preserving ancestral tattooing technologies

A practice all but erased by colonization, traditional tattooing by Indigenous cultures was deemed savage by settlers with many communities concealing the practice for fear of reprisals by church and state. A new generation of Indigenous tattoo practitioners is reawakening our tattoo practices, which heals Indigenous communities.

Indigenous community members who receive traditional tattoo medicine find the process transformative. The conversations and emotions around these exchanges are life giving with the process touching on struggles around grief and mourning what has been lost – a loss of culture, identity, belonging - and ultimately, feelings of reconnection and strength to continue on, despite being affected by residential schools, the Indian Act, the child welfare system, the 60s Scoop, systemic and environmental racism, and more.

Combined, these colonial traumas have affected all Indigenous people in so-called Canada, directly or indirectly, and the trauma is ongoing. Colonial assimilation and genocide have transformed from, for example, residential schools to the prison system (Indigenous people are 4% of the Canadian population yet make up 30% of that in prison), the 60s Scoops to the still-present child welfare system, overt environmental racism to more subtle tactics such as the Duty to Consult with Indigenous communities and UNDRIP, yet neither of these is enforced and Indigenous communities do not have veto power over resources extraction.

"The displacement of Indigenous peoples within Canada from their traditional land bases and the severance of their cultural connections from the land and traditional lifeways has resulted in social, cultural, spiritual, emotional and physical disruptions causing profound social and health impacts related to cultural losses, alienation and identity disruption... Former [UN] Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, described [it] as a crisis where Indigenous communities live in situations comparable to third world conditions..." (Mitchell et al., 2019)

Traditional tattooing is powerful practice within our communities and directly pushes back against the colonial nation state. It is a relationship to our Indigenous ancestors, a mark filled with intention that we wear as expressions of who we were, are and will be. Our marks can be given for coming to various points in our lives that are meaningful, transformative and empowering. For us as Indigenous peoples to thrive, we must live our ways. This means coming forward and standing in our authenticity, with our traditional markings on our bodies so that people know who we are, so that we take up our rightful places/spaces, on the land, whether that be urban or rural.

Traditional tattooing technologies are poke, stitch and superficial cutting of skin using bones, quills and rocks then rubbing, poking or sewing in inks made from soot and plants. In our contemporary practice because of the potential for disease and illness, sterile disposable needles are used to protect those receiving tattoos. While contemporary tools are used, the knowledge of our ancestral practices and tools must be shared.

A new generation of Indigenous traditional tattoo practitioners is reawakening our tattoo practices, which creates and nurtures Indigenous communities.

Indigenous tattooing has been practiced for thousands of years including in Coast Salish territories, the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains using bones, porcupine quills, and rocks to sew, poke and cut the skin, with inks made from soot and plants sewn, poked or rubbed into those holes and cuts to create designs. In our contemporary practice because of the potential for disease and illness, sterile surgical-steel needles are used to protect those receiving tattoos. 

These designs had many meanings. Some were about coming of age, different stages of life, status, lineage, responsibilities and roles, celebration, mourning, warfare, peace, dreams, visions, stories…

The intentions and stories behind these markings, the ceremonies and protocols that surround and support them and call them in, and the responsibilities that come after with carrying those markings are what defines a traditional skin marking and what differentiates it from western tattoo culture.

Traditional markings are important for our cultures in many ways:

• A reminder of who we are as a people
• A testament to our ancestors and everything they did for us to be here today
• A lesson of how to carry ourselves on these lands, with other humans and more than humans
• Represent our responsibilities as native peoples and help us to carry and do those responsibilities.
• Engage us with our authentic selves
• Inform others that we are here. That we have not vanished. That we do not belong in a museum. Speaking of archives.
• They are our archive. We embody our archive. In our oral histories, our storytelling, our artmaking, our skin marking… these all exist within our bodies.

As the traditional tattoo revival is a relatively new awakening here in Canada (not so in other parts of the world like the South Pacific where those practices did not experience as much disconnection), access to this medicine is in demand however practitioners are few. We are part of a growing community of Indigenous cultural care workers who gift skin marking as a mode of embodied healing and empowering community and celebrating Indigenous visual language and culture.

Our aim is to:

- bring the knowledge and practice to urban and rural communities across Canada in a more sustainable, ongoing way, so that communities members know when to expect this engagement and can plan for it. This is significant as many community members have socio-economic challenges and must plan this well in advance to arrange for things like funding, childcare, accessibility for older community members, to have their Elders and Knowledge Keepers present.

- create an ongoing gathering for practitioners, which has yet to happen, as a place to share knowledge with each other around methods and methodologies. Ultimately, we would like to include practitioners from other parts of the world with very robust Indigenous tattooing practices such as Samoa and the Philippines.  

Indigenous Tattoo Revival Documentary, Filipino, Nlaka’pamux, Tlingit, and Tahitian. Episode 3 

We work with urban and rural communities to bring this practice to various locations across so-called Canada. It can take the form of a tattoo gathering, an art gallery or museum performance wherein we publicly tattoo community members, sometimes we gather in various community venues and work amidst other artists such as during powwows and cultural activities, we are often part of panel discussions and give presentations.

Indigenous populations, urban and rural, are perpetually underserved in this country. 

The methods of traditional tattooing that we use - handpoke and skin stitch -- inherently include the passing on of protocols that apply to the tattoo practitioner's responsibility:

- to themselves as cultural carriers: this slow, intentional tattoo medicine takes time and care, attention, patience, lasting many hours as times to achieve something small yet powerful, and this transforms practitioners into wellsprings, channels through which ancestors heal their people. With every poke and every stitch, the community members become their authentic selves.

- to community: healing and care are fundamental to Indigenous ways of being, to relational ethics. In this light, practitioners move into these relational states of being with community in openness, to gift tattoos that in their essence, are transformational, linking them to their ancestors via intention and the meaning of these visual symbols.

- to Elders: our guides, knowledge holders, healers, these community leaders provide practitioners with grounding, humility, confidence, and stories that hold the responsibility and reciprocity needed to be in good relation. With much of Indigenous traditional tattooing knowledge hidden and sometimes even lost, practitioners approach Elders with care and ask for knowledge that may not be readily known. For Elders and knowledge holders to see this practice being awakened is empowering, making it known that Indigenous people are not disappearing, in fact, they are more present and embodying their visual culture than ever before.

The naashkopichikun collective is made up of 3 Indigenous practitioners. Dion Kaszas (Nlaka'pamux, Métis), Sheri Osden Nault (Métis, Nehiyaw) and Mel Lefebvre (Métis, Nehiyaw). We do this work directly with Indigenous communities in various provinces across so-called Canada in a variety of ways: one-on-one with individual community members, within larger groups of traditional tattoo practitioners, as part of art performances, panels and presentations, at conferences and expos; when we are gifted the opportunity to engage with community, we accept! 

The Indigenous people we work with represent the fabric of contemporary Indigenous life in this country: urban and rural Indigenous peoples, some have privilege and can travel and pay for their markings, others need a sliding scale, and still others are unable to pay yet need this tattoo medicine. We always do our best to accommodate everyone. 

We are continuously engaged with our Elders and community in order to receive guidance and to understand best the needs of each community we visit. 

Our strong connections to community stem from our ongoing responsibilities to them which is a grounding principle of all members of the collective. For example, Mel Lefebvre has been working with and for the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal for 8 years as a cook, community liaison, frontline worker, and vice president of the board. Mel's master’s and PhD work is centered around Indigenous culture, belonging, identity, healing, reconnection, decolonization, empowerment, and the Two-Spirit experience. Mel has met with urban community organizations such as the Wabano Center in Ottawa to discuss the importance of traditional tattooing and how it plays a central role in our lives as contemporary Indigenous people.

Sheri Osden Nault is a Métis visual artist, community activist, and Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at the University of Western Ontario. They work across mediums including traditional tattooing, sculpture, performance, video, beading and more. Their work speaks to their experiences as Métis and queer, considering embodied connections between human and non-human beings, land-based relationships, and kinship as Indigenous Futurist frameworks. They use their platform and art practice to share knowledges and medicines, and to support Two-Spirit youth. They have been hand poke tattooing for many years, offering safe and accessible tattoos to community members.

Dion Kaszas is an Nlaka’pamux cultural tattoo practitioner and a leader in the revival of Indigenous tattooing in Canada. He has been tattooing professionally since 2009 and started the revival of Nlaka’pamux tattooing in 2012. Dion travels to National and International events, conferences, and tattoo festivals representing Nlaka’pamux and Indigenous tattooing in Canada. His work has been featured in Tattoo Traditions of Native North America: Ancient and Contemporary Expressions of Identity, The World Atlas of Tattoo, the New York Times and the CBC. Dion has created the first ever Nlaka’pamux visual dictionary for which he has had extensive engagement with community Elders and Knowledge Keepers. Dion was co-founder of the Earthline Tattoo Collective which served to teach Indigenous apprentices the practice of traditional tattooing and to educate community about the ancestral art.

We are each a part of our Indigenous communities which is integral to the practice of traditional tattooing. 

Our responsibilities as an Indigenous tattoo practitioners extend into the future and are upheld by our ancestors who expect us to remain accountable. Being in community, developing lasting relationships and giving back through service has created a web of kinship that provides support such as those coming forward to offer their stories and skin in an effort to build our Indigenous wells of knowledge. In return, this kinship and our relational ethics require us to collaborate in a good way, with respect and humility, and ensure the integrity of these stories and practices moving forward. These methods of tattooing inherently include the passing on of protocols that apply to the tattoo practitioners' responsibility to themselves as cultural carriers, the community and to our Elders.

Living our ancestral teachings is as important as those that have emerged in this contemporary context. As dynamic innovative people, we adapt, our circumstances change, and weaving our teachings through the decades is challenging and inspiring as we continue striving to keep the foundation of who we are intact. We need to act in the spirit of our teachings: Before, during and after the tattoo process this looks like providing safe inclusive spaces, listening to participants and their stories, being transparent about our own capacities, providing resources for follow-up and more. 

Traditional tattoo gatherings have been essential to the revival of the practice. This community of traditional tattoo practitioners is focused on reawakening and connecting further to our practices, continuing to provide the wider Indigenous community with knowledge and access to markings, to explore and share protocol, ceremony, embodiment, relationships with our ancestors and the spirit world, the ethics of our kinship systems, and how we heal and transform each other now and in the future, and document and disseminate our experience. 

Bringing together intentions, motivations, designs, tools and teachings from the past and merging them with who we are today is joyous and challenging. Realities and issues around access, intellectual property, expectations, entitlement, identity, safety, and much more has risen to the surface with every new tattoo revealing a new aspect pertaining to this practice. What has revealed itself is that our battlefields look different than in the past, our challenges have a different face, and our warriors are all of us and so we all need access to our markings.

There is much to do and think about, collectively, in terms of the future of the traditional tattoo revival. As traditional tattoo practitioners we often speak about gathering ourselves together to have lengthy discussions around the themes of protocols and logistics of tattooing and gatherings, providing more education for community, developing gatherings in every province, better access and inclusion, the optics and safety around government funding and fundraising, health and safety, non-Indigenous inclusion, intertribal politics, publishing and dissemination, traditional tool and ink making, how we name ourselves, and archival research and repatriation.  

The Naashkopichikun Collective is seeking an office space that would enable us to tattoo community members, and hold gatherings for community and for traditional tattoo practitioners. We are also seeking sustainable financial support to bring the practice to Indigenous communities across the country and in the long term, into the US. We would like to be included in media and conferences. We would like to be able to engage face-to-face more with our Elders who reside in different provinces. 

Due to the forced diaspora brought on by colonialism as well as the forced reserve system put in place as disconnected communities off of traditional territories, it is at times very difficult for us to arrange to meet community members. 

There are also larger supplies we would need in order to make our process more efficient such as an autoclave to sterilize non-disposable tools.

We would be interested in a website with our story as well as merchandise that can be shared with community.

We are also interested in producing a Plains Indigenous visual dictionary which requires research and development as well as consultation with communities.

Mel Lefebvre has been working with and for the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal for 8 years as a cook, community liaison, frontline worker, and vice president of the board. Mel has mobilized medical and psychological services for Shelter clients; implemented regular sourcing of traditional meats from hunters and meat producers; nurtured connections in the publishing industry to procure the donation of an Indigenous library for the Shelter.

These relationships and service extend into the broader community: Mel co-organized a relationship with the Elizabeth Fry Society to lead the development of an Indigenous library for Leclerc provincial prison where most incarcerated women/2S are Indigenous. In 2018, in a collaboration with local Indigenous organizations and the First Nations Human Resources Development Commission of Quebec (FNHRDCQ), an Indigenous adult education centre was formed in downtown Montreal – Kaneko:ta - where students access services to complete high school, CEGEP, vocational school, and university in Quebec. The school is ongoing and championing Indigenous adult learners.

Indigenous children/youth have also been a focus of Mel's community service and over the past five years I have worked closely with Concordia University and the Shelter in consulting with Batshaw Youth and Family Centres to understand and make recommendations for reform of Montreal's child welfare system in which Indigenous children are overrepresented. In 2019, the co-authored report was released One Step Forward, Two Steps Back about the ongoing harms done to Indigenous anglophone youth and their families in Montreal's child welfare system and recommendations for change.

Mel's master’s and PhD work is centered around Indigenous culture, belonging, identity, healing, reconnection, decolonization, empowerment, and the Two-Spirit experience.

Traditional tattooing is another form of art being informed by and in service of community.