Il ritorno di Caa Pwädé

Un caso di restituzione negoziata del sapere antropologico in Nuova Caledonia

Abstract

Considering the peculiar socio-political context of New Caledonia, the article aims to tackle a specific episode of negotiated restitution of an anthropological knowledge, occurred among the people of Ouatè tribe, in the norther region of the Grande Terre. The event, which has to be inserted in the active debate over the subject of repatriation in Oceania, had an enlightening importance in claiming the return of the local population oral knowledge, which had been guarded and reshaped by the French anthropologist Alban Bensa. In fact, it was precisely in Ouaté, that the academic had carried on his initial fieldwork in the early Seventies. Moreover, thanks to the work done by an independent aboriginal school in Ouaté, the expansive process of research, revival and re-appropriation of the rich cultural and material heritage of the tribe initiated and spread among the local population, while also demanding the return of the French anthropologist Bensa. Once again the archipelago (known for the original idea of the objets ambassadeurs) becomes the protagonist of a genuine process of re-appropriation; however, this time, we do not see involved sacred object, architectural ruins, of scalps of ancient revolutionary leaders, neither human remains treasured in museums or hidden in private collections. This time, what people of Ouaté are demanding is the repatriation of a tormented, historical memory, which has long left its local settings, lost by the most and now found again on French academic essays; it is time for the local knowledge to be claimed back to where it started. The restitution of the written documents is the starting point of a fertile discussion between the people of Ouaté and the anthropologist, which sees its outcome in a fair negotiation and the agreement of a collaboration between the two parts; the inhabitants of tribe of Ouaté are finally active actors in the construction of their “written Kanak cultural heritage”.