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Amessage stick is a publiccommunication device used byAboriginal 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 withmotifs engraved on all sides. They have traditionally been used acrosscontinental Australia, to convey messages between Aboriginal nations,clans andlanguage 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 fortjurungas.[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 10–30 centimetres (3.9–11.8 in) in length, etched with angular lines and dots. Styles vary, but they are usually acylindrical 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 theAboriginal elders, to whom they would speak their message.[3]
They were sometimes referred to as talking-sticks or stick-letters, according toRobert Hamilton Mathews in 1897.[5]
Message sticks were inscribed with notches and strokes whose meaning is codified. They are typically given to a messenger who delivers it to a recipient (often after a long journey). The person who carries the stick is present during the inscribing of the stick, when the message to be delivered is recited orally while it is being inscribed; that messenger is present once again when he delivers both the stick and the oral message. Without this oral delivery most message sticks would not be understood (Howitt, 1889). Cases of message sticks being sent and interpreted without an intermediary are not unheard of but are exceedingly rare in our documentation. The figure shows a message stick from Queensland. The first notch represents the recipient of the stick, Carralinga, the final notch represents the sender, Nowwanjung (Lumholtz, 1889).[6]
AnthropologistAlfred Howitt wrote of theWurundjeri people of the Melbourne area in 1889:
The oldest man (Headman) having made such a message stick hands it to the old man nearest to him, who inspects it and, if necessary, adds further marks and gives corresponding instructions. Finally, the stick having passed from one to the other of the old men present is handed to the messenger, who has received his verbal message in connection with it. If any duration of time is connected with the message, or if anenumeration of stages or camps is made, a method is used (seeAustralian Aboriginal enumeration) [to explain this].[7]
Jeannie Gunn wrote about life at a station near the site of the town ofMataranka in the Northern Territory in 1902:
Then he ['Goggle-Eye'] showed me a little bit of stick with notches on it, and said it was a blackfellow's letter-stick, or, as he called it, a "yabber-stick." It was round, not flat like most other letters, and was an invitation to a corroboree; and there were notches on it explaining what sort of corroboree it was, and saying that it was to be held at Duck Creek. There was some other news marked on it...[8]
Donald Thomson, recounting his journey toArnhem Land after theCaledon 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.[9] The sticks acquired a function as a tool ofdiplomacy, especially in Northern Australia.[2]
| Australian Museum |  The Australian Museum holds 230 message sticks in its collection.[10] |
| South Australian Museum | The South Australian Museum holds 283 message sticks in its collection.[10] |
| British Museum | The British Museum holds 74 message sticks in its collection.[10] |
| National Museum of Australia | The National Museum of Australia holds 53 message sticks in its collection.[10] |
| Pitt Rivers Museum | The Pitt Rivers Museum holds a message stick from the 19th century made ofAcacia homalophylla which originates from Queensland. Originally sent by aYagalingu man to aWadjalang man, it is an invitation to huntemu andwallaby. Zig-zagged symbols carved into the wood represent ‘emu’ and the cross-hatching represent ‘wallaby’. The British Museum holds aKalkatungu message stick, collected by Charles Handley in 1900, created to communicate the death of three children through a combination of diamond-shaped engravings.[10] |
