Kanak (French spelling: Kanak since 1984; earlier Canaque) are the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southwest Pacific. According to the 2009 census, they constitute 40.3% of the total population of New Caledonia with 99,078 people. Though Melanesian settlement is recorded on Grande Terre's Presqu'île de Foué peninsula as far back as the Lapita culture, the origin of Kanak people is unclear. Ethnographic research has shown that Polynesian seafarers have intermarried with the Kanaks over the centuries. The Kanaks refer to the European inhabitants of New Caledonia as Caldoches.
New Caledonia was annexed to France in 1853, and became an overseas territory of France in 1956. A political movement, restarted by some Kanaks in 1984, after an initial failed revolt in 1967, has strongly pursued total independence status from the French rule. A 2014 referendum will decide whether or not the territory will achieve sovereign status. When the 1988 Matignon agreements were signed between the representatives of France and New Caledonia to decide on holding the referendum for independence, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the Kanak leader of the independence movement, had mooted a proposal to set up an Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture (ADCK). After Tjibaou's assassination in 1989, the French President François Mitterrand ordered that a cultural centre on the lines suggested by Tjibaou be set up in Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia; it was to be the last of Mitterrand's Grands Projets. The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre was formally established in May 1998.
Kanak or similar may mean:
I lie half awake
Late at night
I reach out to touch you
To feel you by my side
And I reach
And I reach
But I never get to feel you
Will I ever get to feel you again?
Again...
Just one more time
One more moment
To take you in my arms
One more chance
One more kiss
Before I wake to find you gone
One more time
Before I have to face another day
And my heart breaks...again
It's only a dream
But it's also real
I don't want it to end
But I know it will
So I pray and I pray
Every night I'm on my knees
Begging for the chance to see you again
Again…