NMA_IR_5032_0001

Title: A message stick carved at Ngukurr to advise Mara people at Booroloola about a ceremony at Bing Bong

Description: NMA description: "A message stick made of wood incised with line decorations. The message stick has also been coloured with ochre."

Message: Harris: "The ceremony was the final part of a funeral ceremony for an old man who had died at Limnen River. He was a Mara man . He was Gordon Forrest’s father. [...] The exact purpose of the stick was to advise people from Borroloola to meet some Ngukurr people at Bing Bong for the ceremony"

Date Created: 1949

Notes on date created: JH wrote: "Sometime in 1949 or 1950, a message stick was carved at Ngukurr (then the Roper River Mission). [...] Those who saw the stick in 1949 say they have never seen one since. They say it is the ‘last stick’."; 1949ca

Item type: message stick in a collection

Subtype: traditional

State/Territory: NT

Notes on linguistic areas: The origin of the message stick is Ngukurr

Cultural region: TopEnd

Semantic domains: sd_ceremony_funeral

Dimension 1: 140mm Dimension 2: 15mm Dimension 3: 10mm

Materials: ochre, wood

Institution/Holder file: The National Museum of Australia object identifier: IR 5032.0001

Collector: Ngurkurr message stick collection

Media copyright: The National Museum of Australia

IRN: 5032.0001

Notes: John Harris replied to PK on 28 August 2021: "Hi Piers, I am glad someone is researching message sticks. I am glad my friend Laura put you in touch with me but she has slightly mis-remembered our conversation. The truth, however, is even better than that. There are actually TWO message sticks. There is indeed a message stick connected with the first Christian funeral on Groote Eylandt or, more specifically, a memorial service for Dakalarra some weeks after the funeral as he had naturally been buried quickly. This stick is NOT in the museum. I have it, or at least my brother does. The message stick I deposited at the Museum was reputedly the last stick from the southwestern Gulf communities. It has a complex and fascinating life story. I attach my notes. (Laura, you will be very interested in this too). This stick needs to be written up properly. I am gradually getting everything out of my head onto ‘paper’ but …… Please stay in touch about this. Kind Regards John John W Harris" John Harris's attached notes (sent to PK on 28 August 2021): THE STORY OF THE MESSAGE STICK – John Harris’s notes (This is the draft story so far. More information will be provided in due course) 1) Sometime in 1949 or 1950, a message stick was carved at Ngukurr (then the Roper River Mission). The stick was to advise Mara people at Borroloola about a ceremony 2 ½ months later at Bing Bong. Yulki Nungumajbarr says she saw the stick when she was a small girl. Kevin Rogers says that he also saw the stick when his grandfather showed it to his father. Remarkably,Kevin related this information to me BEFORE the message stick reappeared in August 2008, not having seen it for 60 years or known that it still existed. We published his recollections in our Ngukurr book We Are Aboriginal before the stick resurfaced. I think this stick is remembered because it was the ‘last stick’ and associated with a memorable and significant ceremony. 2) The ceremony was the final part of a funeral ceremony for an old man who had died at Limnen River. He was a Mara man . He was Gordon Forrest’s father. (I am yet to find out his exact relationship to the other people in this story!) 3) The exact purpose of the stick was to advise people from Borroloola to meet some Ngukurr people at Bing Bong for the ceremony. The messenger who carried the stick gave the stick to Simon at Borroloola. Simon was a Mara man. Simon did not use a surname. Simon’s descendants use Simon as a surname. 4) Three canoes went from Ngukurr to Bing Bong. The people in the canoes were related to Simon. Yulki’s mother, Bessie, was sister to Queenie, Simon’s wife, (Bessie is very old but still living – died since I wrote that). Kevin Roger’s father, Roger, was also a brother-in-law of Simon. Canoe 1: Reuben Nunggumajbarr. Yulki was in this canoe. Canoe 2: Calico (Henry Nunggumajbarr’s father) Canoe 3: Roger. (Kevin Roger’s father). 5) The 3 canoes went down the Roper River, then south down the gulf, sleeping for a day or two at different places – Roper Mouth, Limnen River, Rosie Creek, Central Island, Macarthur River. (Must find traditional names for all these places) (“We ate turtle and fish and lilies all the way.”) 6) They then went to Bing Bong where they met Simon and his people for the ceremonies which lasted for two weeks on the waxing moon until full moon. The remains of the dead man from the previous year were wrapped in paper bark. Yulki and Roger say this was the last paper-bark coffin they have seen (but this does not necessarily mean it was the last such burial in the region.) 7) After the ceremony was finished the three canoes went to Borroloola for a few days. Then they returned to Ngukurr by the same route they had followed on the way down. 8) About 1960, ten years after the ceremony, Simon gave the message stick to Max Field, in Borroloola. As Max says, Simon gave it to him ‘because he was my mate and he thought I might like it.’ Max did not enquire much about the stick at the time, not being particularly interested ‘in that kind of thing’ as he said to me – he simply put it in a safe place. Max remains a close friend of Simon’s family. 9) In August 2008, Max Field attended the Ngukurr Centenary. He brought the stick with him and to show me and asked if I could interpret the stick. I could partly interpret it (I have a similar stick given to my father. My father had once had several sticks and explained about how to read them. Message sticks are not complicated. They are to authenticate the bearer and also to function as an aide memoir. Thy contain very basic essential information but bearer knows the full story.) 10)Max Field gave the stick to me for safe keeping and to ascertain its value as an artifact of interest to a museum, preferably an Australian museum. 11) This is my ‘reading’ of the stick. One face of the stick (‘front’) says that a large number of people will travel by canoe. The ‘top’ face is a calendar which says that the ceremony will take place following two full moons on the next rising (waxing) moon after that, up until the next full moon. The face opposite the canoe (‘back’) face is authenticating marks – clan marks? – but the simpler marks on the underside (‘bottom’) may be decorative only. The stick was both a passport and an aide-memoire, its full meaning known to the bearer. The timing of the ceremony is the most crucial information which the bearer may need to check precisely) 12) Those who saw the stick in 1949 say they have never seen one since. They say it is the ‘last stick’. Those people who saw the stick for the first time at Ngukurr in August 2008 were extremely interested. They all say they had never seen one before at all. John Harris wrote on 30 August: "Dear Piers, I am glad someone is interested in the stick. It is definitely at the NMA and I will find out how it has been accessioned. The part of the story you don’t know is that Max Field, to whom Simon gave the stick in Borroloola, had terminal cancer when he showed me the stick at Ngukurr in 2009. He asked me if I could read it and was delighted I could because he basically knew its story and I confirmed it. But his reason for showing me was really otherwise. Eventually he got around to asking me if I thought it had any value. I agreed to find out. I approached Michael Pickering who was head of Indigenous whatever at NMA at the time. He suggested Wally Caruana for an independent valuation. In due course, we agreed on a price, Wally waived his valuation fee and I sold it to NMA on behalf of Max Field. The price was quite enough buy a good bed and to provide palliative care for Max Field before he passed away not long afterwards. So this stick has a long and interesting journey and has only come to light because Max heard I would be at Ngukurr and drove up from Borroloola to find me. Otherwise it would, I suspect, have simply disappeared, thrown out probably with other junk in his drawer where it had been for 50 years. Below this email are some not-very-good photos. They are approximately the actual size of the stick. I have some photos somewhere of most of the participants in the story of the stick. Possibly even Simon if I can find it. Cheers John" John Harris forwarded the following email: "From: John Harris <jwharris@bible.org.au> Subject: message stick Date: 27 January 2009 at 5:51:34 pm AEDT To: "wallycaruana@optusnet.com.au" <wallycaruana@optusnet.com.au> Dear Wally, I’m John Harris and your name was given to me by Michael Pickering at the national Museum. I don’t know if we have met. Probably not but I am well known in some circles for my writing on Aboriginal history etc. I am holding a message stick from Eastern Arnhem Land. It’s little, about 13 cm long and originally painted with ochre which is rubbing off a bit. I attach a couple of photos. If it belonged to me I would donate it to the museum but it belongs to an old chap – a whitefella like me – who is very old, very sick and very broke. So I guess I should try and get him something for it. His name is Max Field and he is currently undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. The quite amazing thing about this message stick is that I have been able to reconstruct its story. An old Aboriginal man - Simon - gave it to Max in Borroloola about 1960 because ‘he was a mate and he thought he might like it’. Max at the time was not interested much in its story or anything, accepted it as a gift but he asked no questions. Last August I attended the centenary of the Ngukurr (Roper River) community. I had helped them write a book and photographic record of their history. In that book one of the Ngukurr elders, Kevin Joshua, wrote that he had only once ever seen a real message stick when he was a small boy ie 1950 or so. His father had showed it to him and read it to him. He said it was the last message stick he had ever seen. Well this is turning into a long story but Max Field decided to attend the centenary celebrations in Ngukurr and drove from Borroloola. Trying to work out what would happen to his effects, he thought of the message stick. He had heard I was going to be there at Ngukurr and thought that if anyone could read it maybe I could. I had never actually met him before but he knew of me. Anyway he showed me this stick and asked me what it meant. I could partly read it. Sticks of course never have the full story, not away from the bearer, functioning as an aide memoire and a kind of passport. It referred to a ceremony that people would travel to by canoe and gave a calendar and clan markings. As I was trying to read the stick, someone with a video camera asked me if they could video me and the stick. Thus the event became a little public and people took notice. An elderly woman, Yulki Nungumajbarr, overheard me and came up to us. ‘I was on that canoe trip’, she said. “My family went with a lot of other people to Borroloola for a ceremony when I was a little girl. It took us a few weeks to get there, eating turtles and fish and water lilies.’ Well we worked out a lot more things but to cut a long story short, this message stick was sent from Ngukurr to Borroloola about 1950 to plan a ceremony. It is the last message stick ever to have been seen by these people, as they say none have been carved or used since. It is actually the last real message stick of this region. And remarkably it has come back to where it came from! Wally, I have no idea of its value, indeed I did not consider whether or not it had a value, but Max is quite ill and he worries about his wife and asked me if maybe it was worth anything. So there you have it. I have no idea what it costs to have it valued or what its value is or whether it would even be worth as much as its valuation fee, but I feel I should do something for Max. I have a sneaking feeling that the stick with its story are important but I don’t know for sure. The museum of course is interested. I am contacting you at Michael Pickering’s suggestion so sorry to impose myself on you but can you advise me where to go from here? Sincerely John" On 4 August 2022 AF of NMA wrote: "The message stick from Ngukurr is in our collection. It has a receipt number IR 5032.0001. It hasn’t been accessioned yet." NR: additional info from NMA Object Schedule sent by Anne Faris on 25.08.2022

Media Files:

Data Entry: Piers Kelly, Nitzan Rotman