Paper short abstract:

My research in New Caledonia gives a new look on the indigenous mining nickel policy, underlining the intertwine between colonial memory and independence hope. The economic time and the sacred one shape the ideology, that is at the base of the mining industry.

Paper long abstract:

In New Caledonia, a overseas french collectivity, nickel is the principal economic resource, to the point that the country is among the six worldwide exporters.

The mine is often seen as a synonym of destruction of the natural heritage and the advance of the capitalism. With this ethnography I analyze instead the economic strategy of a part of the native kanak community, who wants to re-appropriate the nickel. I call it "kanakization" (Marshall Sahlins).

In 2013 the nickel industry "Koniambo" was inaugurated, 51% of which belongs to an indigenous mining society. This was the result of a long process of re-signification of nickel by independence leaders from symbol of the colonial exploitation to emblem of the emancipation of the kanak community. "Koniambo" becomes a very strong political and identity project: there is no political independence without economic autonomy from France.

Today the market oscillations and the approach of the referendum for independence (2018) quicken this process. They lead some mining contractors to ask to increase the production rhythm and the export level. In this scenario there is a independence kanak party, that wants to follow the economic rhythm and another one, that wants to slow down the economic time, fixed by profitability, to incorporate it with the ritual and sacred cycles of the tribe.

My aim is to show another way of seeing the mining resource as a product of a repositioning of the kanak community in the colonial past, in the present capitalism and in the future independence.