Day 19. Indigenous Tattooing and Queer Identity.

Tattooing as Ceremony, Memory, and Survival

Across many Indigenous nations, tattooing traditions marked life passages, spiritual responsibilities, and community belonging. These inks carried stories of ancestors, clan affiliations, and generations of resistance. When colonizers banned these practices, calling them “savage” and criminalizing the act of inscribing ancestral knowledge onto skin, they sought to erase identity and memory.

Resurgence at the Heart of Queer and Trans Communities

Today traditional tattooing is experiencing a powerful resurgence, and queer and trans practitioners are central to its revival. From the kakau of Hawaiʻi, often practiced by Mahu or gender-fluid practitioners, to the batok of the Philippines, traditionally done by babaylan and other spiritual leaders who embodied gender diversity, to the tatau of Samoa, the art of tattooing created by Samoans and historically practiced by fa’afafine and other gender-diverse people, to the moko kauae of the Māori, historically worn by takatāpui (Māori queer and gender-diverse people), Indigenous artists are reclaiming these practices and embedding stories of gender, sexuality, lineage, and resistance into living skin. For many queer and trans people, this art functions simultaneously as affirmation and defiance: a way to honor ancestors while carving new futures.

Visible Genealogies and Embodied Resistance

Each line, each symbol, speaks: I belong. I resist. I am seen. Indigenous tattooing inscribes visible genealogies, visible truths that colonization tried to erase. The body becomes a living archive of both cultural memory and queer survival, declaring presence where erasure once reigned.

As Filipino tattoo revivalist Lane Wilcken explains:

“Tattooing was our first literature. On our skin, we wrote our prayers, our triumphs, our names. To wear these marks again is to remember who we are.”

In reclaiming tattooing, Indigenous queer and trans people remind us that the body is not shameful but sacred, a canvas of resistance, resilience, and radiant identity.