Inuit Hand Tattoo

A LIVING WORLD

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As the natural world has started its great awakening, we witness the struggle between winter’s tight embrace and summer’s sweet caress. March is their offspring, the first month of spring. To me, spring equinox, on March 20, marks its beginning.

How are you these days? I sense the energy of Mars who has named this month. A feisty, fierce energy that corresponds with the old Nordic name for this month, Thor or Thord Month, the Nordic god of war. Or 'manure' (gødning), others say, from the word ‘tord’. Turd, in a sense, I guess (!?)

Anyway, this energy gets shit done and waits for no one. Maybe that’s why the International Women’s Day is in March. There’s indeed a lot to fight for. On March 23 we enter the Age of Aquarius, I am told, and a new way of being in this world, feminine, holistic, and caring, will follow.

I met a person who balances these energies, and much, much more.

Maya Sialuk Jacobsen has founded Inuit Tattoo Traditions. She is a tattoo artist, a visual artist, an experimental archaeologist, and a researcher of Inuit traditions. I went to visit her, and I interviewed her for my upcoming book.

Maya Sialuk Jacobsen in her tattooing practice, the room that held our conversation

CONNECTING BODY, LAND, AND SPIRIT

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Inuit tattoos disappeared with the Danish colonization of Greenland. It didn’t take the Danes long to destroy a culture with deep knowledge of survival and a respectful and balanced relationship to the natural world. Old practices, taught by ancestors, spiritual beliefs, cultural anchoring, people and communities, deeply suffered from colonization and the pain is ongoing. A podcast series (in Danish) about the destruction and its consequences, as well Maya’s research and practice, told by her, is highly recommendable.

Maya, originally educated within a Western tattoo tradition, dived into the 4000 years old Inuit tattoo practices when pain in her shoulder put an end to her tattooing job. This opened a pattern world of stripes and dots that balances the natural world, spirits, communities, and individuals. Moreover, the patterns are identity markers and communicate tribe, migration, genealogies, ancestry, and knowledge of survival. They are deeply connected to land and place.

According to Inuit spiritual beliefs, everything is animate, everything has consciousness, everything is imbued with spirit. Survival in a world of hunting and killing, means being on good terms with the spirits of the animals, the spirits of the fog, the wind, the sea, the moon. Otherwise, the animals may not come back, the wind will turn into deadly storms, the sea will rise viscously and with vengeance. This relationship is one of reciprocity and reverence. So, rituals, songs, amulets, are some of the sacred practices to balance the spirit world. Tattoos another – and particularly important to women.

Killing, giving birth, and menstruation are three out of 500 taboos. The biggest taboos. When giving birth, a woman stands with one foot in the invisible realm of spirit. A newborn is given the spirit of a diseased member of the community and the doors to the spirit world are wide open. The tattoos ensure the balance between realms. Women tattooed women, with needle and thread, in faces and on hands.

Maya’s clients are mainly women, some come all the way from Alaska to Funen. Only in the Western tattoo tradition, the customers can choose their motifs themselves. That's because it is about individuality. The Inuit women can choose a body part they want tattooed, but the rest has already been decided by ancestors. Which patterns go where, to which tribes. It is about community and the whole, not the individual.

“When 4000-year-old patterns meet the skin and the right part of the body, when they are embodied, the impact is really strong. The patterns show 4000 years of survival and hunting methods, connected to the land. We wouldn’t be here if our ancestors hadn’t refined and passed the methods on to future generations. It is deeply empowering. The women cry and express that they finally know who they are,” Maya shared.

We talked about decolonization and healing, of belonging and longing. Of navigating a sea of grief, anger, and political activism when it disconnected from the heart. We talk about animal helpers and spirits, residing in names. Sialuk means 'rain', and with this name, all Sialuk ancestors, male and female, are united.

I have thought of Maya these past rainy days on the threshold of a new beginning, spring.

Love,

Birgitte

Misty March 1st morning. The fog has its own spirit, Maya says.

According to Danish tales, Mosekonen (The Bog Lady) brews, elverpigerne (the Elves) dance, or lygtemændene (The Lantern Men) are out to lure you to the bog. The fog is a dangerous situation between visible and invisible realms.

ANIMISM AND THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE (PRINTERS)

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Animism is a term, coined by Western anthropologists. The Inuit and other Indigenous peoples do not have a term for it, because it is simply how the world functions.

Graham Harvey has put it this way in this book, Animism – Respecting the Living World: "Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship to others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) towards and among other persons."

Animism is a set of practices, connected to place. The cool and wise Rune Hjarnø Rasmusen from Nordic Animism, says something in the line of this in a recent episode of the Rewilding Podcast,

"Animism is not the same as shouting at your printer, when it is out of order; it is more like offering it a beer to be on good terms with it."