Born in the late 1850s around a Catholic mission, this pro-independence district has become the scene of almost daily violence. Two members were killed on Thursday night during exchanges of fire with the GIGN.
Tensions are rising again in New Caledonia. On the night of Thursday, September 19, law enforcement conducted a new operation in which two people were killed. The tragedy occurred in the Saint-Louis tribe, a tense pro-independence territory that has become the scene of almost daily violence.
This indigenous Kanak tribe, located south of Noumea, is considered both a community and a district of the commune of Mont-Dore. Founded in the late 1850s around a Catholic mission, it has 1,400 inhabitants, according to a 2019 census by the archipelago’s statistical institute.
Over time, the Saint-Louis tribe became the stronghold of the Catholic religion in New Caledonia. Since its creation in 1856, it quickly learned to control the water supply, but also to found various factories to process sugar or hull rice, but also a sawmill, a rum distillery and a printing press. Enough to allow its members to live in total autonomy. Ten years later, a school was opened to welcome Kanak children and families from all over the colony. In Saint-Louis, initially, the spoken language was “tayo”, a dialect born from the mixture of the interbreeding of the different populations who joined the tribe. But due to colonization, French finally became the dominant language in conversations.
Road blocked, tensions high with the police
In recent years, the Saint-Louis tribe has had a bad reputation within the archipelago. Firstly because of various clashes from 2001 to 2004 between the Kanak community and the Wallisian community, established in the neighbouring Ave Maria subdivision, which resulted in the death of three people. Then in the last four months, because of the contestation of a project to reform the electoral body in provincial elections.
Anger that led to the blocking of the road that connects Noumea to Mont-Dore, and which passes through Saint-Louis, cutting the tribe in two. Many young people there are armed and are multiplying malicious and terrorist acts. Questioned by our colleagues at France Info, Sonia Backès, president of the Southern Province of New Caledonia, counts 56 carjackings and 300 shootings at the police in the last four months alone.
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