As part of this Thanksgiving issue, we wanted to give a nod to the long tattoo history of America’s indigenous peoples! There is such a rich history of tattoos among Native American tribes that it’s frankly crazy how neglected this area of tattoo history is among historians and anthropologists!
In fact, until recently the 1985 archeological find of two sharpened, ink-stained turkey bones in Tennessee received very little attention. This find is called the earliest “tattoo kit” ever discovered and “suggests that Native American tattoo traditions in eastern North America extend back at least 1,000 years earlier than previously thought” (https://rb.gy/fx1jht). That means sometime circa 3500 to 1600 BCE, America already had a rich tattoo history! So let’s take a small look at one of the tribes that are part of this tattoo history: The Inupiat People of Alaska.
Thanks to a recent revival of tradition among Inupiat young adults, after over a century of indoctrination and oppression which caused traditional tattooing among other traditions to be mostly forcibly abandoned, we see old tattoo traditions once again coming alive. Kakiniit, the Inupiat name for their tattoos, and tunniit, specifically facial tattoos, are used to celebrate milestones in a person’s life.
Specifically, they can be widely found on women, and were mainly done on the hands, arms, and face. There are records of men being tattooed among the Inuit Peoples, of which the Inupiat are a part, but tattoos were mainly applied by and applied to women. The main tattoo artists among the Inupiat in Alaska were elderly women with experience in embroidery. Patterns were formed with dots, zig-zags, basic shapes, and lines and designs would vary by tribe. Kakiniit were done with sharpened bones, not unlike the ones found in Tennessee. Today, some traditional artists use tattoo machines, but the meaning of the tattoos are the same and of deep cultural and spiritual importance to the Inupiat people.
It seems fitting to finish this article using the words of Jana Angulalik, a traditional tattooist, cultural preservationist, and member of the Inuit Peoples: “Whether they are hand-poked, skin-stitched or machine work, they are always only for Inuit to wear. Our kakiniit are here to stay. Never to be banned again. Never to carry shame again” (http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/kakiniit-art-inuit-tattooing).
Originally posted in the November 2024 issue of Art on Skin Magazine.