Lars Krutak — Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity Through Skin and Ink - with Sara Kehaulani Goo

Tattooing within Indigenous communities is a time-honored practice that binds the tattoo recipient to a deeply felt collective history. More than mere decoration, tattoos embody cultural values, ancestral ties, and spiritual beliefs. Indigenous Tattoo Traditions captures ancient tribal tattooing practices and their contemporary resurgence, highlighting a beautiful aspect of humanity's shared cultural heritage.Transporting readers through history, Lars Krutak explores the art and customs of tattooing across numerous ancestral lands, including Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, the Arctic, Oceania, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Siberia. He illustrates how tattoos function as a form of writing that defines and structures community life, performing as rites of passage, symbols of rank, and signs of marital or religious devotion, among other facets of culture. We are introduced to the heavily tattooed Li women of China's Hainan Island with their elaborate facial and body tattoos, the bold indelible markings of Papua New Guinea's Indigenous peoples, and innovative cultural tattoo practitioners who are rebuilding a skin-marking legacy for future generations to come.With numerous images published for the first time and an illuminating foreword by cultural historian Sean Mallon, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions opens a window onto one of the world's most vibrant yet misunderstood mediums of human expression.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780691255392?ic_referral=8oMu76QJ0M6QFHkXwl1oGKGrjlsAGgz05fqsg06Hsd8wM8_WPlHyZhgBAc0HsLp0AHnq0e1CG69NIF1v6yRS9X2r_3F8osHyjDiAWoKwGQvHE_Uenpo-zkNe_N_YyuW79C2xfZsLars Krutak, PhD, is a tattoo anthropologist, photographer, and writer based in Washington, D.C. A research associate at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he is the author of several books on Indigenous tattoo culture and practice, including (2012) Spiritual Skin: Magical Tattoos and Scarification, (2014) Tattoo Traditions of Native North America, (2024) Tattoo Traditions of Asia, and the forthcoming (2025) Indigenous Tattoo Traditions published by Princeton University Press. He hosted the Discovery Channel series Tattoo Hunter and his writing has also appeared in scientific journals, edited volumes, and popular magazines worldwide.Krutak is in conversation with Sara Kehaulani Goo, a journalist, author and news leader based in Washington, D.C. She's led some of the nation's largest news organizations, including serving as editor-in-chief of Axios; managing editor of NPR and senior news director and reporter at The Washington Post. She's also the author of the forthcoming book, Kuleana -- a story of family, land and legacy in Old Hawai'i (Macmillan, 2025). Set in remote Maui, Kuleana is Sara's memoir about her family's struggle to hold onto ancestral land given to her Native Hawaiian family from King Kamehameha III and, in doing so, she comes to better understand Native Hawaiians' her own identity and cultural practice. *recorded 5/15/2025