‘Now we can take it back’: Iñupiaq artist is part of a new generation that’s revitalizing Inuit tattooing

The stencils of completed tattoos inside Sarah Whalen-Lunn’s home studio pay homage to the hundreds of intimate and healing sessions she’s had at her home since becoming a tattoo artist about six years ago.

A hand drawn pair of wolves is pinned next to a raised fist with “solidarity” written underneath. Nearby, there are cutouts of a polar bear, harpoon and cluster of berries.

The imagery-based tattoos were done traditionally by Whalen-Lunn, an Anchorage based Iñupiaq artist.

Giving tattoos has helped Whalen-Lunn connect with her culture and those in her community. When she first started, she could count on one hand the number of women she had seen with facial tattoos.

Now, she guessed, that number is in the hundreds.

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Tattooing, Whalen-Lunn said, is a “tradition that we had for thousands of years, before this tiny little blip of colonization and religion and missionaries, and now we can take it back.”

An expression of identity

Whalen-Lunn is part of a new generation of Indigenous tattoo artists bringing new life to the techniques practiced in Alaska for thousands of years by Iñupiat and Yup’ik women. Christian missionaries who arrived in Alaska in the 19th and 20th centuries banned many cultural practices of Indigenous people, including tattooing.

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Inuit tattooing consists of two different methods, hand-poke and the original technique of skin-stitching. Hand-poke uses a needle to poke ink into skin whereas with skin-stitching, which is less common now, the tattooist uses a needle to sew into the skin with thread dipped in ink, according to the Anchorage Museum’s exhibition page on “Identifying Marks: Tattoos and Expression”.

The museum exhibition was part of Tupik Mi –– a film and Inuit tattoo revitalization project that Anchorage’s Holly Mititquq Nordlum introduced around 2016.

Historically, tattooing was done throughout the Circumpolar North by women for women.

Traditional markings –– including tavluġun (chin tattoo), sassuma aana (tattoos on the fingers representing the sea mother), iri (tattoos in the corner of the eyes) and siqñiq (forehead tattoo, also meaning “sun,”) –– are extremely personal and are often used as an expression of cultural and individual identity, Whalen-Lunn said.

“The whole process is different,” she said of Inuit tattooing, compared to western tattooing. “It’s quieter, it’s more patient. It is not necessarily about the aesthetic of how it looks, but it’s about the intention in it.”

For hand poke sessions, Whalen-Lunn said she hand builds the tools for every recipient during the appointment, ensuring they are made with intention.

A resurgence

Whalen-Lunn was one of a handful of artists selected to participate in the Inuit tattoo revitalization project through the Anchorage Museum’s Urban Intervention Series of the Polar Lab program. The program was led by Nordlum, who is originally from Kotzebue, and Greenland tattoo artist Maya Sialuk Jacobsen. Ultraviolence Tattoo owner Jake Scribner was the cohort’s Western tattoo mentor.

”At the time I had no idea that our people had tattoos, like no clue,” Whalen-Lunn said.

It was during the 2016 training that Whalen-Lunn first heard Iñupiaq being spoken.

Her mother, Irene “Bumba” Hayes, was taken out of Unalakleet at a very young age, she said, which resulted in Whalen-Lunn’s acute disconnect from her culture.

“There’s been such a resurgence in indigenous art and indigenous pride and you see it in all aspects,” she said. “(You see it in) language, you see it in food, you see it in art, you see it everywhere. It’s like coming back home. People are looking for ways to come back home.”

Whalen-Lunn began traveling to Alaska’s northern villages to tattoo after she said received a Rasmuson Foundation grant in 2018 –– the first tattooer awarded such a grant.

Through a National Endowment for the Arts grant, she and her 16-year-old child, Bowie, visited St. Paul Island this past August and Whalen-Lunn tattooed residents for two weeks –– her first work trip since the pandemic.

The trip was, in part, an opportunity for Bowie to see if tattooing is something they are interested in.

“We did quite a few things where they got to experience truly what it’s like to be one Native with one other Native doing this work that hadn’t been done in, you know, over 100 years for us,” Whalen-Lunn said. “Just seeing that excitement and that kind of hunger that (Bowie has) for being involved in this traditional tattooing. It’s just pretty incredible.”

As she continues, Whalen-Lunn hopes that Inuit tattooing becomes more normalized and a part of everyday life for younger generations.

Her own traditional markings help her understand herself and provide a way to give back to her community.

“They steel you up in who you are, they kind of force you to walk a little bit taller,” she said. “They force you to try and do a little bit better. They’re constant reminders of your ancestors, of who’s walking with you. So, they change you.”