What Aboriginal people refer to as a Message Stick was significant for travelers in the ancient Outback. Australia is a big country with miles and miles of countryside to walk through and to investigate. Aboriginal communities have been walking over this land for 40,000 years, perhaps even 60,000 years. They form the oldest continuous culture on the earth. They are proud to still be with us. They have something to say which is very old, but always seems to come as a surprise: that land is important, that it has to be taken care of, and that this is what human beings are supposed to be doing. Young men and older ones too would disappear from home for a month, three months, a year or two, traveling long distances. Sometimes they went to trade, following the trading trails to exchange quartzite, ochres, or spear points with distant communities. Sometimes they went to look into the business (the songs and rituals) of neighboring communities, or maybe to find lost relatives, or perhaps just curious about the land, going over the next hill to have a look.
Traveling alone was dangerous. In addition to the routine dangers of unknown country, things like unknown animals and an unknown supply of food and water, still more hazardous was going into the land of other people, the land of other communities which had a Dreaming claim to their place. The single traveler might seem harmless enough, but that person was a natural object for suspicion. He might be a spy, a scout for a tribal group that was following after him, keen to seize the land or its resources of water or food. The stranger might have been expelled from his own community as a dangerous or disturbed person. Moving across the landscape from tribe to tribe or, better, from community to community required some identification. This would be especially true if the wanderer had travelled outside the limits of his own language group. Where speech failed there needed to be some other form of communication. An ancient Aboriginal device to introduce you to strangers, to a horde you had never visited before, or to Elders did not know you were planning to enter their land was the Message Stick. The Message Stick was a small, very light wooden stick, not sacred or restricted, but practical. The Stick was marked with symbolic signs that you could carry with you as you walked along - or ran. The Stick indicated that you meant no harm, that you wished to visit for a short time and then planned to pass on to your final destination. The Message Stick was marked with symbols from your own people that would make you known and, with the Stick in your hand, you could be assured of welcome and protection.
Was the Message Stick a kind of Passport? Yes, you could say that it was. It granted a kind of diplomatic immunity. But it was also something more. The Message Stick indicated that your people still existed and wanted to be known and remembered. The Message Stick was something, then, that could be passed on. In fact, Message Sticks still need to be passed on. Australia and other countries have forgotten that their indigenous peoples still exist, often on their ancient land. The Catholic Aboriginal Apostolate of Melbourne asked and received Message Sticks commissioned by the Wurundjeri people, the traditional people of the area. This year one of them has been prepared and been passed on to the community at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (DSPT) who hope that it can be placed in a prominent location so we can remember them and welcome.
What we need to do now is to find a time and place where we can receive the Message Stick passed on to us. We need to fashion an event that relates us back to an ancient people and to an ancient culture. Along the way it may serve to remind us of the importance of land - our own physical land on which we stand and walk and which we have been assigned to take care of.
Editor’s Note: The placing of the message stick will take place on Sunday, April 19 as part of the reception for the art exhibit “Land and Spirit are One.”
