Tattoo Traditions of Native North America ─ Ancient and Contemporary Expressions of Identity

For thousands of years the Indigenous peoples of North America have produced astonishingly rich and diverse forms of tattooing. Long neglected by anthropologists and art historians, tattooing was a time-honored practice that expressed the patterns of tribal social organization and religion, while also channelling worlds inhabited by deities, spirits, and the ancestors.Tattoo Traditions of Native North America explores the many facets of indelible Indigenous body marking across every cultural region of North America. As the first book on the subject, it breaks new ground on one of the least-known mediums of Native American expressive culture that nearly disappeared from view in the twentieth century, until it was reborn in recent decades.

Dr. Lars Krutak is a cultural anthropologist, photographer, and writer who has traveled the Indigenous world for over fifteen years documenting the traditions of tribal body modification. He works for the National Museum of Natural History. He is the author of The Tattooing Arts of Tribal Women, Kalinga Tattoo: Ancient and Modern Expressions of the Tribal, andMagical Tattoos and Scarification: Spiritual Skin. Wisdom. Healing. Shamanic Power. Protection.