Tattooed History

All of my life, I have wanted a tattoo, and when I first saw Maori style designs I fell in love with them. I had to know more about this elaborate style of tattooing. But as I learned about Ta Moko, the Maori name for their traditional tattoos meaning to strike or tap[1], I realized that I could never wear the swirling sweep of tattoo upon my chin. The blood and angst of Maori history, much of it related to the tradition of tattooing, demanded more respect than I had considered in my initial glance at the designs. Years passed me by, and I have kept that decision close to my heart. Yet, Ta Moko continues to speak to me in a deep and meaningful way, as a lesson in how not to treat indigenous peoples.

Ta Moko is traditionally accomplished by carving into the skin with a bone knife and tapping charcoal into the wound. However this is only the smallest part of the process of being marked by a Maori tattoo artist. This art form is less about the tattoo and more about the process of learning about ones history and ones self. When a Maori traditionally wanted Ta Moko, they would approach their family and months of discussion would ensue between the family, the client and the tattoo artist. The designs had to be approved by the elders of the tribe, the Kaumatua.[2] The Moko would incorporate family history, personal history and important aspects of that persons life. After many discarded ideas and discussions, the final product would be etched into the skin. One Maori at the website Aoteora Café, Kat, believes that she has another five to nine years before she will gain her Moko.[3]  The process was important enough that the artist was considered sacred in the traditions of the Maori. It has been said that Moko without process is not Moko.[4] The process helps to consolidate the tattoos duty as a declaration of rank, genealogy, tribal history, eligibility, identity and beauty or ferocity.[5] Ta Moko also has traditionally served as a means to prevent aging. [6] It is the idea of tattoo as a process of self-discovery that fascinates me.

Yet, the design is what pulled me to study Ta Moko originally, and it is the design that makes my eye glide along the contours of those Maori that have been able to get Ta Moko. Ta  Moko is not given to all Maori, only those who have earned it. Some say that Moko is only those designs that one wears on the face, but in reality, Moko may be placed upon ones face, back, shoulders, or legs.[7] The tattoos are not like Western Tattoos. Because they are actually incised in the skin of the Maori, Ta Moko is more like a hybrid of scarification and tattoo than merely ink in the skin.[8]  With the exception of the facial tattoos, the designs on the majority of the body vary from tribe to tribe with no hard rules about placement or design.[9] Men may get full facial Moko, while women cannot. Women traditionally may only have their chin, lips, and, rarely, the sides of their nose tattooed.[10] Women with blue tattooed lips are considered beautiful. The designs incorporate the history of the family, with the left representing the fathers history and the right representing the mothers lineage.[11] Yet the abstract designs also speak of the things that drive the individual who wears it. In a facial Moko, the nostrils are generally tattooed with spirals, the lines of which spread across the face. The forehead is generally tattooed in a V shape. The chin and cheeks vary wildly in design. The balance of positive and negative space play a distinct role in the flow of the tattoo. The designs tend to be balanced and assymetrical. They are geometric, with parabolic curves and circles. Hatching and cross-hatching can play an important role in shading the design. [12] Enough variety exists that it is difficult to find one quintessential Moko.

Each Moko is so unique that, before the Maori learned to write, Chiefs used their Moko designs as their signature on land grants and other official documents.[13]  The ink is a dark blue-black and the color contrasts pleasantly against the tones of Maori skin, which ranges from dark brown to a more Caucasian color. The overall effect makes me think of words like rhythm and harmony. Artist Ben Te Hau McDonald says I feel it is important for the process to be carried out, from beginning to end, by one person for the design to be drawn on the actual body, in order for it to flow properly and enhance or describe the part of the body to be Tattooed.[14] Flow, harmony and rhythm are all musical in their nature and it is the music of Ta Moko that drew me to it. The dance of the lines across the skin and the balance of curve against line also inspires this analogy.

Some of those others have chosen to view Ta Moko as separate from its tradition, something that has encouraged resentment among the Maori. Rightly so. Individuals have been known to pick up a photo of a Maori, walk into a tattoo parlor and have the Ta Moko of a Maori stranger tattooed into their flesh. When you understand how the process of Ta Moko encapsulates the individual, it is easy to see that this is tantamount to identity theft. By wearing someone elses Moko, you are wearing their family history, their accomplishments. It is the equivalent of wearing someone elses military awards or grandmothers wedding dress and claiming them as your own. Yet it is more invasive because the Ta Moko that is stolen is totally unique to the original wearer, where someone else might also have a purple heart.  

This debate is anything but solid for the Maori. Some believe that by sharing their heritage of tattooing with Westerners that they are insuring the future of Maori culture, which has been battered and bruised by the social structures put in place during the colonial period, and by Westerners who have typically viewed their ways as novelties. After all, the Western view of tattoo has generally been that tattoo is generalisable, reducible and transportable. [15] Others say that if a foreigner wants to get a Maori style tattoo that it is alright so long as they do not inject meaning into the design or so long as the meaning is unique to them as an individual and not taken from others. And still others say that Maori culture is for Maori, and no one else should have the gall to make anything Maori into their own.[16] According to Traces of Authority, Pritchard quotes the now-defunct  Maori website, Pu Kaea,  as saying Ta Moko is a facet to the renaissance of Maori tangata the next step in the battle to reclaim a culture and re-assert a Maori identity. [17]  This debate rages among the Maori, while in Europe, a craze of Maori style tattooing has spread. It has been exacerbated by stars like Robbie Williams (who at least had a Maori artist, Rangitu Netana, do the work) appearing with new Moko tattoos on their skin, as well as fashion designers who put Maori designs in their shows.[18] Mike Tyson has a tattoo that, according to Boxing Insider, incorporates design elements from Ta Moko and blends it seamlessly with the tattoo traditions of Borneo.[19] It has also been seen on the cover of GQ magazine.[20] These incidents have inspired others to seek out Ta Moko, and they do not always choose to take proper channels. Lending a slant of authenticity to the theft of Ta Moko are the anthropologists who ignore modern Ta Moko in favor of earlier examples of it, and who write as though it were a dead art with no one to turn to for an authentic idea of what Ta Moko was and how it was done. [21] This is a problem because it makes it seem okay to take the designs. After all, the logic of those who have bought what these academics have written goes, none of the Maori have kept the tradition. It is a dead art, right? They think to themselves. As the pictures at the end of this essay demonstrate, they are wrong. Chief George Tamihana Nuku told Ryan Mitchell of the National Geographic News that you can almost use it (Ta Moko) as a watermark for other issues involving native peoples.[22] In this role, it seems that for many Maori the modern attempt to take Ta Moko as our own, as Westerners, is simply further proof that the West will always trample on Maori rights. . Western academics, as outsiders have decided that this tradition is dead without asking the people who live the path in question. As a result, there are no easy answers for those who are interested in Ta Moko, on either side of the divide between Polynesia and the West.

Considering the importance of Ta Moko and the demand for Maori tattoos among the western culture, some Maori artists have come to offer the use of a related style of tattooing to those who simply cannot take no for an answer. Kirituhi, skin art, is a type of  Maori styled tattoo that do not carry the symbolic and sacred weight of Ta Moko.[23] However, this does not prevent the recipient from being the source of controversy among some Maori who do not believe in sharing Kirituhi with the Pakeha, the whites. Kat says in the forum at Aoteora Café Personally I hate seeing kirituhi on Pakeha, in the main, I think it demeans the real thing. But it's a necessary evil to protect the authentic. [24]

Ta Moko has had a far reaching effect in the Western tattoo art industry, being partially responsible for the upsurge in tribal style tattooing. Yet, is the cost worth it? Is a new flair in Western tattoo design worth the at least partial bastardization of another culture? I personally say no, and it is for this reason that one will never seem me wearing Ta Moko, no matter how I am called toward the beautiful art of the Maori. Therefore I can say that, while Ta Moko has deeply affected how I think about pre-industrial art, a useful thing for an art history student, I will never use it consciously in my attempts at expressing myself visually.

Among Americans, tattooing is, generally, something that one does on a whim. Young college students come home with Bugs Bunny permanently flexing on their shoulder. They do not consider the idea that they might not want Bugs Bunny showing when they are older or that Bugs Bunny is not going to look so nice when he stretches with age. Others are fond of choosing a random Kanji, never considering the deeper meaning of the letter they now will wear for their lives. It is the view of tattooing as little more than a novelty or a fashion statement that has been the main culprit of the theft of Ta Moko. It is a beautiful art, a graceful design, something to be admired, and a situation where imitation is nothing less than insult and injury. I am glad that I took the time to learn about Ta Moko. I intend, as a result, when I get my own tattoos, to spend the time to look at myself, to incorporate the process of understanding who I am inherent in the process of Ta Moko, and to make my own Western designs reflect that journey.