Vanuatu fights for the two islands

Bob Makim




There is one current issue on which all of Vanuatu is united. “Matthew mo Hunter, tufala isave blong yumi nomo. Matthew and Hunter islands can only be ours,” said an activist of the Tafea Province to which the two volcanic outposts are geologically attached.
“Man Tafea might have the occasional political difference of opinion with a neighbour, but we all agree nobody can take our southern outliers from us. They are closely tied with our custom and the coming of the traditional god Maorijikjik to the southern islands. They have always been ours and will always remain ours.”
Sadly for most Man Tafea, their primary Matthew/Hunter activist and leader of a taskforce concerned with cementing the republic’s—and Tafea Province’s—ownership of the continually erupting volcanoes, MP Ture Kailo from another small southern island, died last year, and a new taskforce leader still has to be chosen.
Whatever the reason for this continuing vacancy, questions are a certainty in the House in the present sitting of Parliament.
The Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) has been assisting Pacific countries with their islands boundaries and where Matthew and Hunter are concerned, this means the sea boundary between France (New Caledonia) and Vanuatu.
When Vanuatu was the condominium of the New Hebrides, ruled by both Britain and France, the southern outliers were quite clearly shown on the French maps as belonging to Vanuatu.
The most recent such map extant was made in 1949. The lone rocky sentinels were administered by the French Residency insofar as they needed administration by occasional visits from a residency vessel. However, the visits were made from Port Vila, not from Noumea.
In the Tweedledum/Tweedledee administration of the condominium, the British Residency alone dealt with some of the uninhabited northern outliers in the Banks and Torres, such as the Reef Islands. Matthew and Hunter fell to the French Residency.
It was from Port Vila, not Noumea, that a small plane was sent in the ‘Fifties, via Tanna, to bomb a wrecked plane on Matthew which was causing alarm to passing yachtsmen, long after the rescue of the stranded aviator.
The “geological argument” for Matthew and Hunter belonging to Vanuatu was clearly made by the independent country’s first head of geological survey, Sandy Macfarlane, who travelled with the flag-raising tour of the late Tafea administrator, Joe Joseph, in 1983, to Hunter first of all.
Interviewed by the Vanuatu Independent for the Matthew/Hunter silver jubilee, Macfarlane said Matthew and Hunter are together with the New Hebrides Arc which bounds the western margin of the Pacific Plate at its juncture with the subducting Australia-India plate.
“The islands of Matthew and Hunter are a natural physiographic extension of the Vanuatu archipelago. They are also age-wise and in terms of their petrology and geochemistry identical to the most recent cycle of active volcanism from centres on the islands of Vanualava, Aoba, Ambrym, Lopevi and Tanna."
Several underwater volcanoes, charted for mariners, spew pumice to the sea’s surface from its depths, on the way between Tanna’s Yasour and Matthew and Hunter.
Indeed Matthew and Hunter and the New Hebrides Arc are separated from New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands by the New Hebrides Trench.
In the cover story of the April issue of ISLANDS BUSINESS, Nic Maclellan observes that the long-running dispute over ownership of the two islands between Vanuatu and France ‘may draw on custom’.
For Man Tafea it must. Maorijikjik used the two islands as stepping stones to the rest of the islands constituting Tafea.
The many legends concerning Matthew and Hunter all use their names in custom.
These vary according to whether the custom is Tannese, Aneityumese or Futunese. Most people happily accept Umaeneag (for Hunter) and Umaenupne (for Matthew). These names were used on a set of postage stamps issued by Vanuatu shortly after the first administrative tour in 1983.
Maorijikjik came from the south by way of Umaeneag and Umaenupne.
Custom chiefs from Tanna, Futuna and Aneityum felt obliged to make gestures of propitiation to Maorijikjik when the government vessel landed them on Hunter on March 9, 1983.
Fowls and kava were offered as the standard was erected and the national anthem sung by the crew of the government vessel, the M V Euprosyne.
The spirits of the south were invoked. Their blessing was sought, and a plaque installed by the French government from New Caledonia was removed.
A natural fireworks display occurred at night as fumaroles created a blaze which enveloped the upper reaches of the island.
Similar ‘kastom’ was planned for Matthew the next morning, but thwarted.
As the ‘gateau huit’, figure of eight island, with a strand of beach at its waist, was circumnavigated by Euphrosyne seeking a possible anchorage, a French war ship hove into view. Politely, but firmly, Euphrosyne was told to leave, or it would be fired on. It left.
The rumblings between France and Vanuatu began.  The government in Noumea denied a landing had been made.
They were talking about Matthew, but Hunter had already received the attention of the southern islands’ administrator and his chiefs. And in a desultory way, the tremors over the two isolated volcanic mountains have been felt ever since.
The value and cost of retrieval of manganese nodules and other seabed wealth has varied, as has the potential of the EEZ for fisheries purposes. France, however, now faces a difficult foreign affairs challenge from its former colony (albeit after a shared colonial responsibility).
France is bound to want to remain a good friend of Vanuatu as it prepares to mark thirty years of Independence in July. All the Pacific leaders will be in Vanuatu at the time of independence for the weighty business of the Pacific Islands Forum. 
The Kanak liberation movement already has a seat at the table, and the Kanak custom senate has stated it has no claim on the two southern islands.
The last days of July and the first days of August would not be a good time for a demonstration against the last coloniser in the South Pacific.
As Man Tafea sees it, for France to make an issue of Matthew and Hunter would make it a re-coloniser. “Tufala i blong yumi nomo—they are both ours” would be the main topic of a demonstration which might not be cheerful and would certainly linger at the French Embassy, on the path of all such “manif”.
A birthday present from the former coloniser is in order as the significant independence anniversary is reached. A torn up claim to possession of the two outliers might be the best offering from France which all of Vanuatu could appreciate.