Talk:Message stick

Suggest deleting Category:Nonverbal communication]]
This seems more like verbal communication than nonverbal. I suggest deleting this category and replacing it with something more appropriate. Cbdorsett 08:43, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

writing system?
this is very interesting! however the article needs to be clear about the exact nature of these message sticks. Were they a proto-writing ideographic system, or did they partly transcribe the spoken language? --129.11.12.201 (talk) 12:49, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Images
The image appears to be a Native American artefact, should it be replaced with an Australian one? I didn't see any mention of the American version of message sticks in the article. --124.178.225.5 (talk) 04:14, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm wondering the same thing, why is there a Native American artifact shown in an article about an Australian cultural practice? But I'm not a domain expert so am not comfortable editing the article. Nelson Minar (talk) 01:57, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

There should not be a Native American object included here. These artefacts were have occasionally been referred to as 'message sticks' (eg by Garret and by the Peabody Museum in Harvard) but this usage is idiosyncratic and misleading. Let's remove the image.Von Igelfeld (talk) 13:31, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Further update: the two new images added below the 'Euahlayi Tribe' do not depict message sticks but tjurungas and should probably not be displayed. The Etnografiska museet is labelled as an 'unidentified object' but its markings are clearly that of a tjurunga. The Spinifex and Sand sketch is identified as a "message stick" in the original source but contextual information, and the design itself, reveals that it is also very likely a tjurunga. I have taken these images down. Note that in Western Australia, the English term 'message stick' is sometimes used in popular discourse to encompass a broader range of objects including ordinary secular message sticks, tjurungas/dancing boards and even bullroarers.