Paul Néaoutyine

Who is Paul Néaoutyine?

Paul Néaoutyine is a Kanak independence politician born on 12 October 1951 in the Saint-Michel tribe near Poindimié, on the east coast of Grande Terre, New Caledonia. He became active in the Kanak nationalist movement in the 1970s and rose through the ranks of the Union Calédonienne and later the Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika), one of the constituent parties of the FLNKS. Following the creation of New Caledonia's three provinces under the 1988 Matignon Accords, he was elected to the North Province assembly and became President of the North Province in 1999, a position he has held for over two decades. Under his leadership the North Province pursued a strategy of using nickel-mining revenue and the Koniambo metallurgical plant project to fund Kanak-led economic development, framing economic "rebalancing" between the north and south of the territory as inseparable from political independence. He has written and given extended interviews on Kanak identity and strategy, notably the book-length conversation L'indépendance au présent: identité kanak et destin commun. Néaoutyine remains one of the most prominent living Kanak political leaders, continuing to argue for a sovereign, decolonized Kanaky-New Caledonia built in partnership with France rather than through rupture alone.

Sources: English Wikipedia, "Paul Néaoutyine" · Paul Néaoutyine, Jean-François Corral, André Némia, L'indépendance au présent: identité kanak et destin commun (Syllepse, 2006) · Dépêche de Nouvelle-Calédonie (dnc.nc), "Paul Néaoutyine: Nous avons posé les bases d'un destin commun décolonisé"