A message stick is a public communication device used by Aboriginal Australians. The objects were carried by messengers over long distances and were used for reinforcing a verbal message. Although styles vary, they are generally oblong lengths of wood with motifs engraved on all sides. They have traditionally been used across continental Australia, to convey messages between Aboriginal nations, clans and language groups. In the 1880s, they became objects of anthropological study, but there has been little research on them published since then. Message sticks are non-restricted since they were intended to be seen by others, often from a distance. They are nonetheless frequently mistaken for tjurungas.[1] the term 'message stick' is also sometimes applied to similar objects made by Indigenous people of North America, housed in the Peabody Museum Harvard and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley.
The message stick is usually a solid piece of wood, around NaNcm (-2,147,483,648inches) in length, etched with angular lines and dots. Styles vary, but they are usually a cylindrical or slightly flattened shape.[2]
Traditionally, message sticks were passed between different peoples, language groups and even within clans[3] to make alliances and to manage the movements of people and goods. They were often used to summon neighbouring groups to ceremonies, including mortuary or initiation ceremonies. Identifying marks inscribed into the stick would convey the relationship.[4] [2] When messengers entered another group’s country, they would first announce their presence with smoke signals, so that they would be taken safely with the message stick to the Aboriginal elders, to whom they would speak their message.[3]
They were sometimes referred to as talking-sticks or stick-letters, according to Robert Hamilton Mathews in 1897.[5]
Anthropologist Alfred Howitt wrote of the Wurundjeri people of the Melbourne area in 1889:
Jeannie Gunn wrote about life at a station near the site of the town of Mataranka in the Northern Territory in 1902:
Donald Thomson, recounting his journey to Arnhem Land after the Caledon Bay Crisis in 1935, writes of Wonggu sending a message stick to his sons, at that time in prison, to indicate a calling of a truce. In etched angles, it showed people sitting down together, with Wonggu at the centre, keeping the peace.[6] The sticks acquired a function as a tool of diplomacy, especially in Northern Australia.[2]
The Australian Museum holds 230 message sticks in its collection.[7] | ||
| The South Australian Museum holds 283 message sticks in its collection. | ||
| The British Museum holds 74 message sticks in its collection. | ||
| The National Museum of Australia holds 53 message sticks in its collection. | ||
| The Pitt Rivers Museum holds a message stick from the 19th century made of Acacia homalophylla which originates from Queensland. Originally sent by a Yagalingu man to a Wadjalang man, it is an invitation to hunt emu and wallaby. Zig-zagged symbols carved into the wood represent ‘emu’ and the cross-hatching represent ‘wallaby’. The British Museum holds a Kalkatungu message stick, collected by Charles Handley in 1900, created to communicate the death of three children through a combination of diamond-shaped engravings. |