Message stick

This article is about a means of communication by Aboriginal Australians. For the Australian television series, see Message Stick. For the film festival, see Message Sticks Festival.

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.

"A native carrying a message stick" image from The Euahlayi Tribe by K. Langloh Parker (1905)

An Australian Indigenous message stick held in the National Museum of Australia

Message stick inscribed with notches and strokes and their codified meaning (Howitt, 1889)

Description and use

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 a cylindrical or slightly flattened shape.

Traditionally, message sticks were passed between different peoples, language groups and even within clans 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. 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.

They were sometimes referred to as talking-sticks or stick-letters, according to Robert Hamilton Mathews in 1897.

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).

Historical accounts

Anthropologist Alfred Howitt wrote of the Wurundjeri 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 an enumeration of stages or camps is made, a method is used (see Australian Aboriginal enumeration) [to explain this].

Jeannie Gunn wrote about life at a station near the site of the town of Mataranka 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...

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. The sticks acquired a function as a tool of diplomacy, especially in Northern Australia.

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Museum Collections

Australian Museum	Aboriginal Message Sticks from the Australian Museum collection The Australian Museum holds 230 message sticks in its collection.
South Australian Museum	The South Australian Museum holds 283 message sticks in its collection.
British Museum	The British Museum holds 74 message sticks in its collection.
National Museum of Australia	The National Museum of Australia holds 53 message sticks in its collection.
Pitt Rivers Museum	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.

Modern cultural references

• Message Stick was an Australian TV series.
• The student newspaper of the University of New South Wales goes by the name Tharunka, which means message stick in a Central Australian dialect.
• Message Stick is a business owned by Aboriginal Australians, started in 2003. It works closely with the Federal Government to influence Government policy to support economic development, including business ownership and entrepreneurialism.

See also

• Australian Aboriginal enumeration
• Australian Aboriginal artefacts
• Devil's Pool, Australia
• Koori Mail
• National Indigenous Times Australia's largest circulating Indigenous affairs newspaper

Further reading

• Allen L (2015) Message sticks and Indigenous diplomacy. In: K. Darian-Smith, P. Edmonds (eds). Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. New York: Taylor & Francis, 113–131.
• Bastian, A. (1880) Message-sticks der Australie. Verhandlungen der Berliner Anthropologischer Gesellschaft 240–242.
• Bastian, A. (1881) Australische Schriftsubstitute. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Transactions 13:192–193.
• Edye, I.G. (1903) Aboriginal message sticks. Science of Man 5(12): 197–198.
• Hamlyn, Harris R. (1918) On messages and ‘message sticks’ employed among the Queensland Aborigines. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 6: 13–36.
• Howitt, A.W. (1889). Notes on Australian message sticks and messengers. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 18: 314–332.
• Kelly, Piers. 2019. Australian message sticks: Old questions, new directions. Journal of Material Culture 1-20.Online First
• Mountford, C.P. (1938). Aboriginal message sticks from the Nullabor Plains. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 62(1): 122–126.
• Thorpe, W.W. (1926). Aboriginal message sticks. Australian Museum Magazine 2(12): 423–425.

External links

• Australian Message Sticks Database