of the implementation of the Accords de Matignon. The agreement was signed in Paris in June
1988 by French Prime Minister Rocard, the late Tjibaou (former leader of UC and president of FLNKS) for the Kanak, and Lafleur for the French settlers (see Henningham 1992). Yeiwene and Tjibaou who had advocated the Accords were considered by some responsible for selling out the independentist movement (see Ounei-Small 1994).
F E N E IW E W E W E D R U M E L
Protestant district of Wetr. Catholics represent a minority of the population in Lifu but in Drueulu they constitute the majority and include the chiefs family.
Today the old core of the village has expanded, and recently married couples have installed themselves in more peripheral areas, though new households have also been established along a third road, which connects the two major ones (see Map 3). People tell of the 'old time' when people lived scattered around the place; some people inhabited what is today known as Drueulu,6 but the concentration of people in a village settlement was, they say, a consequence of the arrival of the missionaries. In the old part of the village people belonging to the same clan live next to each other: Ange hnalapa next to the chiefly compound, then along the coastline Ange Api Zeula and Ange Api Canyö. Ange Cipa households are located near the cliff and Ange Triji dwellings are found where the two main roads intersect. In the distribution of new plots of land, a similar principle has been followed, in the sense that people living next to each other have some clan or customary links.
The old part of the village is divided in four sections,7 or quartiers, as Drueuluans call them: Hunöj, Feneiwewe, Bewe and Qasany. These toponyms are mentioned in connection with some community activities. For example, for a religious fete each quartier might have specific duties to carry out. On other occasions these distinctions are eclipsed by denominational affiliation.
The hnalapa is the dwelling site typically of one nuclear family, but often extended to include an elderly parent or younger unmarried classificatory brothers and/or sisters. Nowadays flowers and screens of bushes or fences somewhat separate one hnalapa from the other. Nevertheless it is often possible to go from the back of one compound to the neighbouring one. The access to each compound from the street is always open. Most of the gardens are outside village boundaries.
The dwelling ground, the property of a family group, consists of several buildings, diversified in terms of material used and functions. It comprises the Lifuan circular hut [meitro], a wooden thatched structure with a very low front door (see Chapter Two) today used for sleeping and receiving people; a concrete rain-water tank; a one-room corrugated iron or concrete dwelling for cooking and eating, another for sleeping and keeping one's personal belongings; a latrine and a shower. An outside wooden shelter for cooking completes the dwelling place.
6 In the early Marist missionaries' records Drueulu is referred to as Ngaxa (Gaica).
Young married couples, except for the eldest married son and his wife, who inherit his parents' dwelling site, usually move to a ground furnished with a water tank, a cooking shelter and a one-room house made of corrugated iron. As time goes by and the family grows larger the dwelling ground generally becomes more organized. The couple, daughters and young male children will sleep in the hut
[uma ne meköl], whereas older sons sleep separately. Our hosts, a young couple in their thirties, upon their marriage had moved to the ground of the husband which he, as the second male bom of his family, owned as hereditary property. They lived there for several years in a small corrugated iron one-room dwelling. They were both employed, saved money and were able to fund the building of a thatched hut; recently they were able to take out a mortgage from the bank to build a brick house.8 The couple and their three male children (a fourth, a girl, was bom after my fieldwork), an adolescent adopted daughter, the husband's mother (a widow), his unmarried sister, her young son and one of his cousins were living together in this new house. In the cold season meals were prepared inside and we would all eat in the house or under the porch. The hut was still used for sleeping purposes by the male children, the other female relatives and ourselves while the couple slept in their bedroom in the house. However, they always received visitors in the hut.
Lifuan men and women consider the circular hut the traditional dwelling and refer to it as to a symbol of cultural identity. In order to apply to the provincial Social Housing Program, operating since 1992 with the objective of building each year 70 logements [dwellings] in the provincial territory, people must satisfy several requirements, such as having low income, being a Lifu resident (i.e. spending at least nine months a year on the island), owning the chosen plot of land, and having built a case traditionnelle [traditional hut] on it. This was explained by Macatre Wenehoua, at the time of my fieldwork technical adviser to the Province, as a way to motivate young people to build Lifuan huts.
When I started fieldwork at the end of 1989, Lifu and the whole country were experiencing a period of relative peace after the political mobilizations [evenements] for independence which had swept the country in 1984-85 and again in 1988 and early 1989. The new political climate could be felt in Drueulu. Both nationalists and loyalists had accepted the move towards normalized relations. The elections of 6 November 1988, when people went to the polls to
8 It is not the only brick house in the village; such houses belong to families who have at least one employed member.
vote on the Matignon Accords, gave the following results in Drueulu: 310 yes, 31 no and 2 void (from Journal Jeunesse 1988).9
During the eventments young Drueuluans were politically active both in Lifu and on the main island; some of them were engaged in the EPK [Ecole Populaire Kanak]. A few Drueuluan children were taken out of the government and church schools and sent to Hapetra, the village next to Drueulu, where an Ecole Populaire Kanak was operating. The Hapetra experiment was over by 1989. People recall how during the evintments they were bitterly separated by political cleavages even though they belonged to the same clan or to the same church. Sometimes people strategically invoked customary paths to prevent people on the opposite side from reaching their ends. Recounting the boycott of the 1984 elections in Drueulu, Mariqatr told how a man from a nearby tribe had gone to see the high chief to ask him to intervene to allow free access to the road between Drueulu and We, which was blockaded by barricades preventing people from voting. The man belonged to a clan of which Mariqatr's husband was the chief. Thus later, she reproached the man for having gone directly to the chiefly compound without following the right customary path, through her husband. However, this incident demonstrates that the protocol of following customary paths can be strategically used both to achieve one’s own political ends (to request the intervention of chiefly authority) and to prevail over a different political/ideological affiliation.
The year 1985 was a critical time for Drueulu. Celestin Zöngö, aged 18, was shot dead at the end of a demonstration in Montravel (Noumda). His corpse was buried in his home village. Waxöma, my host, a sister of Celestin's father, recalled the tension at the funeral. Celestin's family's members are well known in New Caledonia for their involvement in the Catholic education system, and at the burial several kamadra [whites] had joined with the family from Noumea. The young men of Drueulu responded to the arrival of the outsiders with barricades. Only the intervention of Luatre, Waxöma's brother, but also the maathin
[mother's brother] of one of the young men, a political activist, brought the situation under control. The kamadra were thus allowed to enter the village.
At the end of 1989 the same young men involved with the barricades were the promoters of the Youth Association, Drui, a group created with the aim of involving young people in the economic, cultural and social life of the tribe, a
9 For a different interpretation of the Matignon Accords at the grassroots level, see Susanna