"I feel so complete. Like really complete."

December 8, 2020 8:35 AM

Decolonising The Arctic, One Tattoo At A Time (The Polar Connection): If Inuit tattooing once teetered on the brink of being lost, it is now returning as an integral part of Indigenous identity and culture in the Arctic. And this re-membering of not only tradition, but also a painful past, is a profound aspect of decolonisation. “We are just getting back to it, so give us a little bit of space to do that, to find what it is for us now. And then also, going forward, with the women we want so desperately to heal. If you are ‘woke’ and you admire the chin tattoos, understand that that’s because we need that healing and that we want it to be special for us.” The revival of Inuit hand-poke and skin-stitch tattooing has also lead to a book, Hovak Johnston's Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines: Revitalizing Inuit Traditional Tattooing (Bookshop) -- which recently won an American Indian Youth Literature honor -- and documentaries like Tupik: Inuit Ink (Youtube) and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril's Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos (Vimeo). More on Tunniit here.

The New York Times and Tattoodo have more photos. The CBC and Indie Alaska have more on the difference between hand-poke and skin stitching.

Iqaluit celebrates Inuit women’s tattoo culture at Piujut Arnaqsiutit (Nunatsiaq News):

“There was just a few of us having facial tattoos just 12 years ago,” said Hovak Johnston, “and now, when somebody talks about someone with facial tattoos, I have no idea who they are talking about because it can be anybody. It’s so beautiful to see all these young people proudly wearing their markings.”

Reclaiming Inuit culture, one tattoo at a time (CNN):

That sense of reclamation is why Inuit women want to keep the tattoos to themselves. Pedersen spends a lot of time on board a One Ocean Expeditions small ship in polar regions with people from all over the world who ask about her tattoos. "We are reclaiming this for us," she tells the passengers. "I hope people continue to be understanding about that. It wouldn't be right if anyone else got these tattoos because it's our way of claiming back what we lost."

Reviving the Tradition of Skin-Stitched Tattoos Presentation (Youtube): A public presentation as part of the "Urban Interventions: Tupik Mi" Polar Lab project at the at the Anchorage Museum. Presentation by Iñupiaq artist Holly Nordlum and Greenlandic Tattoo Artist Maya Jacobsen, on September 10, 2015.

Beneath The Skin, Exploring The Revival Of Inuit Tattoo Traditions (Mythogynist):

Maya’s sketchbook is filled with a hundred pages of a woman’s face, each cryptically drawn with no distinguishable features from one to the next. But each one has a slightly different set of markings added on the face, representing a tattoo found in drawings or photographs of Inuit women in history. In Maya’s career, she has researched and catalogued hundreds of unique Inuit tattoos. But these images are not easy to find on the faces of Inuit women today. Maya’s research is both archival and yet highly personal. She is a tattoo artist dedicated to the preservation, protection and revival of native Inuit tattooing traditions. Having learned the art of tattooing in the Western style, Maya has put down her mechanical tattoo guns for good. Today, she practices the art of hand-poking and stitching, two traditional Inuit tattoo methods.

'This is so powerful:' Kitikmeot women revive traditional Inuit tattoos (CBC):

Millie Angulalik broke down in sobs after seeing herself in the mirror.

Her niece had practised her new skill flawlessly, creating an exact replica of a traditional Inuit facial tattoo on her aunt's face.

"I feel so complete," said Angulalik. "Like really complete. I feel like flying like a bird."

posted by not_the_water (10 comments total)

Wonderful and beautiful. Thanks for sharing not_the_water.
posted by saturday_morning at 8:54 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

There is a moderately large Inuit population in Ottawa, and I occasionally see women with facial tattoos when I am out and about around town. They're really quite striking and beautiful. I don't think I've seen any that look like they were done with the stitching method, though -- those are very distinctive.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:00 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the amazing post, OP!
posted by Bella Donna at 9:40 AM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this is just awesome.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:45 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

These are really amazing. There is a photo of wrist tattoos in the "Tattoodo" link that are particularly beautiful.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:37 PM on December 8, 2020

Yesterday's episode of Molly of Denali on PBS Kids had a character who was an indigenous woman with a chin tattoo, but this wasn't remarkable at all in the context of the show. And then this post showed up and helped me understand, thank you!
posted by indexy at 6:13 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thank you! I saw this great movie several years ago called Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things abotu GLBTQ people in Nunavut and one of the women in it, director/producer Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, has facial tattoos that I was always curious about. There is a lot of joy in these articles.
posted by jessamyn at 8:03 PM on December 8, 2020

Long ago post on this topic. The link is dead, but this one works.

I work in Haida Gwaii a bit, and the simple, even home-made, stick-and-poke technique is making a big comeback among young people, who are looking to their own history and practices
of the pre-contact era in addition to the historical elaboration of Haida art which is now also used in tattoos, not always appropriately.

As with the Inuit tattoos, a person needed to have the right to tattoo a certain crest or design on themselves, and this right is fiercely guarded. A woman I work with got into a fist fight in a dispute about her right to have a sculpin tattooed on her forearm, for example.
posted by Rumple at 9:20 PM on December 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

The first episode of the great Coffee and Quaq podcast about Alaska Native culture and society was interviews about tattooing.
posted by Kattullus at 2:33 AM on December 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

this is wonderful. thanks for sharing.
posted by cabin fever at 10:54 PM on December 10, 2020