keyboard shortcuts, OS X, caret, and Ctrl

[Jet7]

There's an aspect of the Customize Keyboard dialog that I don't understand. I'm on OS X.

In the dialog, a number of shortcut keys are displayed with a caret:


I can't tell what key the caret represents.

Is it Alt? Probably not. Posts here say that you can't assign Alt to shortcuts in OpenOffice.
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=341488#341488

Is it Ctrl? That would be my second guess, but it doesn't seem to work. For example, when I assign "About OpenOffice.org" to ^N, click OK, and press Ctrl-N in my document, no About dialog pops up. (Instead, the cursor moves down one line, which I guess must be the default behavior of Ctrl-N.)

So I'd like to know:
1. what the caret means
2. how to assign Ctrl- in keyboard shortcuts on OS X.

Thanks.