tattoo you: the girl from Oonalaska

A kind of proximity to nature, the spirit world, the absence of boundaries where the human and the animal engaged one another in various guises of transference and inhabiting the physical body. Combinations of profound science fiction with ancient pagan ritual. Enough to give Baruch Spinoza wet dreams and Jean Jacques Rousseau a fresh spear for which to skewer Voltaire. Alternately romanticized as sophisticated noble decent folk “just trying to make a living” and brutal primitives unencumbered by the soft cushion of normative religion and ready to use your immediate family as whale bait should you fall under the evil gaze. Unfathomable violence mixed with infinite complexity; insane superstition mixed infinite spiritual wisdom. Not exactly docile little cuddlies to be sold a bag of ice cubes.

---Chugach Eskimo woman with labret and piercings, Prince William Sound, Alaska, in engraving made 1778--- Read More:http://crushevil.co.uk/blog/?p=596

As in most hunter-gather societies, patriarchy is predominant and the woman is war booty, barterable, lended and rented, sold and sometimes left on an ice floe to meet the great polar bear in the sky….

Chin stripes served multiple purposes in social contexts. Most notably, they were tattooed on the chin as part of the ritual of social maturity, a signal to men that a woman had reached puberty. Chin patterns also served to protect women during enemy raids. For example, fighting among the Siberians and St. Lawrence Islanders took place in close quarters, namely in various forms of semi-subterranean dwellings called nenglu. Raiding parties usually attacked in the early morning hours, at or before first light, hoping to catch their enemies while asleep. Women, valued as important “commodities” during these times, were highly prized for their many abilities. Not being distinguishable from the men by their clothing in the dim light of the nenglu, their chin patterns made them more recognizable as females and their lives would be spared. Once captured, however, they were bartered off as slaves….

---Kingikmiut Eskimo woman carrying baby on back holding wooden bowl, Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, ca. 1906 --- Read More:http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/alaskawcanada&CISOPTR=2261

…More generally, the chin stripe aesthetic was important to the Diomede Islanders living in Bering Strait. Ideally, thin lines tattooed onto the chin were valuable indicators for choosing a wife, according to anthropologist Sergei Bogojavlensky :


It was believed that a girl who smiled and laughed too much would cause the lines to spread and get thick. A girl with a full set of lines on the chin, all of them thin, was considered to be a good prospect as a wife, for she was clearly serious and hard working.Read More:http://www.larskrutak.com/articles/Arctic/

---engraved portrait by John Webber of Aleut woman with tattooed face and linked nose labret---Read More:http://crushevil.co.uk/blog/?p=596

And women as bait both sexual and animal: A full set of lines was not only a powerful physical statement of the ability to endure great pain, but also an attestation to a woman’s powers of “animal” attraction. For example, in the St. Lawrence and Siberian Yupik area of the early 20th century, women paint-ed and tattooed their faces in ritual ceremonies in order to imitate, venerate, honor, and/or attract those animals that “will bring good fortune” to the family. And in an odd twist at least with respect to Heineken’s sexist beer advertisement on the hunted: Waldemar Bogoras  added, “[i]t is a mistake to think that women are weaker than men in hunting-pursuits,” since as a man wanders in vain about the wilderness, searching, women “that sit by the lamp are really strong, for they know how to call the game to the shore.”

…Moreover, it was through the performance of domestic activities – butchering, cooking (turning hunted meat into edible “food”) and sewing (creating sturdy and beautiful clothing that attracted game) – that a woman’s ritual position as “wife the hunter” became solidified in Arctic culture ….


img class=" wp-image-52653 " title="inuit22" src="/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/inuit22.jpg" alt="" width="538" height="441" />

---Eskimo mother in fur parka carrying baby on her back, ca. 1906 --- Read More:http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/alaskawcanada&CISOPTR=40

…In this connection, it seems that a woman’s facial tattoos assured a kind of spiritual permanency: they lured into the house a part of the land or sea, and along with that, part of its animal and spiritual life. Not surprisingly, an unusual event, such as the capture of a whale by a young woman’s father, was sometimes commemorated on her cheek(s) by tattooed fluke tails, which advertised her father’s prowess to members of Yupik society.

Other tattoos of St. Lawrence Island women have more cryptic functions. For example, two slightly diverging lines ran from high up on the forehead down over the full length of the nose. These tattoos were quite often the first ones to be placed upon pre-pubescent girls (six to ten years of age). Daniel S. Neuman , a doctor living in Nome, Alaska at the turn of the 20th century, wrote that these tattoos distinguished a woman “in after life from a man, on account of the similarity of [their] dress.” Chukchi myths illustrate that these same tattoos were the symbol par excellence of the woman herself .

Tattoos also marked the thighs of young St. Lawrence Island women when they reached puberty. In Igloolik, Canada, some 2,500 miles east of St. Lawrence Island, the tattooing of women’s thighs ensured that the first thing a newborn infant saw would be something of beauty.( ibid.)

ADDENDUM:

As Promised, Awack and Ooblooria each received files and new spears plus a bonus of wood to repair their kayaks. Despite the squabble over repairing the sledge. Commander Ross was impressed with Awack and considered him a “superior young man.” Why not, thought the young commander, bring Awack back to England and “humanize” the bright, young Inuk? With that in mind, when Commander Ross awarded Awack his file, he asked the young man if he would like to move aboard Victory and sail to England. Awack was surprised by the offer and told the commander that he needed time to think it over. When he returned two days later, he shocked Commander Ross and the other officers by stating that, no, he would not live aboard the Victory, nor did he wish to visit England. When asked his reasons, Awack let on that he was betrothed and that he had had a most tearful discussion with his beloved, Narluwarga. “A woman’s tears had again determined the destiny of a human being;” wrote William Light, who said the bewildered officers considered Awack, “A fool! A motley fool!”  Read More:http://www.inuitcontact.ca/artifacts/pdf/Encounter_between_James_Ross_and_Awack.pdf

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