Urban Kanak Parents on Customary Trial: An Ethnography of the Customary Family Court of Nouméa, New Caledonia

AbstractFor the last two decades, in the context of the progressive decolonization of New Caledonia (South‐West Pacific), the French justice system has integrated Kanak within New Caledonia's family courts. These customary assessors are officially responsible for identifying and explaining the relevant “customary law” to the presiding professional judges (all of whom come from metropolitan France), required to adjudicate Kanak family matters (divorce, child custody, child support, and so on) according to “Custom.” Drawing on an ethnographic study of the Customary Family Court of New Caledonia's capital city, Nouméa, this paper concentrates on the practical interactions between these legal guardians of the customary order and the urban, mostly young, Kanak parents appearing before the Court. As day‐to‐day experiences of Kanak parenthood in this urban context often challenge the traditional, functionalist, and ruralist paradigm promoted by the Customary Family Court, ethnographic observation of these hearings reveals a wide range of discursive strategies and cultural negotiations and confrontations between Kanak parents, customary assessors, and French judges. At the core of these debates on family, culture, and custom in the justice system lies the issue of Kanak authenticity and its articulation with history, social change, and urban trajectories. [custom, justice, decolonization, parenthood, New Caledonia]