DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS
Jean Guiart
On the 13th of January 1985, television screens world-wide showed the burning and gutting in Nouméa of a house, said to be that of the anthropologist Jean Guiart. This house belonged in fact to his wife, a Melanesian woman of high birth from Lifou island, Joséphine Pawe, isola i Wahnyamala, who had been reared in this very house.
The house was attacked by a European commando armed with petrol bombs, under the cover of a frenzied mob of European settlers who prevented the firemen from doing their job, destroyed their equipment and cut the water hoses.
The reason given was that Jean Guiart had always been pro- Kanak and that his son René was the leader of a Kanak protest movement organising rallies supporting the claims for the return of the land to their former Kanak owners: in New Caledonia proper 90% of the land was taken from the Melanesian population, which was pushed inside reservations where the value of the soil was in most cases low or non existent. With the new population growth, reservations were becoming dramatically too small.
Jean Guiart's was introduced to Pacific anthropology by Maurice Leenhardt, who had been an early fighter for Kanak rights, had been able to prevent a number of potential land confiscations and had been the very first person putting pressure for land to be returned to the Melanesian people and for the suppression of the reigning forced labour system, later abolished in the spring of 1945 by the government of General de Gaulle.
Taking over in the field from Maurice Leenhardt in 1948, Jean Guiart has accompanied the post-war process of political change. He has been responsible for the handing back of land in tens of cases and for the registering in 1951 of 9,000 Kanak new electors on the roll, which was a political revolution introduced without the knowledge of the settlers representatives, who were presented with a "fait accompli". He campaigned successfully for family allowances to be given to the Melanesians at the goring European rate. He has been responsible too for the sending to France of the first Melanesian students, and has written the best parts of the first law votes by the French Parliament, establishing the legal right for the Kanak to reclaim their former lands.
René Guiart took over from his father and built a land claim movement which fought so efficiently, by entirely legal and peaceful means, that more than forty thousand hectares of land were handed back in haste to the Kanak people on the west coast of New Caledonia. This movement became so popular that everywhere else the Kanak managed to get back the greater part of their former lands with only a slight pressure being applied, except in the area of Noumea, the capital city.
Meanwhile, his father, and that is one the things he is proud of, pushed for policies organising the transfer of land, through the State buying it at market process before returning the land to the Kanak communities. The idea was to avoid a situation by which the evicted settlers would be left with insufficient means of living, waiting interminably for compensation. It was hoped that this would diminish the very strong and potentially dangerous racial tensions. This did not happen immediately, but is an important factor today in (restored) peaceful relations, the transfer of lands being still the order of the day.
The burned house has now been rebuilt, exactly as it was, and is again the prettiest house in town, where so many local European and Melanesian leaders have been entertained and, where numerous Pacific islands leaders of the first generation and social scientists interested in the region had been visitors. The French State has borne two thirds of the rebuilding costs, and Mrs Guiart the rest, which has meant very strict management of relatively scarce financial resources. She has had to fight the Nouméa municipality, which wanted to put the bulldozer to the remnants of the house and oblige her to sell the land to a developer.
This communication is meant as a partial answer to the questions posed by Stephen P. Pokawin, the chief minister of Manus, in the courteous way he mused about the value of Anthropology to the Pacific islanders, and by Alan Howard, in his soul searching key note paper. Things can be said and done. They can be efficient, never more than in a ratio of one in three, under the conditions of potential physical dangers to the anthropologist, or more subtle pressures for the destruction of his career, are accounted for. Fortitude is needed, and the researcher's family must agree to face these dangers. Politically entrenched strongly in Europe, colonial or post colonial interests, do not practice Christian virtues. They can be frightfully nasty, if not at times downright murderous. The capacity of practicing some pay back is needed on the side of the anthropologists, if he finds palatable the idea of using the lessons learnt in the field about tactics and strategies in both the local and home social and political environment.