About Dion Kaszas | Transformative Blackwork Tattooing
About Dion Kaszas
My journey with tattoos started early with an obsession and fascination with the physical permanent transformation of our bodies by inserting ink, as early as I can remember. As a young person, I didn’t have actors, actresses, athletes, or musicians’ posters on my bedroom walls; it was tattoo models, tattoo artists, oh, and one Bruce Lee poster.
My first tattoo was in the late 90s, and I have kept getting tattooed since then. It was in 2006, when I stumbled upon a pamphlet in a tattoo studio that detailed my ancestral Indigenous tattooing practices, titled ‘Tattooing and Face and Body Painting of the Thompson Indians.’ This discovery was a profound moment, as it connected me to the tribal tattooing of my ancestors.
In 2009, I heard that my first teacher in my tattooing career, Carla Romaniuk, was looking for a tattoo apprentice. And so I went and asked Carla if she would give me an apprenticeship, and she said, “Yup, you can come hang out at the shop.” So I hung out at the shop for a couple of months, and eventually Carla said, “Okay, you have a tattoo apprenticeship.” And so I started my official apprenticeship in 2009. Receiving that apprenticeship was a lifelong goal.
In 2010, I began my journey into the world of my ancestors’ tattooing practices, searching for all I could find about the reasons we mark our skin, the designs, the tools and technology we used, and what these practices mean for today’s world.
My ancestors marked their skin for a multitude of reasons, each one an equally spiritual act intended to guide and influence the wearer’s life path. The first reason was solely for adornment, beautification, and to make oneself more attractive. Secondly, we marked our skin to show our love, care, and commitment to our life partners, and as a prayer for a lasting union. We also marked our skin as part of our journey into the spirit world to find our guardians. We marked ourselves to ensure a successful, healthy life, as a form of protection, to record an important event, as a sacrifice to show courage, and as an offering and prayer for a desired successful outcome. We also marked our skin as a preventive measure against weakness and premature aging. Our skin marking practices are connected to dreaming and our guardians. We marked ourselves as a medicinal practice to cure sickness and ward off death. Finally, it is recorded that we marked our identities on our skin to show who we are, what we are skilled at, and where we get our power from.
When I sat down at my young friend’s funeral, who decided to take his own life, it was at that time that I realized that it was my responsibility to revive Nlaka'pamux tattooing, because I knew how powerful it was. I had this hunch that it was a protective factor against suicide. So I started reviving Nlaka’pamux tattooing at that time. And so, in 2012, I began hand-poking and skin-stitching. I realized it was my responsibility and my answer to the creator’s question, "what will you do for the people to be?"
After working in the tattoo industry for many years, I began to question how I could share my ancestral visual language in a contemporary world with all my clients, including non-Nlaka’pamux and non-Indigenous clients and collaborators. In 2019, I began to imagine what I have come to call Nlaka’pamux Blackwork.
Nlaka’pamux Blackwork is not just a contemporary Nlaka’pamux tattooing practice that uses large sections of black, but also a vital tool for preserving and sharing our ancestral visual language. It incorporates ancestral patterns found on the basketry, in our painted clothing, on our rocks, and etched into stone in our territory.
After over a decade of observation, research, and ancestral guidance, I have intentionally transformed my skin marking practice over the past five years to align with the original principles, intentions, and process of my ancestors. As an ancestral skin marker and transformative blackworker, I offer Nlaka’pamux blackwork as an embodied artistic technology for beautification, guidance, connection, protection, and healing. Nlaka’pamux blackwork is a powerful tool for personal growth and healing, and it is my gift to any and all human beings who need, desire, and make the commitment to the work that it takes to enter into communion with this ancient practice.
I talk about Nlaka’pamux Blackwork as part of a larger collection or body of work I do, which is Transformative Blackwork. In Nlaka’pamux Blackwork, I use both black and red because of an ancestral understanding that, for us, black was usually considered a color that spoke of death, of the other world. And so for us, Red was a color that helped to balance that out. It’s a color that speaks of joy, of friendship, and of really good things. Transformative Blackwork also includes non-symbolic/abstract tribal Blackwork that helps highlight the positive-negative relationship between large black abstract forms and skin tone. Finally, I also do large sections of blackout, such as a full sleeve or a whole leg. Sometimes it’s to cover up old tattoos, sometimes it’s just because it looks fantastic. Either of these blackwork styles can be used to blast over old tattoos, not as a cover-up, but as a new layer of markings over them. This leaves a sense of history on the skin. Transformative Blackwork is really a practice that helps us to think about the transformations that we can go through during the process of sitting for a large tattoo.
Nlaka’pamux Blackwork is my own distinctive truly tribal tattoo style created as a way of sharing my Nlaka’pamux ancestors designs symbols and motifs with my clients from all communities, cultures, ethnicities and walks of life. The designs, patterns and motifs and their interpretations found in this style are distinctive and unique to Nlaka’pamux and Interior Salish peoples. The fact that I am Nlaka’pamux gives me the right and responsibility to share my ancestral visual language with whoever I chose to share it with. It also gives the rights, relationship and responsibility to my clients to wear these marks and to share their stories. During the consultation process information about each individual is offered, including their life’s journey, dreams, hopes, aspirations and the reason they wish to receive their marks.
From the things shared with me during this process I design a skin marking or tattoo that is tailored to your story from my understanding of my ancestral visual language, this is a guided intuitive practice. It is a ceremony that operates on a multitude of levels which changes and develops with your understanding, needs, and development as a human being.
"Transformative Blackwork roots people into who they are."
Places to Read My Work or View Exhibitions
True Tribal Exhibition
True Tribal: Contemporary Expressions of Ancestral Tattoo Practices explores 30-plus years of Indigenous tattooing from around the world and the artists who are reconnecting with traditional skin marking practices. The revival of ancestral tattoo designs and motifs, the re-envisioning of meaning and protocols, and the re-fashioning of ancestral application methods is part of Indigenous peoples’ efforts to reclaim their lands, cultures and identities.
Truly Tribal Book
After generations of colonial suppression, Indigenous tattooing practices have experienced a resurgence led by artists and informed by community stories, protocols, and Elders. In Truly Tribal, nineteen Indigenous ancestral skin markers from fifteen Nations and cultures around the world come together to discuss their reclamation of tattoos as tangible reminders of their communities’ enduring rights, relationships, and responsibilities.
Oxford Handbook
The skin markings of the Nlaka’pamux people (also known as Thompson River Salish) from British Columbia, Canada, are an ancestral embodied knowledge system conveying information about lineage, skills, aspirations, life story, and status. This chapter is written by a member of the Nlaka’pamux, who, as a professional tattooer and independent scholar, is engaged in reviving, maintaining, and updating this body language. The wearing of ancestral marks is seen as an assertion of rights, responsibilities, and relationship to the earth and all that is. Because it roots the revitalization effort in the prayers, ceremonies, and suffering of the ancestors, the current tattooing practice is seen as an authentic way to adhere to Nlaka’pamux Indigenous scholarship and beliefs. This is a powerful declaration of continued existence, resilience, pride, and struggle that goes beyond scholarly studies and stands as a necessary, unfiltered testimony to the vital spirit of body modification as a whole.
Besiders Magazine
Article I wrote for the Beside magazine.
Article no longer available.
Indigenous Tattoo Traditions
Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink by Lars Krutak
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.
Gathering Together We Decide
Gathering Together, We Decide: Archives of Dispossession, Resistance, and Memory in Ndé Homelands eds. Margo Tamez, Cynthia Bejarano, Jeffrey P. Shepherd.
My Chapter is Chapter 19.
Healing Savage Souls, Re-creating, and Belonging: Indigenous Tattoo Revival as a Contemporary Form of Indigenous Embodied Biography of Continuing Independence and Resistance.