> View Lars' Tattoo Bibliography

On a crisp fall morning in 1997, a small aircraft carried me from Nome across the Bering Sea to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska (Sivuqaq). Landing on a gravel landstrip, I exited the plane to begin my first research project focusing on indigenous tattooing practices and the women who created them.

Since then, the tradition of tribal women's tattooing has been dying out around the world at an alarming rate. For example, the 2,000-year-old custom of Yupik tattooing on Sivuqaq died in 2005 along with its final two practitioners. And in 1998, the last living Ainu woman in Japan with tattooing passed away leaving behind an indelible custom that some scholars believe was 10,000 years old.

For these reasons alone I have crisscrossed the globe to document the rapidly vanishing art form of tribal tattooing; one that, until recently, has traveled on living bodies for millennia.

Of course, my new book The Tattooing Arts of Tribal Women and the articles listed below would have been impossible without the support and tutelage of numerous indigenous elders and historians I have worked with over the last decade. In fact, many of these individuals encouraged me to explore more deeply the complex symbolism of indigenous tattooing practices before it began to disappear from view. To these elders and their families, I extend my appreciation and deepest gratitude.

Lars Krutak
Washington, D.C.


ARTICLES

Making Boys into Men: The Skin-cutting Ritual of the Kaningara Tribe of Papua New Guinea NEW!

Dinembo: Forbidden Tattoos of the Makonde of Mozambique NEW!

The Kayabi: Tattooers of the
Brazilian Amazon
NEW!

Scarification and Tattooing in Benin: The Bétamarribé Tribe of the Atakora Mountains NEW!

Titi: Spirit Tattoos of the Mentawai
Shaman
NEW!

Many Stitches for Life: The Antiquity of Thread and Needle Tattooing

Tattooing in the Gran Chaco of South America

Tattooing Among Japan's Ainu People

Crest Tattoos of the Tlingit and Haida of the Northwest Coast

Tattooing and Piercing Among the Alaskan Aleut

The Mundurucú: Tattooed Warriors of the Amazon Jungle

Vladimir Smith - Dermografo (Skin Artist) de Tepic, Mexico

In the Realm of Spirits: Traditional Dayak Tattoo in Borneo

Borneo's Tattooed Women Warriors - Weavers of the Skrang Iban

Women Tattoo Artists of Northern Borneo

Return of the Headhunters: The Philippine Tattoo Revival

The Oldest Tattoo Shop in Greece

The Vanishing Tattoos of China's Li People

Loosing Your Head among the Tattooed Headhunters of Taiwan

Four Tattoo Artists in Havana, Cuba

Kosovo: Tattoo Art Amid the Ruins

Sacred Skin - Tattoos of Easter Island

Tribal tattoos of Papua New Guinea

North America's Tattooed Indian Kings

The Last Tattoos of St. Lawrence Island

Tattoos of the Early Hunter-Gatherers of the Arctic