Wallis << WAH luhs >> and Futuna << foo TOO nah, fuh TOO nuh, or foo TYOO nuh >> Islands are a group of volcanic islands located between Fiji and Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean. The island group consists of Wallis Island, also called Uvea, which is surrounded by a coral barrier reef and about 20 uninhabited islets, and the Futuna and Alofi islands, which lie about 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of Wallis. The islands cover a land area of 55 square miles (142 square kilometers). They have a tropical climate.
The Wallis and Futuna Islands are a political unit of France called an overseas collectivity. Their capital is Matāʻutu, on Wallis Island. The French government is represented locally by a chief administrator. The people of the islands elect a territorial assembly. The cabinet consists of three traditional kings—the king of Wallis, the king of Sigave, and the king of Alo—and three other members appointed by the chief administrator with the approval of the assembly. The Wallis and Futuna Islands also send representatives to the French Parliament.
Only Wallis Island and Futuna Island have permanent settlements. Most of the population of about 14,000 is of Polynesian descent. The islanders raise such crops as bananas, breadfruit, cassava (also called manioc), and taro. Some of them fish. Other sources of revenue include the sale of fishing rights to Japan and South Korea, payments sent home by islanders who work overseas in New Caledonia, and aid from France.
Historians believe that Polynesians from Tonga settled on Wallis Island about A.D. 1500. The island is named after Captain Samuel Wallis, a British explorer who, in 1767, became the first European to visit the island. Historians are uncertain about the history of Futuna and Alofi. Some evidence suggests that the islands’ first settlers were from Samoa and the Marshall Islands. French missionaries first arrived on the islands in 1837. The French officially made the islands a protectorate in the late 1880’s. In 1961, the Wallis and Futuna Islands became an overseas territory of France.
