Matañ

When we started developing a website for the Marshallese Arts Project, we knew we wanted to include an element of Marshallese culture in the website design.

The project’s research is focused on migration and displacement, we decided to use a design inspired by ‘stick charts’, a tool crucial to the Marshallese navigation system, for MAP’s logo.

There are many different kinds of stick charts, used for teaching geography and wave patterns. They are traditionally used in Polynesia and Micronesia. Alson Kelen, director of the traditional canoe building organisation Wan Aelon in Majel, suggested his favourite stick chart: the matañ, sometimes spelled ‘mattang’.

© Dirk H. R. Spennemann, Essays on the Marshallese Past: http://marshall.csu.edu.au/Marshalls/html/essays/es-tmc-2.html

More information about Marshallese navigation and images of stick charts:

http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/stick_charts/

http://marshall.csu.edu.au/Marshalls/html/essays/es-tmc-2.html

http://marshall.csu.edu.au/MJHSS/Issue2005/MJHSS2005_103.pdf

http://www.janesoceania.com/micronesian_stick_chart/index.htm

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=496721&partId=1

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=486364&partId=1&ethname=236052&termA=236052-1-2&page=1

https://svmshippingblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/mattang-reading-the-pattern-of-the-waves/