Norfolk Island

The year under review was a fateful one for Norfolk Island, and indeed for the entire Pacific Islands region, as it marked the unprecedented recolonization of an island territory by its administrative power without the territory’s consent, an anachronistic act going against the current of decolonization of the past six decades and comparable in modern history only to the reactionary French policies toward its Pacific possessions from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. Australia’s recolonizing policies sparked an outburst of Norfolk Island nationalism and a well-organized resistance movement struggling both locally and globally for the restoration of democracy to the island community.