Wallis and Futuna, a French overseas collectivity in the South Pacific, has no flag of its own in law. The one everybody uses carries the French tricolore in one corner and a red cross of Saint Andrew in the other.
A local flag alongside the French one
Wallis and Futuna became a French protectorate in the 19th century, an overseas territory in 1961, and an overseas collectivity when the category was renamed in 2003. The local flag has no legal standing at all. A letter from the territory's secretary-general in 1994 put it plainly: the territory has no official emblem of its own, and the only official flag is the national tricolore.
The design appeared in 1985, developed out of variants in use from about 1976, and it has stayed close to that form since.
Design and symbolism
The field is red. Set towards the fly and slightly below centre is a white square bearing a red saltire, the cross of Saint Andrew, which leaves the white showing as four triangles with their points turned inwards. The French tricolore, edged in white along its inner sides, occupies the canton.
The flag descends from the flag of Uvea, the kingdom on Wallis, and behind that from a much older line of Wallisian flags. The first, in 1842, was the work of Father Bataillon, a Marist missionary, and carried a white cross pattée. Christianity has been central to island life ever since, and the cross has never left the design.
The four triangles have a political reading as well as a religious one. They are commonly said to stand for the three customary kings, of Uvea on Wallis and of Alo and Sigave on Futuna, plus the senior administrator sent from Paris. Red is read as courage and white as purity of intention. Setting the tricolore beside all of that puts the islanders' double identity into the design itself.
Where it is flown
The local flag is used mostly outside the territory, at the airport, and at events such as the Pacific Games, where it stands in for a territory that has no flag of its own to send.
Inside Wallis and Futuna the picture is different. The three kingdoms each drew up their own flags in the 1980s, all of them carrying the tricolore in the canton, and it is those that fly officially alongside the French flag. The unified local flag has never displaced them.
The flag in island life
The flag appears at ceremonies, cultural festivals and traditional events, and residents treat it as their own. Christianity, introduced after European contact, is part of what it means, and so is the colonial history that put the tricolore in the corner. The two sit together on the same cloth without either cancelling out the other.
Similar flags in the region
Several Pacific flags do something comparable, setting local symbols inside a wider national framework left over from colonial rule. Vanuatu and Samoa both tie cultural imagery to that history. The Wallis and Futuna flag also draws on European heraldic conventions, which run through the flags of French territories worldwide.
Related terminology
The 'canton' is the corner section of a flag, usually the upper hoist quarter, where the French tricolore sits here. The 'field' is the background. 'Tricolore' is the standard name for the three-color French scheme.
References
[1] Government of France: Wallis and Futuna Overview (link)
[2] The Flag Institute - Vexillological Terminology (link)
[3] Historical Archives of Wallis and Futuna - Flag Documentation (link)