Disability, Leprosy, and Kanak Identity in Twentieth-Century New Caledonia

The article examines the striking role played by the Indigenous (Kanak) leprosy-affected people in the history of the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. The so-called leprosy crisis in colonial New Caledonia spanned 1890–1950 and provoked alarm among medical and government officials both within the territory and back in Paris. Beginning in 1911, authorities introduced strict medical protocols in Kanak communities in stark contrast to those for Europeans, including enforced isolation and compulsory clinical diagnosis. These policies continued until the 1950s and were also in place at the last leprosarium in the territory, the Sanatorium de Ducos. Such protocols, implemented under French medical supervision, were closely aligned with the French administrative process of internment, connected to the code de l’indigénat, which confined Kanak in an attempt to control them. Indeed, I argue that the enforcement of the indigénat between 1925 and 1950 depended on the medicalized able-bodied discourse attached to Kanak leprosy in New Caledonia. When Kanak, leprosy-affected people resisted able-bodied norms, they were making a powerful, though as yet unexplored, statement about the cruel impact of French colonial policies on their way of life. A study of the long-term impact of inherently ableist colonial policy and questions of contagion reveals also how such history remains crucial to today’s self-identifying “Kanaky” and their claims to equality and equity.