].

I have every reservation about a neo-colonialist plan that would aim to maintain the French army on a territory still promised independence.

Finally, I stress the recent ambiguity or duplicity of the Parisian power and its delegate on the spot, who, under the guise of restoration of order, allowed, in the Bolivian way, the encirclement and the cold shooting-down of one of the most popular ministers of the FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front], to then tolerate fraternization of the rioters of Nouméa with the ultimate henchmen of the crime — tomorrow reinforced by paratroopers.

[January ’85]

Also

Daniel Guérin texts at the Anarchist Library

Collectif Solidarité Kanaky

New Caledonia unrest: Kanak people want end to oppression – protest organiser (2024)

French betrayal triggers Kanak youth rebellion (2024)

Kanaky in flames: Five takeaways from the New Caledonia independence riots, by David Robie (2024)

Why are protests against France raging in New Caledonia?, from Al Jazeera (2024)

National Liberation, Social Revolution and Organised Anarchism: the case of French Anarchists and Algeria, by Mya Violet Walmsley (2021)

Language of Imperialism, Language of Liberation: Louise Michel & the Kanak-French Colonial Encounter, by Carolyn J. Eichner (2019)

Civilization vs Solidarity: Louise Michel and the Kanaks, by Carolyn J. Eichner (2017)

A “Headless” Native Talks Back: Nidoish Naisseline and the Kanak Awakening in 1970s New Caledonia, by David Chappell (2010)

Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native, by Patrick Wolfe (2006)

The Struggle for Kanaky, by Susanna Ounei-Small (1995)

For a nuclear-free and independent Pacific, by Susanna Ounei-Small and Norm Dixon (1995)

Solidarité avec la lutte du peuple Kanak, par Lutter! (1985)

Kanak Society, by Jimmy Ounei (1982)

Numbo, New Caledonia; The Bay of the West; Nouméa and the Return, by Louise Michel (translated/edited 1981)

Long Live Free Algeria!, by the Libertarian Communist Federation (1954)

The Kabyle Mentality, by Sail Mohamed (1951)

Mémoires, par Louise Michel (1886)

Our Colonizations, from Le Révolté (1884)

Land Back

Anarchists on National Liberation

Anarchism & Indigenous Peoples

Anarchists & fellow travellers on Palestine

Against the Destruction of Gaza, For the Liberation of Palestine