Why Did The Maori Of The Pacific Islands Value Tattoos?

The rising of the Maori tribal tattoo

By Ngahuia Te Awekotuku
University of Waikato, New Zealand

Published: 21 September 2012

Moko - the art of tattoo - has always been part of the Maori world in New Zealand. It is about beauty, and belonging. And it is much more than than peel deep.

When the first European explorers came into the Pacific, they were stunned by the patterning they saw on the faces and bodies of the isle peoples, from Rapanui in the eastward, to Hawaii in the north, the west islands of Samoa and Tonga and in the temperate south of Aotearoa - the Maori word for New Zealand.

Their languages, myths, values were similar. Tatu, or tatau, was the discussion used for the adornment of the skin past pricking or cut and so applying colour. The 18th Century mariners carried the word and the tattoo itself to the northern hemisphere.

In ancient times, male facial moko was considered a mark of adulthood and achievement, as much as an agile and flattering beautification. Normally the faces of men were marked from forehead to pharynx, creating a mask-like result which enhanced the bone construction, softened or strengthened the features, and confirmed the virility of the warrior or the wisdom of the shaman/orator.

Ngahuia Te Awekotuku on the onomatopoeic origins of the word "tattoo"

Each line attests to the human'south backbone - taking moko is a painful and exacting process, and the Maori technique especially so.

Dissimilar the other Pacific peoples who used rummage-like instruments that tapped the ink into the skin, the Maori used scalpel-precipitous chisels, which cut and scarred, gouging a raised pattern on the cheeks, forehead, eyelids, and chin.

No two facial moko are ever akin. Information technology is unremarkably gendered - a woman'south facial adornment is restricted to a panel from the central forehead (rarely washed today), nostrils and below to the rich darkening of the upper and lower lips, and a design on the mentum standing into the throat.

The near common selection is the chin blueprint, or kauae, which persisted throughout the colonial menstruation, and which I saw and admired as a kid growing upward in the 1950s. Maori women accept always had facial tattoos. Despite missionary disgust, settler vilification, rude stares and comments from strangers, they accept sustained the tradition.

Why? Considering information technology is a particular artful. It defines and flatters the face, information technology draws attention to the eyes and lips, and a particularly skilled creative person tin correct flawed features and offering an illusion of dazzler. And the illusion is beneath the skin, in the ink, forever.

My own skin was first marked more than 50 years ago, in a self-inflicted ritual that almost Maori children observe, often with each other and usually at school with a compass indicate and pen, or needles bound on to a pencil and punched in.

My mark was a small pointer and, in homage to a favoured comic strip, a tiny skull that turned into a hulk and was later scratched out.

Many pre-teen imprints were shallow and delible. Nosotros express joy about how it seemed to be a genetic coercion.

Nearly of usa moved on into parenthood and responsibleness with the diminishing dots on the wrist or the cheek, the small stars or crosses on the ankle - zero also outrageous, but the marking with ink was a shift from childhood into early boyhood, and we all did information technology. Parents - those who did non have bodily moko - smiled indulgently and considered their ain faded drawings.

Today it is more probable that young people will acquire a machine-practical design, oft as a mark of excellence later gaining educational credits and degrees, or reaching a major sporting goal such every bit the 1st XV rugby team or a national title.

Cultural trip the light fantastic toe competitions and outrigger canoe racing are also opportunities to acquire - and to encounter - the best of contemporary moko. The enhanced celebrity of youth is on display at events such as these.

Robbie Williams, Rihanna and Mike Tyson all have tribal tattoos inspired past Maori designs

Much of this occurs on the bodies of both sexes.

Trunk adornment - swirling curves of blackness on shoulders, thighs, lower back, arms, upper feet, rear calves - has become an opportunity for storytelling as well. Some symbols represent children born, targets reached, places visited, and increasingly, memories of special people who have passed away.

In August 2006, Te Arikinui Dame te Atairangikaahu, affectionately known as the Maori Queen, died afterward a long illness.

Her people were devastated. Many wanted to commemorate her in a special manner, and 16 women chose to memorialise her by taking a traditional facial tattoo. I was humbled to exist i of them. There are at present more than fifty of u.s., generally older and involved in the formalism life of our people. It is a plumbing equipment memento mori.

Merely moko, most of all, is about life. It is near dazzler and glamour, and its appearance on the bodies of musicians such equally Robbie Williams and Ben Harper is non unusual. Although it is ofttimes contentious, raising problems of cultural appropriation, and ignorant use of traditional art as fashion.

Nevertheless we must also acknowledge that Maori artists are sharing this art - they are marking the strange bodies.

The of import reality remains - it is ours. Information technology is about dazzler, and desire, nigh identity and belonging. It is well-nigh the states, the Maori people.

As ane venerable elder stated, more than a century agone, "Taia o moko, hei hoa matenga mou" (Inscribe yourself, and then y'all have a friend in death).

The Why Factor is broadcast on BBC World Service on Fridays at eighteen:xxx GMT. Listen to the tattoos episode via iPlayer or The Why Factor download.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19628418

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