Les Esprits du Koniambo : En terre kanak

Koné, New Caledonia. The ethnologist, Alban Bensa, returns to the tribe he has been working with for some thirty years. His chief Kanak informer, Antoine, died two years beforehand. Samy, Antoine’s 33-year-old son, finds the notes and recordings his father had left behind. Before his death, Antoine had been intensively active, both at tribal level and politically, in order to defend his clan’s rights regarding the Koniambo massif. The region is rich in nickel and independentist leaders from the North Province had entrusted the working of the deposits to the Toronto-based multinational, Falconbridge. Yet, long before the Whites arrived (1853), the massif was the Kanaks’ homeland. It was there that their ways had crossed, that their dead had found refuge and their ancestors’ spirits haunted the sacred grounds. Alban and Samy trace Antoine’s steps so as to understand how the wise old Kanak had successfully got his clan’s rights recognised by the multinational. Through this encounter with Antoine’s shadow, what appears in the mirror of is all of New Caledonia’s modern history, its colonisation, uprisings and the difficult march towards independence.