ABSTRACT
The hypothesis here is that this customary jurisdiction, less visible than customary state institutions such as the Customary Senate, has a crucial role in making law and in shaping or modifying custom; such a role is at least as important, if more important, than these institutions. The trouble case at stake here regards a gender reassignment in the customary civil register. It will be the vehicle to explore the backstage of the (re)production of legal and customary categories, as it reveals an obvious grey zone in custom regarding the possibility of taking into consideration transsexual identities. One of the legacies of the long colonial French history is the survival of a distinct statute for the Kanak, the autochthonous people in New Caledonia. The French government granted the Kanak population the status of citizens only in 1946, the abolishment of the Indigénat Regime, which confined them to a status of subjects of the empire, and kept them isolated in indigenous reservations.
