The earliest history of Europeans arriving on these islands is when Captain Cook of the United Kingdom landed in these islands in 1775 at a time when there were reportedly 70,000 Kanaks living in the archipelago.
When Kanaks were forced to move to reserve areas of the island, closer to the mountains, they occupied only 10 percent of the area of their ancestral territories given that their population had declined so dramatically due to disease, and their living conditions became very hard [REF].