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 and will be posted on my blog.
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.