Xârâcùù
Xârâcùù, or Kanala, is an Oceanic language spoken in New Caledonia. It has about 5,000 speakers. Xârâcùù is most commonly spoken in the south Central area of New Caledonia in and around the city of Canala and the municipalities of Canala, Thio, and Boulouparis. Xarâcùù has a strict SVO sentence structure with few exceptions. Efforts to determine how the language evolved to the present has been met with difficulty due to Xârâcùù's lack of reflexive markers in established Proto-Oceanic forms. Xârâcùù has been taught since 1980 at the primary level in the popular Kanak school (EPK or Ecole Populaire Kanak) Canala, only establishment of its kind still existing in 2013, the students can then join public education. The language is also offered at the private Catholic college Francis Rouge-Thio and public college Canala.
Kanak people
New Caledonia was annexed to France in 1853, and became an overseas territory of France in 1956. An independence movement led to a failed revolt in 1967, and was restarted in 1984, pursuing total independence status from the French rule. 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.