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Wallis Island was granted in 1961 the status of French Overseas Territory that provided the islanders grouped under the authority of a local chieftainship with a special jurisdiction. Contact with Westerners and conversion to Catholicism resulted in the cessation of armed conflicts, an homogenisation of social orders and the adoption of a Christian model of communities and households. The notion of ‘aliki, which denotes “what is of higher value” and was embodied by the “king”, finds now its origin in God and has lost some of its social relevance. But these mutations did not alter the representation that Wallisians have of their own identity, which is based upon the primacy of the “land”, fenua, of which the “king” is the keeper.