TATTOOING RETURNS TO SOLOMON ISLANDS AFTER DECADES-LONG BAN

Honiara: An ancient Polynesian ‘kastom’ (traditional culture) of tattooing in the Solomon Islands has been revitalised after it was banned for decades by fundamentalist churches on remote islands.

The practice is flourishing again on the island of Bellona, 80 years after Christian missionaries arrived there and ended the practice. Much of the knowledge of the designs - distinctive heavy ink block ‘taukuka’ mixed with detailed patterns – survived, but no longer carry the same meaning.

Bellona and neighbouring Rennell Island are tiny, but the tattoos signify a new confidence in their identities.

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Boland Green Kaituu is a mataisau (tattooist) from Bellona and is considered the best in the Solomon Islands at what he does.

“In the Christian Bible, or belief, they say the body is a temple, so if you put a design on it, you dirty the temple. That’s why they ban it,” he told SBS News.

“They were not stopping our culture, they were killing our culture, so we have to dig it back and do it again.”

Returning home to Bellona from the capital Honiara, BG, as he is known, is now building his family house and doing what was once forbidden on the island. There is no national government presence and churches remain powerful.