With the disappearance, on August 14, in Poindimié (New Caledonia), at the age of 73, of Déwé Gorodey, the greatest female figure in New Caledonian literature and politics died. Jean-Francois Carenco, “as minister in charge of overseas but also as a reader”paid tribute to a “Immense poetess, avant-garde novelist, convinced activist, in love with her Caledonian land”.
Entering in 1999 in the first collegial government born of the Nouméa agreement, Déwé Gorodey, who had been fighting cancer for several years, will occupy there without interruption for twenty years, until 2019, the portfolio of culture, citizenship and the condition of women. The institution hailed “an independentist politician and writer of international renown”recalling the creation, during his terms of office, of the Maison du livre, the Oceanian International Book Fair, the Academy of Kanak Languages, the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of New Caledonia, and the Citizenship Day.
pastor’s daughter
Advocate of multiculturalism, she has worked “to the advent of Kanak and Oceanian culture as the basis of a common destiny for an independent and sovereign country”, highlighted the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika), a component of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS). Déwé Gorodey belonged to this Marxist-inspired branch of the Kanak independence coalition and had participated in its creation in 1976.
Born on 1is June 1949, in Ponérihouen, on the east coast of New Caledonia, this pastor’s daughter left to study literature in 1969 in Montpellier, where she became fully aware of her condition as a “colonized”. “At that time, there was a lot of unrest in the universities. I started to listen and hear what students from other countries were saying and I realized that what their people were going through was what we, the Kanaks, were going through.she said in an interview in 2010.
To the reading of the writers of negritude, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Senghor, Léon-Gontran Damas is grafted that of Marx, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg forging an ardent militant, who, on her return to her native land in 1973, participated, with other students who have traveled the same way, “Kanak awakening”. “Before going to France, she had already joined the Red Scarves of Nidoïsh Naisseline [mouvement pionnier de la revendication identitaire kanak] and had made a first stay in prison after the distribution of leaflets in the language [kanak] »remembers Elie Poigoune, former president of the League of Human Rights of New Caledonia and a great figure in the fight for independence.
You have 42.63% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.