Now, these modern traditional tattoo artists are not only reviving but also evolving the practice. In fact, they’re the reason … So really it’s just more stealing of something that’s 10,000 years old.”īefore women like Nordlum, Jacobsen, Lunn, and Johnston began working to revive the practice, Inuit tattoos were on the verge of dying out with the last tattooed elders. “On the face? I would be very offended … I know a few non-Native people here in Alaska who’ve done it, and it doesn’t recognize either culture because they don’t even know the meaning … And they’re not of that marginalized society. “I guess it would matter which ones,” she says on whether or not she would tattoo a non-Native person. This has been controversial: A number of Native tattoo artists, and tattooed women, have spoken out against the appropriation of their culture while others, like Nordlum, have chosen to leave room for conversation. The resurgence of Inuit ink within Native communities has also generated interest among Western enthusiasts. There are limits to widening the practice, however. For many modern Native women, much of that hurt is also emotional. Though cotton thread and Western needles have replaced materials like sinew, bone, and porcupine quills, some degree of pain is inevitable, particularly when it comes to tender areas like the face. There are two traditional methods: stitching, which entails sewing the skin, and hand-poking. ![]() The pain of being tattooed has always been a rite of passage. Yet even for those who don’t speak the region’s Indigenous languages and whose grasp on the precise meanings behind Inuit ink might be tenuous, the significance of the practice is as evident today as ever. “We’ve got a pretty good handle on how our culture treated them, but how I verbalize that in English might not do it justice,” says Nordlum, who hesitates to simplify the practice into a convenient “coffee-line answer” for anybody’s benefit. ![]() Translated into English, for example, the tattoos lose much of their nuance. Nordlum cautions against accepting these explanations without a grain of salt: Early research was mediated by non-Inuktitut speakers whose own languages may have been unfit to express Native beliefs and whose own cultures may have biased their translations. Those without tattoos would be condemned to a bleaker afterlife underground known as Nuqurmiut. ![]() Elsewhere in Nunavut, in Gjoa Haven, the Nattilik Inuit have been cited as believing that only tattooed women would be allowed into the afterlife in the sky. Per d’Anglure, Ittukusuk explained that face tattoos were done to please the sun spirit while hand tattoos were said to please the sea spirit. In the mid-20th century, French ethnographer Bernard Saladin d’Anglure traveled to Nunavut in Arctic Canada to interview Atuat Ittukusuk, the last tattooed woman in her Igloolik village. Over the years, academics have recorded various explanations for Inuit tattoos. “So if you have an infection, and you do it right … they can actually be healing.” “Tattoos create wounds your body has to send white blood cells to heal,” says Nordlum, explaining the practice’s medicinal value.
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