Reclaiming suppressed Indigenous tattooing
Body Language traces reawakening of cultural tradition
It’s an old photograph, dated 1881, but it reveals a lot about how much Indigenous culture was changed by colonization.
It shows four high-ranking Haida men. On the far right is Chief Xa’na. He’s not wearing regalia over his torso so you can see the grizzly bear tattoo on his chest. What’s remarkable is that the tattoo is a smaller version of the grizzly bear design on the totem pole beside him.
Whether Haida or Squamish, Musqueam or Heiltsuk, there would have been a visual culture with common motifs that linked bodies and objects. It would have connected the outside world with the inner.
A turning point for tattooing as an active cultural practice occurred after the federal government banned the potlatch in 1885 and then started to strictly enforce it in the 1920s. The ban was especially harmful because tattoos were traditionally done at potlatches as a representation of each clan’s repertoire of stories.
A new exhibition at the renovated Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast art has brought together the work of five body artists who are part of a revival of contemporary Indigenous tattooing. They include Corey Bulpitt, the great-great-great-grandson of Chief Xa’na.
The exhibition is called Body Language: Reawakening Cultural Tattooing of the Northwest.
Dion Kaszas, the guest curator, said that while the potlatch ban had a big role, the suppression of tattooing and body piercing began earlier in the 19th century with the arrival of the first Christian missionaries.
“Here on these lands, there is a vested interest in the erasure of Indigenous identity because it’s identified with land, place and resources,” Kaszas said. “The erasure of our identity, including our tattoos, is part of that imperialist, colonialist project.”
The other Indigenous tattoo artists in the exhibition are Nakkita Trimble (Nisga’a), Nahaan (Tlingit), Dean Hunt (Heiltsuk) and Kaszas (Nlaka’pamux).
Kaszas is the only artist who is not from the Northwest Coast in the exhibition. As a Nlaka’pamux, he’s one of the Interior Salish group of First Nations. The Nlaka’pamux traditional area includes Lytton and Merritt in the Fraser River Canyon and South Interior.
He said the meaning of tattoos is different depending on the Indigenous group. On the coast, tattooing was traditionally related to clans and the crests a person had a right to display. Tattoos reflected the hierarchical social structure of each nation.
“For us, we don’t have that same system,” Kaszas said of the Nlaka’pamux. “Ours is more specifically and acutely associated with our spiritual journey. We would go out and fast and try to find a spiritual guide or helper for this world. Sometimes we would receive that in a vision and that is what you would tattoo.”
Before contact with Europeans, most tattooing would have been done with a bone needle or sharpened rock. After contact, there is also evidence of copper needles being used.
Ink or pigment varied from one group to another. Soot from the bottom of a pot would have been mixed with water or spit to make black. The plant devil’s club was also charred to look black but would change to blue when tattooed on a body.
One of the works in the exhibition is Bulpitt’s reproduction of a Haida tattooing kit from the Smithsonian Institution. Another is a photograph showing an ancient pictograph in a remote part of the Stein River Valley and a contemporary tattoo of the deer/lizard creature on an arm by Kaszas.
He said calling the exhibition Body Language makes a point of connecting body adornment to all of Indigenous culture.
“People think about tattooing in the way the academy has studied it so that you become an expert in tattooing or in basketry design,” he said. “These motifs and designs are associated with a visual and material cultural that goes throughout everything we have. I get a lot of inspiration from designs on basketry and on pictographs. We’re reaching back into the past to bring it into the present to take into the future.”
Body Language is the first exhibition in the gallery after its $1.5 million renovation which has opened the main floor and added exhibition space on the mezzanine.
Body Language: Reawakening Northwest Cultural Tattooing of the Northwest continues to Jan. 13, 2019 at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art.