The Connection to the Land in French-Language Pacific Fiction

Abstract

The link to the land, the place where newborn babies’ placentas are traditionally buried in Polynesia, is clearly apparent in L'Ile des rêves écrasés by Chantal T. Spitz, where the announcement of the creation of a missile base at Ruahine causes Tematua an intimate wound. But the land is also a burial place for the dead, and the attack on a pre-European cemetery in Le Bambou noir by Jean-Marc Tera'ituatini Pambrun is one of the causes of the revolt by local residents, supported by the main protagonist, against a luxury hotel project in Punaauia in Tahiti. Some of Déwé Gorodé’s stories also show the extent to which the relationship with the land is at the heart of Kanak identity. A similar dimension can be seen in Paul Tavo's novel Quand le cannibale ricane, in which William, engulfed in alcohol and drugs in Port-Vila, returns to Lamap to re-learn, with his family and friends, the traditional activities of cultivating the land and thus re-forge his Pacific identity.