Susanna Ounei (15 August 1945 – 21 June 2016) was a Kanak independence activist and feminist from New Caledonia who spent her last years in New Zealand.
In response, the French government encouraged massive migration to New Caledonia to reduce the Kanaks to a powerless minority.
She wrote, "My dreams became a reality in September 1969, when Nidoïsh Naisseline, the high chief['s son] of Mare returned to New Caledonia from France and established a political group called the 'Red Scarves'.
[2] Ounei has pointed out that Kanak women were involved in "grassroots" activism from the mid-19th century, when they tried to hide their husbands and children from the French armies.
[12] Ounei expressed hostility to the Christian Church, which she felt had corrupted the custom and perpetrated male dominance.
[12] Susanna Ounei lost her job in Nouméa due to her work for Kanak independence, and early in 1984 went to New Zealand to learn English.
[1] The Council of Organisations for Relief Services Overseas (CORSO) and the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) sponsored her in New Zealand, and she was later involved in projects with both organizations.
Susanna lived in New Zealand, attended the University of Canterbury, where she earned a degree in sociology, and published several works about Kanak independence.
[14] In the 1990s the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, the secretariat of the NFIP, moved from Auckland, New Zealand to Suva, Fiji.
[15] The Omomo Melen project aimed to ensure that the Beijing conference addressed questions of Pacific decolonization.
[16] In 1995 Ounei represented the project at the United Nations headquarters in New York during the final preparatory conference for Beijing.
She ensured that the draft Global Plan of Action (GPA) included a statement on the situation of women in colonized territories.
In her view the neocolonial relations developed during the French occupation of New Caledonia had resulted in domestic violence, rape and a division of labour that forced women into subordinate roles.