: Sorcerers and Healing Spirits: Continuity and Change in an Aboriginal Medical System . Janice Reid.

“French Protestant interpretation” (i la Leenhardt) of the Canaque as someone endowed with a greater spirituality, living in symbiosis with nature, and thinking according to a mythical consciousness. He stated that this outdated image stands in the way of understanding properly Canaques’ aspirations. Yet anthropologists, not to mention the Canaques themselves, a re in danger of going from a mystical Scylla to a socialist Charybdis, as some on the far left are now claiming the Canaques as the original socialist society. Has anthropology any tool to offer for the understanding of current events in New Caledonia that a knowledge of the history of decolonization throughout the world does not provide? Must anthropology, in order to achieve perenniality as a scientific discipline, place itself, like the Catholic church, outside of history? In its efforts to protect itself from accusations of ideological opportunism, will the discipline not end up being equally disliked by all? Bensa’s answer to this ideological problem, which is to listen to what the Canaques have to say in their own language, seems a meek prescription indeed.