Exploring New Zealand's Ancient Tattoo Identity | Needles & Pins with Grace Neutral Episode 4

i'm grace neutral a tattoo artist from london i just had it by hand so i just have a tattoo needle attached to a stick when i was young tattooing felt like a small world it was a radical act of self-expression that could scandalize your parents i'm a little tired high right now feel so good today though it's everywhere from the mainstream to the underground what gracie couldn't look like if she didn't her face i'm traveling the globe to meet the artists the rebels and the weirdos who made this niche hobby a global industry this time i'm heading to the southern hemisphere to discover one of the spiritual homes of tribal tattooing [Music] i'm about to do a pull from a hook in my chest attached to a rope tied to a tree on the other side of the planet everyone just wants to breathe in some of the stage and give thanks and also just ask to keep us safe so i'm going to do a vertical and i'll do the point down and take a deep breath in well done thank you so much feel good it's gonna sit here for a couple minutes just breathe some of the air and then get ready for the pull i'm with a group of young tattoo artists on new zealand's north island hanging out in one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen [Music] i've come to new zealand to explore one of the main pillars of global tattooing tribal known as tamukul this is the main tribal body art that originates from the polynesian islands of the south pacific [Music] and as a rite of passage tarmoko is a sacred tradition in maori culture that through the generations symbolizes a connection to your ancestors and your land however these traditions came under threat during colonization where laws were introduced to explicitly banned maori people from using their indigenous language and cultural practices i'm tattooing everyone i'm doing an old symbol that i came across and it's basically um your magic circle so i've only ever tattooed this on um dear friends have you got anything on your palms nah okay does pack a bit of a punch i'm not gonna lie does that feel horrible yeah sorry they say that getting your palms tattooed is like definitely up there for me i thought my ass my palms and my boobs were the worst yeah i'm not sure i'm ready to claim my tumor core just yet i want to go back to my highway and like reconnect with my family who i don't really know down there when we were colonized they didn't just you know like hide the knowledge of our entire history they killed the people who knew it it's not like stored somewhere in a library it's gone forever and that's why things like tamil go so precious because they are your lineage so they're very specific designs depending on what what ewe you come from and tribe and your family and to get it you need to sort of deserve it we also have a huge issue with pretty much blatant cultural appropriation it's totally okay for a white dude to get a completely meaningless tribal tattoo whereas if you see a maori person with a like specifically designed for their ewe and earned tamworker it's still seen as gang related being like part maori i learned to deal with the guilt early on because i had to face it my ancestors are both the oppressors and the oppressed it's quite hard to reconnect when you're urban because you don't feel light enough and you don't feel maori enough [Music] in recent times there has been a resurgence in tamil cool and i'm going to meet an artist called mokko smith whose ambition is to help resurrect the traditional practices of his ancestors [Music] is our practice of marking the skin and it's named after the lizard which is the moko mainly because the lizard used to shed its skin and so do we and the idea is that we're not complete until we're reborn and and our skin's been shed and our new skin's kind of been obtained every maori person or as far as i know pretty much every polynesian back in the day as soon as they hit pure puberty were tattooed and it's definitely evolved within the resurgence of moho into something quite different as well yeah now it's bordering on tattoo culture but my point of reference for moho is what the old people wear in the paintings and now it's become a thing of you know reconnecting with identity reconnecting with the culture the kind of cultural weight that we have behind it i think that's like the real transformative power of of what we work with that's that's the real yeah you hit the now in the head with tattooing i think something that's dying out which i think shouldn't is people learning to solder their own needles and things like that and you with the hand tools you don't use needles at all what new zealand maori have done up until recently is use albatross wingbone but um i'm mainly pig tusk because it's such a good material from the average boar tusk how many needles would you be able to make out of one i can get pretty much two blades out of a tusk okay just to get the flat plate how long would that take you yep an hour an hour and a half so this is the bone here and you attach this to yeah just plastic for now instead of using turtle shell so we're just saving the turtles a bit i mean we don't talk too much about tool making because that's so sacred yeah it is hidden knowledge if you were going to compare this to like a tad like a conventional western tattoo needle this is usually a shader and you tap on top that's my biggest at the moment that's for lining that's for filling big black panels these tools they feel like they're part of me and always have been it's charged with the landscape and the surroundings and that moment becomes you know something really memorable rather than the buzz and the neon lights and the yeah when i finished the first part of my training in rarotonga and i was just about to come back to new zealand we found out that there's a traditional canoe about to leave the islands to sail back down to new zealand my teachers took that as a sign and said look this is your chance to sell back the tools following the steps that your ancestors took but now i feel it's time to take the tools to continue their journey and to go down to my homeland where where my tribe is from and that's the rotorua area there's an island called makoya in the middle of the lake i want to take the tools back to that island to the place where my ancestors practice the art form breathing life into that practice and that's something that hasn't happened in you know we could say close to 100 years can you just go there and do it i've had to go back to our tribal meetings and and put the idea forward to my elders and i've got a cousin who we're going to work on and we're going to make a piece for her which is more contemporary just so we're not trying to walk directly in their footsteps the dream is that our leaders can start to weigh more again you know our leaders were in parliament and hopefully that'll go towards people getting facial mojo again and wearing that in society that's a beautiful goal to have i know that people have been using different types of bone and tusk different cultures and tattooing for generations and hundreds of years so it's not surprising to me that we're here finding a bore task for him to tattoo it's just super interesting because i've never been exposed to anything like this before you know working with the tusks demands a lot of dedication for me as well because there's a lot to cut them shape them not mess it up you know and then keep cleaning them and sharpening them for different jobs just you know become part of our culture now it is what we do what will be a good task for you i'd love that one that would be really choice for the cfo to some good use thank you both for this this is this is really primo check it out holy it's just amazing how far they come out because i've seen some women wearing them around their necks yeah and they're huge when i came in here i was thinking they must have had them in like elephant-sized pigs sort of touched that big but now i understand it's the root of the tooth that goes in no not that's a choice man love you guys kopapo thank you so much [Music] heading back to auckland i'm excited to meet cara mukul's cousin this is the beginning of a tattoo journey unlike any i have ever known everyone this is great ladies i love this it's like hi i've never been welcomed so warmly by such a beautiful group of females i feel very lucky right now i feel like i'm blushing a bit you gotta have soul baby you're holding soul right now oh in there i got a soul tattooed on my belly [Music] really exciting to be the person who was going to be the first one and so many generations to go back there and get tattooed how did you come to meet him and form this tattoo relationship i know like we're from the same tribe and after meeting him the first like first time and talking about what i wanted to get done i was like yeah that's it it's so spiritual is it something that the youth are aware of some of us are disconnected some of us are learning to be more in tuned through the process of getting tamuko people are rediscovering that history and reclaiming it which is part of the process of decolonisation when we have access to that stuff again [Music] getting tarmoko isn't as simple as just walking into a tattoo shop it's a significant ritual often involving family and friends just being there for her yeah that's what's i think most important about this whole thing we're like family so even though we're not blood related and like as maori women so important that we're we're together in these times i thought my weakness was that i was half maori or half jamaican in and out of different kinds of worlds i never really felt that i belonged and that's how i carried myself and then i realized that those weren't my weaknesses and that i wasn't half of anything that i was completely maori completely jamaican completely myself you know completely queer all these kind of different intersecting identities that i can completely own now and i think that that's my strength kara is part of a new movement reclaiming her identity by embracing tarmoko but for many years the tradition has had negative connotations with associations of gang culture and criminality i'm about to meet some members of one of the country's most notorious gangs to better understand their relationship with tamuko and tattooing [Music] new zealand has a large number of gangs with maori descendants making up the majority of members many members have used their facial markings as a symbol of rebellion against the colonial powers [Music] so i am in whakatane and i've come to meet up with a group of maori boys they are part of a gang called black power they've agreed to meet up with me and have a chat so we're gonna go meet them nice to meet you yes thank you for seeing me today how are you guys doing good we're doing good nice and hot today yeah i've got a few wow you're covered and all three of you are members of black power just me and brother judd's i got shorter than the heat went in here in there in here they're big holes yeah yeah yeah after they shot you no before before shot to the head still standing yeah was there any point you thought i have to rethink my lifestyle or was it just made you did it reaffirm your your strength within your family your black power family know it actually reinforced my life for unity with the brothers brothers at the first i'm proud of it could you guys identify your tattoos as being tamara yep could you tell me about because your face is beautiful man it is my identity who i am i'm a maori i'm also a gang member it was just all my people my tribe part of this land the land is us we are tango tv that's what they really are is their stories of your life it's a walking diary yeah don't we there was once saying goes uh what society rejects them throws away the black power picked them up and called them family is a powerful symbol in new zealand and one man has been hugely influential in reclaiming its original meaning [Music] uh so i'm traveling to taneatoa a couple hours outside of auckland to meet tame who is the maori activist tama iti was one of the first people in the country to wear a full face ta'amuco in recent times a fierce and proud activist tame has helped forge the path for younger generations to celebrate their maori identity this is his son's barbershop so he's going to go inside and meet him nice to meet you are we going to get a haircut i want to want to touch up oh well maybe maybe really what prompted me to have a mukbang was a response to the gangster and so we really need to go back and bring back the old markets ask our eldest what do you think that we have a moko and one of them said alone so if you say leave them alone so you're saying that we should not sing the old traditional song well it's the same thing we couldn't really find any answers as you do tomoko the best people we can talk to the old ancient carvers donate the story the shape the design but we not have been radical if you are taking ownership of something that's an ancient times how was it for you after you got your face tattooed i had to live by people staring at you took a period about 10 years before people really get used to it what was it like for you toy like growing up i imagine the kids that you went to school with their parents didn't have full time local face tattoos when you're at school and you're taught to follow the rules then there's my father doing what he's doing there's a bit of a contradiction there so at an early age you find out that not everything and why the society is how it's you know really really is so the fight that these guys fought so that my children could uh have their own language and have the opportunity to evolve our language is um something we're thankful for carmen has actually asked me to tattoo him which is a huge honor and a massive deal for me we're gonna go down to his gallery and have a look at what room he's got left and have a little tattoo session thank you come to the gallery oh cool great i love the way that you use trampolines as canvases as well that's awesome so we're still creating this space [Music] so i just drew something out what i've done is two triangles to represent his culture his tribe and one to represent mine and then i've done two lines off the edge of each side to signify the knowledge and stuff that we passed down through each generation tattooing doesn't get any better than this you know okay you're all done [Music] i've never been touched by a white woman on my skin tattoo i'm always started working on my schedule my mid 40s but i'm still doing it in my mid 60s yeah i mean yeah maybe some more next time we meet yeah for sure somewhere i would love to tamaiti's activism has inspired others to channel their energies into healing those in need here at the mma center in whakatane gang members are offered an opportunity to turn their life around why have you got gloves either [Applause] [Music] definitely a bruise as an instructor or coach i have to kind of adjust to their lifestyles especially in whakatsani because it's very kind of gang orientated and we've seen a lot of boys turn away from gang culture to kind of spend more time in the gym well a couple of brothers come from the gang life coming in here you know getting ready for you know a gang fight or something like that and actually fall in love with the yard in the gym one of our bros he's left the gang and uh he started to find his balance within this gym how old can you start getting tattooed um i was like 18. started i've got a few in jail some of the lifestyles living you know just easy woman drugs yeah i had my children and stuff and i just didn't want my children to go down that lifestyle i guess so training has been pretty good because it gave me something positive to focus my energy on i see you have some tamoko on your on your arm those three things there are for my three children it's brought me a lot of healing and stuff a lot of the depression and kingy has invited us to witness a different event that he believes is crucial to the self-improvement of these men you know i was a gangster for 26 years and this ball is what uh the culture i was brought up in and that's that's why you got the fists over here it was just a meaning a statement to everyone we're fierce and all that kind of stuff been out of the gate for like two and a half years now after 26 years with the gang i'm so grateful that i i still stand here today man up is an all-male support group which is run by the controversial destiny church known for its strict conservative christian values what time you know if the dad said oh son you know you've done a really good job as a boy you'll be like oh you know you'll feel like uh you're now a proud little stallion you know you know our fathers never said that enough to us you know i was usually oh you're useless blah blah blah or you know i noticed with my wife lately that um you know just rubbing their back and holding hands being affectionate and i never used to be like that you had to be soft sort of thing but i noticed she likes that a lot brother can you give it a little bit of a detailed elaboration of what what it is to give a meaningful gift see would you give your you know your fiancee a pair of gum boots as a gift what i have used in the pasta is maybe a small piece of jewellery and it doesn't have to be expensive jewelry just something to add to that sparkle seeing a group of men discuss their relationships with their fathers and weighing up the benefits of giving their wife a bit of jewelry as opposed to a pair of wellies is an enlightening experience but more than anything it was heartening to see how effective community is as a tool to heal a belief that lives at the heart of maori tamukul moku is travelling back to rotorua to visit his tribe's meeting house known as the marai it's here where he will connect with his ancestral community and begin the process of kara's tamil cool this place here my mum is is where the old fairies used to live it's a big thing for a lot of maori like for the tribal area that they come from it's so loaded what i'm going into the people who are waiting for us at the marae are relations so i'm safe in that respect but they are like the top-notch kappa haka group who might even go stand in front of them so i'm a wee bit scared to go speaking and like r-rating in front of them [Music] this welcoming ceremony was not just a homecoming call for mukul and his mother but a welcome for our whole crew family and ancestors foreign foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] we [Applause] [Applause] why [Music] i've never experienced anything like that to be in a place like this you really realize what family [Music] this day and age is a bit of a resurgence going on which is an awesome thing it's who i am it's part of my other identity my culture my tradition and my tamako represents my whakapapa which is my genealogy for me personally it keeps me connected to my culture and it also allows me to display my culture in a proud way to others as you would have noticed your friend your heavily tattooed friend and modified friend when she turned up did it scare out kids you know nobody really stared at her as if she was any different because we come from thousands of years of body mortification you know it's within us our kids know that when they reach a certain age or have performed a certain duty they are allowed to be wearing as well and they love them because that's all they want to be they want to wear like what mom's got what that's called what uncle's got is it's about being part of the tribe not only just the tribe living here now these ones up there these ones in the hall that's what connects us they say that's your friend fall off take it to the hole it lasts longer than you [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was a beautiful moment support for my cousins [Music] compare the tools prepare the design tune them with cara and we can start the [Music] journey encouraged by the support of his community mukul sets about preparing the tools he'll be using to mark cara's skin the pace that i work at here sets the pace that i work at on the map there's just a really nice way to tune in set the intentions could you explain to me some of the things on your body and what they mean yeah we've got different patterns from all over the pacific and parkaci which are maori patterns we've got samoan patterns weaving and tupper patterns tukutuku patterns which are also ours elements about strength and protection and protection numbers you know that we're stronger with our community or our family or our friends behind us with your relationship and cara and coming up with the tattoo design how did that come about basically we started creating a piece based on taniko which are like the weaving patterns of our culture because in our mythology both came to the world at the same time one was carried by the male one was carried by the female it's building on elements of the moon which is that strong feminine energy how do you feel about non-maori people wearing maori tattoos i'm not going to sit down a criteria for it you know but i feel that there should be a connection with the culture whether it is they've been here they've traveled here to get it they've met maori they've engaged with the culture and then they're able to go through a process of figuring out what's appropriate for them yeah i think it's um it's extremely insensitive to take something from someone's culture and have no idea where it comes from or what it means especially if it's just down to an aesthetic as well some people like yeah you're only a sixteenth you're not even married or and other people like i'm the thirty second then i'm maori don't you call me not money you know and and then some people like me are like don't even use numbers identity is always evolving day by day and moment by moment but the culture is always in you [Music] unlike most tattoo artists mockul has very few markings i wanted to know if he has any big plans for his own personal tattoo journey this week we're really laying the foundations for the rest of my body so moving from a very blank canvas papatha to probably some heavy work in the future looking to nature for reference the next step facial work making it acceptable and then making it celebrated it's just growing so fast but where i'm going to help take it is back to our traditional body placement rather than these kind of more japanese style layouts the real powerful centers of the body like the face the arse the thighs middle of the forehead like it doesn't get any stronger than that soaking in the hot pools i thought ahead to tomorrow when mokku and kara together will further define their maori identity so i'm on my way to makatu to meet up with kara and her mum this is where her mum lives i spoke to her earlier and she seemed a little bit concerned sometimes we plan things and they don't go the way that we want to or our energies and our feelings towards that change when that kind of that time is dawning so the main goal is just to go over and have a chat have a cup of tea with her and a mum and uh and just talk it all out make sure she's all right hi hi cara hi grace how are you how are you good thanks dave welcome thank you this is my mom oh i'm feeling a bit nervous trying to figure out whether the feelings that i'm having and the weather are signs that maybe we shouldn't be going to makoya that we should maybe take another avenue i don't think it's a good sign the heavy rains perhaps our ancestors have you know put the storm so that we can't cross the lake because what i know of makoya it's a very historic place one of the most significant things that i know of it was a a battle site you know our people were nearly exterminated there so i don't know if i want my daughter to go in and spill blood so all the elements are kind of telling you that this is not it's just whether we should be crossing that lake and going to that island well we can have a cup of tea and just listen to the rain and listen to our gout exactly [Music] i really love to be over there and to lay the mats out there and to do the work and to keep in mind all those practices that the ancestors had when they were over there as well kind of beyond me and my wants really maybe mccoy is not the go [Music] so what's the plan then maybe to go to our marae tone hopefully and have it there at home it sounds like a really nice idea kara and mokul make the decision to head to kara's mirai to complete their journey if there's going to be battles or tension or whatever it'll happen out here it doesn't happen in there so when we walk into this place we're walking into tunisia's body but we're also walking into ourselves so all of our history our ancestors our connections to the gods the spiritual place said to be the place of woman our culture was just about totally obliterated just about our language you know through the outlawing of things our spirituality all of those things the things we do like mukul because they were steeped in ritual in prayer so what you see now is a revitalization way because that's my agency i'm claiming because it's my birthright this is who i am you know that's my political resistance and usually in total shorts in london you can't you can't even bring a friend you know and if you do they've got to sit at the front it's a business or whatever so this is really nice like a family gathering would you love [Music] he holds the tool and then taps on top of that tool with another tool so he doesn't have the free hand that you usually would use to stretch the skin with tutorial so he has assistants help him and he's very kindly offered me a position as one of his stretches today so i am helping out with that in cara's tattoo which will be amazing wanted to tattoo on this side of the room because her ancestors the pictures of them are hung up on this side of mirai so it's really cool that they'll be watching down over here we're just marking out the lines right now and then you're gonna do solid black and leave negative right so we came up with this idea of having a guiding star and the moon element to to reference that divine feminine and then we're just framing it with what could be seen as different layers of the [Music] sky to be there with her and experience this with her like and having her mum there and aroha there just like just feeling that energy and expressing it through song like that that's really that just brings it out and it brings me closer to what i feel is my like whole a lot of the time when i tattoo in london i find it really hard when their friends are all around them touching them because they scrambled the energy that i'm trying to create which is this calm space where i can try and take some of that pain away and we can have like a like a beautiful experience yeah but here everyone is under this mutual understanding and they respect the energy and they respect what's going on and that it's really nice just i've never had so many people surround me tattooing and i felt so comfortable like i'm feeling very privileged right now to be able to be here yes like from a point of view as a tattoo artist for me to be able to be so close watching mukul tattoo seeing what he's doing and actually being part of the process that's super special but then you know to hear that mother song makes everyone feel like they're they're a child again you know when when they're young and their mum used to sing them to sleep [Music] not really that makes me quite sad [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thought it would have been um a lot more aggressive to the skin but it's not like you can see even here like it's been just been done and the skins have almost sealed itself completely already and usually with a machine you know you chew up the skin in comparison to what you do with anything by hand i was a roller coaster of emotions i think it was yeah i was overwhelmed being here happy i felt privileged honored to be here with these people around me it's painful michael did an amazing job but always knew he would watching cara surrounded by her friends for this moment takes me right back home for me there's nothing more special than being in a group of beautiful women celebrating each other and for the first time on this trip i started to miss home for mockel mccoy island will have to [Music] wait you

Channel: i-D

Views: 175,694

Keywords: body art, Tattoo, Body Image, Ink, self expression, Maori Ta Moko, fashion, Youth, i-D, beauty, vice media, I-D video, new zealand tattoos, ancient tattoos

Id: F9MiEALqFIw

Length: 42min 34sec (2554 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

hahahahaha considering I live in New Zealand and I am getting "The uploader has not
made this video available in your country" is fucking hilarious. 

[u/drunkdoodles]

I didn't know they had giraffes in New Zealand.

[u/EarthBrain]

Dude on the right in the thumbnail looks like Daniel Craig