mattang / meddo / rebbelib

A stick chart is a Marshallese navigation tool made from strips of palm ribs tied together with coconut fiber to represent patterns of ocean swells. Shells are lashed to the grid to mark island locations. But the chart is not a map of land. It is a map of water—the invisible currents, the wave patterns created by distant storms and islands, the subtle rhythms of the open ocean.

There are three main types: mattang (the large, general chart), meddo (the smaller, more detailed chart), and rebbelib (the smaller teaching chart). Each was individually crafted. Only its maker could read it. The chart was not universal. It was personal—a record of one navigator's experience of the sea.

Marshallese navigators who used these charts could find islands hundreds of miles away in open ocean. They felt the changing patterns of swells with their bodies. They read birds and stars. The stick chart was memory made physical—a diagram of swells, a reminder of the ocean's invisible grammar.

By the 20th century, Western charts and GPS made stick charts obsolete for navigation. But they were not abandoned as cultural objects. In the 1970s and 1980s, as Marshallese independence approached, stick charts were recognized as archaeological documents of sophisticated ocean science. Now they are preserved, studied, and used to teach new generations about wayfinding.