[Return to SSGM Home] [Return to Workshop Page]

State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project
Australian National University

I want to use this episode as the basis for an analysis of Drueuluan women's engagement in an organized collectivity during the late 1980s/early 1990s. Specifically, I'll focus on the groupe des femmes de Drueulu (Drueulu Women's Group) which belongs to the umbrella-group mouvement féminin vers un Souriant Village Mélanésien (Association of Women for a Smiling Melanesian Village) to examine how, in the period considered, the women's group mobilised cultural elements including the centrality of motherhood and Catholic affiliation to assert their identity. This paper emphasises how various articulations of women's concerns, customary bonds and religious affiliation informed women's engagements and commitments at the village level and in the wider context of the 1992 Annual General Assembly which celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Association.

The focus on local identity constructs does not obliterate or deny a sense of common Kanak identity but rather suggests that in different contexts and for different purposes people identify themselves differently, giving more weight to their sense of belonging and loyalty to one community over another (see Morauta 1985). Further, the idea of a flexible notion of boundaries is invoked by all Kanak. To move beyond a timeless representation of Lifuan men and women means bringing to the fore changing identities in different times and places. It does not entail privileging localism over national commonalities.
 

ENCOUNTERING AND REPRESENTING 'OTHERS'

I'm well aware of the risks involved in representing Drueuluan women's engagements and commitments, but I also believe that if we agree that fieldwork relationships are dialogical as well as political than we should also become 'aware of the importance of social commitment and responsibility towards our researched' (Karim 1993:251). As I have argued elsewhere (Paini 1994, 1997), this insight should be taken one step further by asserting that sharing a context is the only way to establish the basis of an exchange which modifies all parties and which allows one to escape from a position of tolerance or of exoticization of differences. This is not a move towards erasing the memory of colonial pasts and presents; rather, it means keeping these pasts alive, not so much to produce feelings of guilt, but to question ourselves about our present modalities in dealing with otherness. In my case, it means a critical review of stereotypes, prejudices, and ethnocentric behaviours which often spring forth from the Italian colonial experience embedded in our collective understanding and representation of otherness. Yet this is not to deny tensions. Only recently, working in a project for a Health and Cultural Center for Migrant Women's in my hometown, I was confronted with some ambivalence on my part, which I acknowledged in a contribution to le griot, the local newsletter by and for the migrants. Discussing the initiative with some Eritrean people, I realised how sensitive I was (and still am) to the encounter with otherness when dealing with the reality of colonialism experienced first-hand as an anthropologist in Kanaky/New Caledonia and the criticism of the Kanak people of French colonialism, and how less sensitive I tended to be when the discussion shifted to situations with which I have had no direct experience, such as the Italian 'presence' in Eritrea. And I realised that I too have not been immune to the widely-accepted stereotype of 'soft' Italian colonialism.

The politics of research have to be considered; the assumptions we take with us into the field, the way we engage in a dialogue, sharing context and time with the people of the community who accept us, the ethnographic narrative strategies we opt for once 'back home' to represent this experience, and the criticisms indigenous people may offer of our texts are all part of the same process. But a politics of otherness cannot be reduced to a politics of narrative devices. Power does not become an issue only when we engage in writing our text. Textual strategies can call attention to the politics of representation, but the issue of otherness itself is not really addressed by these new experimental devices (Macintyre 1993, Keesing 1994). As the Algerian sociologist Marnia Lazreg (1990) stresses, a focus on textuality dismisses 'the crucial issue of intersubjectivity ... removing it [difference] from the realm of shared experience' (1990:339, emphasis in original).

A further question concerning the issue of representing non-western women is that pertaining to the debate on engendering knowledge and the critiques of the persisting ethnocentrism and colonialisms of a Western feminist agenda espoused by the author (see Jolly 1998:20-21). As Mohanty argues, western feminists tend to 'construct themselves as the normative referent' (1991: 56). She states that any feminist analysis that represents 'third world women'[5] in terms that take 'western' as a point of reference and deals with 'women' as if they comprised a homogenous, monolithic group is predicated on the notion of an asymmetrical power relation between western and non-western worlds. It is in this very process of constructing and representing 'third world difference', Mohanty argues, that 'power is exercised in much of recent western feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and named' (1991:54). Mohanty does not just counterpose western with nonwestern feminism but rather critiques the strategies used to codify 'others' as non-western. I feel very strongly that we should acknowledge a diversity of positions, not only between western and non-western women's political agendas, but also within western and non-western theoretical thought. Failing to admit such internal diversities means we foreclose important questions (see Mohanty, Russo and Torres 1991; Bono and Kemp 1991).

Having briefly positioned myself (but see Paini 1997), I now turn to introduce the engagement of Drueuluan women at large within their community before considering the groupe des femmes de Drueulu.
 

WOMEN'S USE OF MATERNAL METAPHORS IN CREATING NEW COLLECTIVITIES

Women in Drueulu were and still are organized on different levels. The broader network of solidarity among women is experienced as part of daily domesticity. At the household level women help each other with the different tasks concerning housekeeping, child-minding and gardening. As elsewhere in Melanesia, men participate in gardening and child care, performing different labour tasks, though the division of labour is not necessarily gendered, but is based on marital status and age as well. Cooperation in gardening between a wife and a husband is highly valued. Usually those who achieve a good production are praised for their complementary relationship. But women organize themselves individually and collectively in more structured ways. Women are able to mobilise their informal networks in times of stress. For example, when a husband is drunk, women in the village use female networks in order to take shelter and receive comfort. Domestic violence is explained by married women as being derived from men's heavy drinking. On such occasions, if a woman does not live near her natal family, which is often the case in Drueulu, she will rely on this network. During my fieldwork women activated their informal networks in other critical situations. A very young unmarried woman, mother of two children, was living with her mother, a Catholic widow. Her relatives became tired of feeding her and her children, took the three of them to the garden and left them in a shelter. Lilié, a married Catholic woman, went gardening and discovered the three. She decided to intervene and took them to her place. The news spread and the family of the unmarried woman made known that that same evening they were going to pick up the mother and the two children at Lilié's place. At that point Catholic women mobilised their informal network and a few of them went to Lilié's place. They wanted to be there upon the arrival of the family to make sure that the young woman and her children would not be mistreated anymore. Although they disapproved of the young woman's conduct (two children out of marriage), they emphasised they were very concerned about the two children, who were not to blame for their mother's behaviour. In situations of tension such as these, women mobilise their networks following kinship and denominational lines. Although women emphasised place as the basis of communality, they also acknowledged that their belonging to the same religious denomination can be a crucial element of identity in certain contexts and situations, differentiating one part of the village from the other. Identity is not made up of specific elements: rather, some elements (language, place, customary expectations, denominational differences) may acquire more prominence in a specific context. Further, the ways people differentiate themselves as persons or members of a given community change. The level of inclusiveness may vary and people may find themselves 'likely to possess multiple, nested affiliations' (Linnekin and Poyer 1990:11). As I have discussed elsewhere Christianity, is crucial in Lifuans' present sense of themselves (Paini 1998); yet the rhetoric concerning the non-antithetical relation between la coutume (custom) and Christian Church adherence is differently deployed by Catholics and Protestants in Lifu as they differently mobilise their arguments to relate the past to the present. Although Protestants acknowledge the differences of the past, their narratives show more continuity between the old and the new, the past and the present. Catholics instead conjugate past and present more in terms of disjunction (Paini 1998).

While collectivity in Lifu is primarily male dominated and male defined, women have their own ways of engaging in it. In fact, to be part of a larger collectivity is crucial in defining Lifuan identity. This is stressed by both men and women as inherent in the indigenous way of life, which they contrast with the selfishness and individualism of whites (Paini nd). I have elsewhere stressed the use of images of the maternal female body in cross-sex sociality which in Lifu is primarily male-dominated. I'll briefly touch on it before considering how women deploy the maternal in their creation of new forms of collectivities, which are exclusively female.[6]
 

REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN

In Drehu there are several metaphors that are used by both men and women to produce gendered representations of social life. The most common one used to speak of a woman is ka xet, the young banana leaf which is undamaged and used for wrapping the itra, the indigenous earth oven dish. This consists of several layers of slices of yams, sweet potatoes, on top of which is laid a chicken or a fish (sometimes a flying fox or a coconut palm crab), the whole generously sprinkled with coconut juice. A bed of banana leaves is placed on the ground, with the old, harder ones placed underneath and the young, tender ones on the top. The ingredients are then arranged in a circle. Upon completion, the young leaves are carefully wrapped around themselves, while the external leaves are used for the final wrapping, which is completed by using some lianas to firmly tie the parcel. The purpose of the outside leaves is to protect the food from heat and dirt during cooking, whilst that of the young leaves is to prevent any coconut juice from leaking. A well-done itra is one which comes out of the earth oven with the hearth leaves still intact, with no coconut juice leaking. Thus women are conceived through the image of a banana leaf which should keep all the ingredients together.[7]

Ame la föe ka xet ne hnalapa means 'the woman is the one who keeps the household together' and it is a frequent expression used to define women's relation to a collectivity. But women are also spoken of as trengen la mel [the basket of life], an analogy between human procreation and agricultural harvest. During wedding ceremonies women are referred to as atre qatreng la mel, the person who encompasses life. Qatreng la nekönatr [literally, to put a baby in a bag, meaning the woman carrying a baby] is another image which focuses on a woman's reproductive role. The idea of woman being a container rather than its contents[8] is stressed again and again during collective social moments. Although this image emphasizes women's nurturing role, it is an image of stability, of strength rather than weakness. In a very mobile population, women's embodiment of strength and continuity is even more salient.[9]

A focus on different constructs of motherhood does not imply that women in Kanak society of Lifu are symbolised just as mothers. Although in a man's relation to both his wife and his sister her status as a 'mother' is crucial, he must still behave quite differently vis-à-vis the two. The more relaxed relationship he has with his wife is not mirrored in the relationship with his opposite-sex sibling. But motherhood, although defined by a language which has pervasive gender asymmetry, is not just a dyadic mode of attachment to men, as the other kin categories - wife and sister - must be. 'Motherhood' denotes women's collective existence. Everyone is generated by a woman.[10] Thus women can represent themselves through the maternal in an empowered way, not stressing closed domesticity and stasis but greater mobility and visibility in the broader social world.

In Drueulu in 1989 women participated in communal activities as part of both mixed and same-sex groups. There was an informal group of Catholic women who gathered together on a weekly basis to pray; the Catholic parish committee had women members; other women were active in Secours Catholique. Younger women, regardless of their religious affiliation, were members of a youth cultural group, Drui, which started its activities in December 1989. They also participated in sports activities, cricket and volleyball being the most popular. The engagement and activities I discuss here, however, concern one of the two organized women's groups of Drueulu: the Drueulu Women's Group which belongs to a larger women's organization with branches in various areas of New Caledonia, the mouvement féminin vers un Souriant Village Mélanésien (Association of Women for a Smiling Melanesian Village, mfSVM hereafter),[11] an organization with a declared Catholic bond. The other group's aims and activities will only be mentioned as background information (but see Paini 1992). This second group belongs to the Evangelical Church and during the period of my fieldwork had eleven married women as members; unlike the Catholic women's group, no unmarried woman was taking part in the activities. This exclusion was explained in terms of the activities of the Protestant community, which were strongly differentiated following an age criterion (adult/young). Women gathered together on Sunday afternoon at Eika (a Greek word meaning 'people living in the same house' used by Protestants to refer to the pastor's house and nearby terrain) at the same time as the other members of the Protestant Church met to discuss and to organize their work. They stressed that, although they met separately, they did so during the day and not at night so that their husbands present at Eika at the same time could mind the children.[12] The structure of the group was very formal, replicating the Protestant Church hierarchical structure. A committee with a president was chosen every three years at the tribe level, at the consistoire level,[13] and at the regional level (Lifu). This meant any kind of information was sent to local groups by the central committee based in Nouméa going through the different levels of the organization. Because of this, the group lacked the freedom of movement and autonomy of action of the Catholic women's group and as a result their involvement in social activities was somewhat atrophied. The group did not have a statute, and many activities were 'à caractère religieux' (of a religious nature), as the president put it, although alcohol was an important social issue on their agenda. Meetings were always opened by a prayer. The group was organized in a work party usually doing gardening, and involved in fund-raising activities; the money generally was used to allow its members to participate in meetings taking place in other parts of the island. In such occassions women were accompanied either by the pastor of their tribe or by the deacon.[14]
 

LE GROUP DES FEMMES

The Drueulu women's group which is the focus of this paper belongs to mfSVM. an organization with a declared Catholic bond. The path through which the group came into being is quite interesting. The group's activities date back to 1971 when Scolastique Pidjot came to Drueulu.[15] Women explained this visit to me in terms of both customary allegiances and religious ties. Although Scolastique Pidjot's father, Justin Togna, was from La Conception (on the main island, the Grande Terre), her mother was from Drueulu, and therefore, women stressed, her maternal uncles were issued from Drueulu. The other relevant factor they mentioned about the visit was that Scolastique's husband, Rock Pidjot,[16] attended the School for Catechists in Canala (Grande Terre) at the same time as Paul Zöngö and Poten Taua. The narratives of Dreuelu women pointed to Scolastique Pidjot as the key figure in the development of the group in Lifu. The pamphlet distributed by the association for the celebration of its 20th anniversary acknowledged both her role and that of the late independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou as promoters, but she features as the principal protagonist of the women's movement. Following this visit to Drueulu, the group started to organize itself, a prominant woman in the village, Awaqatr, became the first president and Pohnimë the secretary of the newly-formed association. Pohnimë, at that time in her early thirties, explained that in the past elderly women were illiterate and thus could not hold positions such as secretary and treasurer, for which young women were chosen. The wife of the high chief, who later became actively involved in the group, was present at the first meeting but did not join the group: 'Elle venait de se marier, elle était encore jeune' (She had just got married, she was still young) (Pohnimë). The women then went to Hnathalo and Hunëtë, two Catholic villages in the Northern part of Lifu, because, they explained, the association was primarily for Catholic women. In 1989/1990 all three groups were functioning and still belonged to mfSVM, although women remarked that the group of Hunëtë also took part as such in the parish committee. Some of the first women involved in the Drueulu group were still active; others did not always participate in weekly activities, but did so when the group was involved in some communal activities. Women who belonged to the Drueulu group had different political convictions and affiliations; these differences were exacerbated during the events of 1984 and 1988.[17] In spite of this, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, the time span taken into consideration in this paper, women were able to set aside these differences and worked together; and this happened beyond the tribal level. (However when I returned in 1996 as the Matignon Accords drew to an end, frictions had resurfaced). In order to remain autonomous not only in terms of activities but also financially, the group of Drueulu had its own statute, independent of the larger organization mfSVM, which allowed it to engage directly in activities without having to pass through the central committee. The group from Dueulu had thus direct membership in the 'Conseil des Femmes Mélanésiennes de Nouvelle-Calédonie' (Council of Melanesian Women of New Caledonia, an NGO to which Kanak women's groups were affiliated).[18] The aim of the Drueulu group set out in Article 2 of their Charter (23 April 1989)[19] is 'to promote Melanesian Art and Culture'. This broad way of defining their interests, which sometimes would seem at odds with their commitments and actions, was not to camouflage their activities vis-à-vis men, but to enable them to engage freely in a wide range of activities. I never heard any women question whether a planned activity was within the charter or competence of the group. Their denominational affiliation was not a strong element of identification, and religious commitment was more a private matter than a group's concern. There was a complete absence of Christian prayers, ritual and symbolism accompanying the women's activities. Some women of the groupe des femmes did participate in the Church activities but kept the two engagements somehow separate. Yet in the case of the protest march this Catholic bond was played out as an element of identity.

The group was structured around an elected committee, although the election was just a way to ratify the names that had been agreed upon. The members of the Drueulu board were chosen on the basis of several intersecting criteria, among which their husband's lineage status. But this element is not sufficient to explain the choice of the women in the committee. In the case of widows, their own lineage status might be put in the foreground. Kinship and age were other important criteria. Marital status didn't seem to be a requirement. Not only widows but also the local nurse, an unmarried woman in her late 40s with children, were board members. Whereas the Protestant group always met during the day, this group often met in the evening (except for gardening). This fact was often criticised by men, as well as by some women in the community, who considered women's evening meetings as recreational because bingo was often played before the meeting (while waiting for other members to arrive) or at the end of the evening. Further when women attended meetings involving other women's groups they always went by themselves. Men did not go along. This meant that it was they who made the speeches in presenting the customary gestures to their host.

When I first started to attend their meetings, the group from Drueulu included over 30 women, all Catholic and of different ages. The strenght of the group resided in the authority of some of its members, who included the high chief's wife and quite a few elderly women, some of whom married into trenadro (master of the soil) families. The importance of the women 'à la tête' (in charge), however, was maintained not just by women in Drueulu but by women from other branches of the mfSVM, as one of the most important elements for the success of a group's activities. The strength of a group relies primarily on the efficacy of the women in charge of it. In fact women remarked that very active groups almost disappeared once the women in charge left the group (it would be interesting to confront this assertion with other experiences in other part of Melanesia).

If leadership was a crucial element for the success of the group, an analysis of its dynamics must consider how authority is deployed within the Catholic community of Drueulu. The absence of any religious authority (in the middle of 1920s the last missionary based in the village moved to Hnathalo marking the end of the Marist mission of Drueulu; and in the 1980s/1990s no Catholic clergy was based on the island) has meant that local catechists were (and still are) taking care of the community, but within a national level structure which is white-dominated and highly hierarchical. Thus authority within the community was more diffused, less centralised than in other local social contexts.This allowed for a greater participation of women, regardless of their age, in the parish committee compared to what I perceived as a more rigid and centralized, male dominated structure among the Protestants of the same village.

The youngest members of the Drueulu group were between 20 and 25, though in 1992 few of them were participating in the group's activities, partly because they were questioning the way elderly women ran the group but also because of recent commitments as mothers. Drueulu younger women seem to have a large workload, especially if they have their first child and are not married. They are expected to take care of the child but also to give a substantial contribution to the household chores. As women grow older they are always very busy but they can split their chores with their younger sisters, elder daughters and daughters-in-law. This contrasts with the situation of Simbo women of the Western Solomon Islands where young women with their first child can rely on a lot of assistance but where older women denounce the increase in their workload and the decrease in kin assistance as family increases in size, preventing them from participating in communal events (Dureau 1993). Although old and young women were part of the group, a gap was created by the virtual absence of married women in their thirties. Members always complained that the young married women who had had more educational opportunities were not members of the group.

In examining women's creation of new collectivities the metaphor of woman as mother emerges as pervasive. Among the Catholic women the maternal is central in their engagement in the social arena, linking individual and political transformations through this relationship. A woman's maternal role in the expanded social context is viewed as an expansion of her role as a mother, but in a way that emphasises more the singularity of a woman than the conjugal bond. The boundaries between enclosed domesticity and a broader social context are blurred, thus woman as mother is not confined to the private space but becomes a powerful trope used by women to engage in a broader social context, challenging conventional conceptions which view private/political spaces as bounded and differentiated units.

Women have made use of maternal tropes in their engagement with new communal projects. When they have expressed concerns about the present situation of heavy drinking in the tribe, when they have made statements about the problem of pregnancy of unmarried women, they have always validated it through making use of the maternal. They organize themselves and engage in this new collectivity is predicated on their maternal relations as embodying relationships with the community at large. Women always voiced what they were doing, from the protest against alcohol abuse to family planning meetings, as activities addressing broader communal issues, their focus being on how their well-being relates to the well-being of the entire community. They connect their role of stable mothers within the household and within the larger community. They thus engaged in this new collectivity, which has no precedence in local terms, not by making statements which would seem to subvert their maternal role but rather by reaffirming it. By making their engagement in the social predicated on the maternal trope they have been able to create a new collectivity and to acquire wider autonomy in terms of access to money and in terms of geographical mobility.
 

WOMEN'S ASSERTIONS IN THE SOCIAL ARENA: NEGOTIATING BETWEEN CUSTOM AND CHRISTIANITY

Catholic women of Drueulu acknowledged what the Protestants from the village had maintained: that alcohol was a problem that mainly concerned the Catholic community.[20] While this issue was recognised by the protesting women, problems which were considered specific to the Protestants were also raised. To paraphrase one of the women: 'If we Catholics have to deal with the problem of alcohol, they (the Protestants) have to deal with the more important question of families that break away from their Church and go to the Jehovah's Witnesses.' This statement can be viewed as an admission of the problem the Catholic community had with alcohol and as an acknowledgment of the tensions present between both denominations, although they both identified themselves as belonging to the same place and being under the authority of the same anga joxu (high chief). In order to allow a greater participation of the women in the march it was decided that women should gather not at the Women's house but in a different space. In fact the women's group has been highly criticised for having its own publicly organized space, the 'Maison des Femmes',[21] where they gathered according to a schedule that changed throughout the year and adapted to other communal events occurring in the tribe (For example, during weddings, when a large group of men and women took part in different tasks, women's group activities slowed down). The rest of the Catholic community of Drueulu, especially the men, did not approve of the fact that women gathered in a space which was and still is apart from the Mission (a large new hall has been built next to the church), nor did they approve of the fact that they had access to public funds for social and cultural activities and that they managed to follow their own agenda. Women were perceived as subverting not so much custom but male authority within the village. This criticism has arisen especially within the parish committee. Women have been criticised for spending too much time in the 'Women's House' and neglecting the care of the household and their children. Yet the attempt to create a more Catholic oriented women's group called 'Maman Missionnaire' (Missionary Mum) in 1990 was unsuccessful.[22] Women were also criticised for their willingness to go to the administrative centre of We and ask for money. It was not the money per se that rankled, but the fact that they used it in an autonomous way. Part of this money was used to pay travel expenses for women to participate in meetings taking place in Nouméa or in other tribes.

Male opposition[23] did not jeopardise attendance at the group's meetings because the majority of the middle-aged women were widows and the younger ones were unmarried. But among the married women there were the wives of two catechists of Drueulu, one in her late twenties and the other in her mid-thirties. This suggests that, although a lot of criticism had been voiced by the parish committee, the fact that elderly women or women with important customary roles were the promoters of these initiatives gave the group its legitimacy, even if it was contested. Having their own building enabled them to organize activities to raise money without having to ask permission of other collective bodies, such as the parish committee. The Women's House became a physical and symbolic space. It was a space where collectivity was created by female agency. But in the case of the march it was decided that a more neutral space for gathering should be chosen, allowing for a greater participation of women (and a private place would make it easier to keep the organization of the march a secret.)

The choice of the route to take was not on the agenda. It was 'taken for granted' that the march should end up at the Mission, which was, and still is, a short way from Thérèse's house. It was decided for a Sunday morning when a small fund-raising sale was scheduled by the local Catholic school and hence people would be gathered at the Mission. Today Catholics still refer to the former mission as 'la Mission', meaning the area comprising the Catholic preschool and primary school, the Church and the Church Hall. Yet this is now a place within the village and it is no longer considered a separate space as it was prior to World War II. The boys' day school, the girls' boarding school and the church were all part of the Mission which formed within village boundaries two distinct environments (cf. Maisin society analysed by Barker 1990 and 1993). Today the Mission is a space that can be used for community purposes: people gather for worship as well as for social occasions. Thus, women's choice emphasised a shift in the perception of strong boundaries between the village and the mission. Both were considered part of their life; yet by stressing their being Catholic they put forward an element of identity which differentiated them from the rest of the village (which is Protestant) and which enhanced their demand by allowing a greater participation of women.

Let us now return to the heated exchange of words between women and men once the protest march reached the Mission. The young woman who was verbally assaulted by her husband rested much of her argument on putting forward elements of la coutume (custom) - to be respectful of elderly, to be respectful of the place - in a strategic way. Similarly she made use of aspects of Christianity - the reference to Hatreqatr's husband, the emphasis on the place - to her advantage. But her words were not only strategically chosen to stress traits which could connect the two environments; they represented also a statement regarding the compatibility between custom and Christianity, a statement which did not pertain just to the women's arena but whose meaning could be communicated to men as well. Her discourse was shaped according to indigenous rules but it was reinforced by including Christian elements. Thus without subverting the codified social norms and at the same time stressing the cohabitation of custom and Christianity in the islanders' life, she was able to affirm her actions. As White (1993) has pointed out, elements such as Christianity and kastom need not be considered in oppositional terms, 'they are mutually constitutive constructions ... conceptualised as complementary (and even equivalent) facets of a single field of cultural meaning' (:483).
 

SHARING WITH OTHER WOMEN'S GROUPS

So far I have discussed how the women of the Drueulu group gained visibility within their village. I now consider the women's engagement in the wider context of their Association. Although the national goals of mfSVM are the same, the component local groups are autonomous in the activities which they promote. Every year, however, a central committee is re-elected and a common theme is chosen. In 1992 the annual theme was 'Mother and child'. Marie-Claire Beboko-Beccalossi introduced it during the Assembly: 'We have tidied up the exterior of our houses, now we must do the same with the interior' (Nous avons fait joli l'extérieur de nos maisons, maintenant il faut faire joli l'intérieur). She was referring to the emphasis in the first years of the group's activities on promoting the material cleaning up of houses and their surrounding gardens. In 1992 the emphasis was on health, schooling, and more generally on the well-being of the children living within the household, the future of the country.

The national organization has a declared Catholic bond; however, the articulation of women's concerns and religious affiliation informed the component local groups quite differently. This came out quite clearly during the local annual reports made at the 1992 annual General Assembly when 200 women gathered in Drueulu from all over the country to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the organization. Before the session began, part of the Drueulu group complained that some of the other groups did not have social or village projects and all they did was clean the church and work in the priest's yam garden. The presentations themselves varied from groups which reported these kinds of activities to groups which were able to get big projects under way, such as building a women's house, or organizing and running a school cafeteria for the children of the tribe. At the General Assembly, the Drueulu group astonished the rest of the women by announcing they had finally received the substantial cheque that LePensec, a former French Government Minister, had promised when he visited Lifu. The other women were eager to know how they got this money. Pohnimë, the President of the Drueulu group, confidently took the microphone and replied that the Minister was on the island and they simply went up to him with a request.

But the yearly report from Drueulu women stressed other achievements. Women were able to arrange for a weekly visit to their dispensary by a gynaecologist who could be consulted, especially by young women, in order to avoid early pregnancy. When they reported this to the General Assembly, the other women were eager to find out more about it. In some areas of the Grande Terre not even general practitioners go to visit patients in their tribes. They stay in the white settlement and sick people have to make the long and expensive journey down from their mountain settlements to the white villages by 'taxi'. Being able to provide free and easier access for everybody in the tribe to a medical service was considered a big achievement.[24] In choosing to promote this action the women's group has not made any public comments critical of the medicalization of health, though most members of the group make use of both western and Kanak medicine. Women do not perceive the coming of a western doctor as a way of imposing conformity on patterns of western medical consumption. For the moment they appreciate the positive and practical aspects of being able to go for a consultation once a week. It means that women with children can easily see the doctor, without having to catch a bus to the administrative centre of We; it also allows the young women to go and seek advice more freely than if they had to make a trip to We, not only in terms of time and money, but also in terms of being less publicly exposed. In fact everybody acknowledges the problem of pregnancy among unmarried girls, despite the protocols of la coutume, which forbids sexual intercourse out of wedlock. This interest in family planning and health-oriented activities[25] was the result of a combination of factors: the arrival of a French woman doctor interested in working with the group;[26] the choice of two Kanak women from Lifu, trained nurses, to head the Provincial Sanitary Education Section; the controversial establishment of a Provincial Women's Rights Office; and the visibility that the group has gained in recent years. Thus women were engaged in activities which they considered to be in the interests of their well-being and of the well-being of the community. Women were carrying over elements from the past, there was persistence in their engagement, but their concerns differed from men's (see Paini nd). What is interesting is that the concern, publicly expressed, for the need for family planning came from a group of Catholic women, a fact at odds with mainstream Catholic discourse on women's role in reproduction. But women always stressed that 'our grandmothers had methods for spacing children' (nos grand mères, elles avaient des méthodes pour espacer les enfants). So using birth control methods is not novel to their way of thinking, and family planning is not perceived as a demographic policy formulated around the child. Their discussions of procreation are informed by the well-being of the mother, yet they do differ from western agendas. Whereas Catholic women in Drueulu never questioned their actions in terms of the Catholic Church's canonical position on contraception, this is not always the case among Drueuluans in town. The family planning meetings which they organized took place in the Maison des Femmes but the customary authorities were informed. Women, who have a very deep knowledge of customary relations, do not try to bypass the hierarchical structure, rather they make a point of making their project known to the rest of the community through the intermediary of the petit chef, the man in charge of bringing news from the chefferie to the people. Thus the women's group is able to introduce its projects and give them visibility without openly challenging either custom or religion.

The visibility gained by the group for their commitments on family planning was the basis for the request to participate in a short documentary film on sexuality that was going to be translated into the different languages of New Caledonia and used for family planning. Two women interviewed for the film had no difficulty speaking openly about this issue but they controlled the limits of the narrative. One interviewer asked them about contraception and they answered that some of the young married women were having one child after another and this was not good for their health, and that in the past Kanak women knew how to space children. However, when one of the two interviewers elicited the women's comments on the use of contraception as a choice a woman might make for having a life of her own without children, the two women expressed their disagreement with this use of contraception. Their answer was not understood by the medical experts. For local women contraception was not viewed as a negation of their reproductive power but rather as a method to avoid continual childbearing by spacing children.

Women are well aware of the specificities of each indigenous group and the distinct articulations of colonial pasts and presents. Yet at the General Assembly they always stressed commonalities over distinctions, doing so without erasing differences. They emphasised differences not from a narrow localist point of view but rather by highlighting the sense of belonging to a place (Gupta and Ferguson 1992). Women were interested in learning other women's techniques of weaving or recipes; the march which concluded the General Assembly saw women of each group wearing a 'robe mission' with a chosen colour code and pattern; all this points to the importance of the sense of belonging to a place. Throughout the works of the Assembly, however, the identity of Kanak woman was stressed over tribal identity. The need to work together at the tribal level was emphasised, regardless of religious or political affiliations, and, in doing this, the bond of co-residence was given priority. The message underlying autonomy at the grass roots level was a dual stress on both local and national identity. The two levels of identity were not considered antithetical. Although women had different projects, the first priority on every woman's agenda was to further women's engagement in the social scene, to enhance their well-being and the well-being of the community in which they live.
 

FINAL REMARKS

The groupe des femmes in Drueulu was able to raise funds, to seek provincial contributions, and to manage money; it was also proficient in sponsoring events such as a kermesse, a general assembly, and other kinds of activities. Although Drueuluan women were very active, their involvement was not considered by them or by other Drueuluans in terms of 'entrepreneur's skills.[27] Rather they stressed their being together as women and their sharing of ideas and new experiences as playing a large part in pulling their efforts together. Although women were (and still are) Catholic, the group was autonomous from the Church.

The use of the maternal trope, genealogy, age and other signs of status in the traditional hierarchy works together with not against religious and in particular Catholic values and practices to affirm the autonomy and action of this Women's Group; their strategic use of the religious goes with the traditional not in antagonism with it. As many writers have stressed, cultural identities are always relational and draw upon oppositional contrasts (cf. White 1993). Yet this does not imply an opposition between tradition and modernity, between endogenous and exogenous. There is no antagonism between these terms; they are rather fluid signs in the denotation of different historical subjectivities.
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: My gratitude goes to the Kanak women of Drueulu and to the women of the former Conseil des femmes mélanésiennes de Nouvelle Calédonie who helped me in many different ways in carrying out my project. I also wish to acknowledge the support of RSPAS, Australian National University for enabling me to carry out doctoral fieldwork in 1989-1990 and 1991-1992 in New Caledonia, and of ESK, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales for supporting further research in 1996.
 

ENDNOTES

[1] Drueulu, where fieldwork was carried out, is a village on the west coast of Lifu, the second largest village of the island, with a total population of 1100, half of whom lived in the capital, Noumea, at the time this research was undertaken (1989-1992). In contrast with the other two villages in Lifu which are seats of chiefly residence, Drueulu is bi-denominational. The Roman Catholics represent a minority of the population in the island but in Drueulu they constitute the majority and include the chief's family.

[2] A hunger strike or a strike during the wedding preparation were two alternatives voiced by some women during the meeting.

[3]  I participated in the women's meeting and followed but did not take part in the protest march.

[4] 1998 was the end of the ten-year Matignon Accords at which time a referendum on independence was to be held. Further political developments pushing for negotiating a consensual solution rather than calling a referendum led to the Noumea Accord of 5 May 1998. The new deal provides for specific New Caledonian citizenship as of next year, for a gradual transfer of powers from France and for the recognition of Kanak customary law. The preamble of the Noumea Accord states that: Le moment est venu de reconnaître les ombres de la période coloniale (the time has come to recognise the dark side of the colonial period).

[5] 'Third World' is a contested term. I use it following Mohanty, Russo and Torres (1991:Preface).

[6]  On the image of women as mothers in nationalist discourses, see Jolly (1994). She argues that the rhetoric of motherhood, differently conceived within different nationalisms, should not be considered solely as 'a site for masculinist constructions' (1994:57) but should be interpreted also from the point of view of women's lived experience and their creative agency.

[7] Cf. Weiner on the association of Trobriand women with banana leaves. Women's wealth [doba] is constituted of banana leaf skirts and bundles of dried banana leaves (1989 [1976]: 92). Also Keller (1988) on plaited products as emerging symbols of ni-Vanuatu identity.

[8]  Cf. MacKenzie (1991) on the metaphorical use of the string bag among the Telefol of Papua New Guinea.

[9]  Cf. Bonnemaison (1985) where he presents the metaphors used in Tanna to speak of men and women. The former are compared to banyans and their domain is considered as 'the hearth of rootedness'; the latter are compared to a birth and thus the femine domain is considered 'linked with movement' (1985:37). This, he explains, is due to the practice of women marrying-out.

[10]  See Rich (and 1976) her 'Ten years later: a new introduction' in the 1986 edition of 'Of woman born'.

[11]  The women of the central committee insisted that the initials of their association should be written as mfSVM, so I follow their convention.

[12]  During my fieldwork they only met once at night to prepare the itra (earth oven dish) for a meeting involving all the Protestant women of Lifu which took place in Wedrumel in March 1990.

[13]  The boundaries of the consistoires in Lifu, unlike in the neighboring island Maré, do more or less coincide with the administrative districts.

[14] Although I perceived differentiation following status stronger among Protestant women, this brief sketch does not do justice to the complexities of this issue. A comparison between the structure of the two groups, how they perceived gender relations, how differentiation following status worked within them is quite interesting. I have dealt with some of these issues in my thesis and I am presently further exploring these notions.

[15]  The group became an official organization in 1973.

[16]  Both families have a long-standing involvement with the pro-independence movement.

[17]  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 (évenéments) for independence which had swept the country in 1984-85 and again in 1988 and early 1989.

[18]  Some groups belonging to the Council of Melanesian Women include men, but they must have women-only boards in order to become members of the Council, as Marie-Claire Beboko-Beccalossi explained to me. Since then the function of the Council has been taken over by the Federation of Melanesian Women's Associations (FAFm).

[19]  Every year half of the board is re-elected; decisions however are taken by the whole group.

[20]  Pohnimë at that time the president of the women's group disagreed with this view saying that to stress denominational differences was the wrong way to address the issue.

[21]  This house was built with money made available by a German NGO, and it was the first 'women's house' in Lifu and to my knowledge in the whole area of the Loyalty Islands.

[22]  Women gathered only a few times at the church hall but had no specific agenda. Furthermore the woman in charge was away from Drueulu most of the week working in Hnathalo, and as I have pointed out the strength of a group relies primarily on the efficacy of the women in charge of it. The fact that most of the older Catholic women belonged to mfSVM compromised the composition of the newly born group.

[23]  This opposition was not connected to the political genesis of the group, in fact members of the church committee were pro-independence.

[24]  In the Loyalty Islands public medical service is free, as it is in the main island outside of Nouméa.

[25]  Cf. Vanessa Griffen's critique (1994) of the Port Vila Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development (September 1993), which represented the official position of the Pacific region for the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in September 1994. She criticizes the declaration's focus for being too narrow in as much as it concentrated on family planning as 'control of fertility'. She argues for a point of view which would encompass 'the empowerment of women, would identify control of women's reproduction by women, as personally empowering and enabling' (1994:67).

[26]  It should be pointed out that in the main island a high proportion of medical doctors are French military officers, which also implies that they are men.

[27]  It's interesting to draw a parallel with Wok Meri (women's work), an organization of 'enterprising women' in Highland Papua New Guinea, discussed among others by Sexton (1982, 1986) and Warry (1987). Sexton's analysis focuses on the economic involvement of Wok Meri groups; women's production of wealth and its allocation. In fact she considers the movement 'an effort by women to improve their deteriorating economic status' (1982:167). Here I think lies the difference with the Drueuluan women's group. Sexton's analysis has been criticised for being too 'capitalist' in its stress on business versus maternal symbolism (see Myott 1995).
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barker, John