message stick

English

Alternative forms

• message-stick

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

message stick (plural message sticks)

1. (Australia) A piece of wood, etched with angular lines and dots, traditionally used by Australian aborigines to communicate messages between different clans and language groups.
   • 1889, A. W. Howitt, Australian Message-sticks and Messengers, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report of the Annual Meeting, Volume 58, page 842,

     The use of message-sticks is not universal in Australian tribes, and the degree of perfection reached in conveying information by them differs much.

   • 1956, Charles Pearcy Mountford, American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnheim^[sic] Land, Art, Myth and Symbolism, page 466,

     The scattered records of message sticks in the anthropological literature of the last seventy-five years indicate that, in one form or another, they have been, or still are being, used over most of aboriginal Australia.

   • 1994, Robert Layton, Who Needs the Past?: Indigenous Values and Archaeology, page 77:

     A quick scanning of the Australian Aboriginal literature on ‘message sticks’ indicates that it has been fashionable since at least the 1880s (for example, Howitt 1899) to interpret them as mnemonic devices for their bearers, who delivered the message verbally, plus perhaps asome totemic symbol to vouch for the bona fides of the bearer or the sender. Conversely, Yolngu assert that message sticks (balarm) themselves did (and still can) convey information about the precise time that, say, a ceremony is planned, as well as how many people were invited and expected to attend.

   • 2004, Diana Marshall, Aboriginal Australians, page 12:

     The message stick was an important way for groups that did not speak the same language to communicate. Before entering a new territory, Aboriginal Australians would hold up a message stick carved with their group′s totem.

Synonyms

• talking stick, stick letter