![]() ![]() “There’s a history of appropriation of Indigenous voice in terms of experts and I didn’t want to continue that-even though I’m an Indigenous person.” Tattoo artist Dion Kaszas uses the skin-stitch technique. “The exhibit is less my own vision than the vision of the community,” he explains. Kaszas has insisted on a diverse Indigenous curatorial steering committee for Body Language, giving it final say on what could be shared in the show, and what could not. But by doing that, it’s a strategy that people don’t see the full view of what we are as Indigenous people.” “For academic reasons, people have wanted to become experts in different things-an expert on basketry, or an expert on rock art. “I’m trying to dispel the myth that tattooing is disassociated from the rest of our culture,” he tells the Straight. They were integral marks of identity that were banned, alongside potlatches, in an 1885 amendment to the Indian Act.įor Kaszas, whose own academic research took him on hikes deep into the wilderness to find his people’s pictographs, it’s important to show the traditional tattoos alongside the wider cultural practices. Tattooing and piercing were used widely among the First Nations of the Northwest, with motifs signifying everything from status to important life events and guardian spirits. Each will display tattoo work alongside clothing, basketry, rock art, and other works that reflect similar motifs from their regions. The show marks the reopening of the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art after a six-month renovation.īody Language brings together the work of Kaszas with that of Nisga’a artist Nakkita Trimble, Tlingit artist Nahaan, Haida artist Corey Bulpitt, and Heiltsuk artist Dean Hunt. And now he’s come to Vancouver to guest-curate the new exhibit Body Language: Reawakening Cultural Tattooing of the Northwest. Kaszas went on to get his master’s in Indigenous studies at UBC Okanagan, focusing his research on Indigenous tattooing. Kaszas, who’s also a painter, went on to apprentice as a tattoo artist and eventually helped establish the Earthline Tattoo Collective, dedicated to promoting Indigenous tattoo practices in Canada. That moment would plant the seed, not only for Kaszas’s own reawakening to his culture, but for a revival of Indigenous tattooing here. I knew the Maori had and the folks in Borneo and Tonga and Fiji did, but I didn’t know about it here.” “I didn’t realize that my ancestors had a tattooing tradition. Salish community in the Thompson River region. “My head almost popped off that we had this tattooing tradition,” says Kaszas, whose mixed heritage includes the Nlaka’pamux-an Interior B.C. Then, in 2006, while he sat in a shop waiting to get his latest ink, he spotted a pamphlet about the tattooing and body painting of the “Thompson River Indians”. ![]() Dion Kaszas started getting tattoos at 17, as he puts it, “in the western tradition, just with the machine-pick something off the wall and go for it”.
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