Blog — samoan tatau

I grew up in a Christian household and saw tattoos as defiling our bodies. Movies and television depicted villains and "bad people" with tattoos. Tattoos in my youth meant something negative. Then as a teenager the cool thing to do was get a taulima (tattoo around arm). Today the cool thing would equate to a sleeve. The thing is, even though it is cool, it doesn't give our people the actual connection that tatau (tattoo) has to our Samoan culture.  Each motif has a meaning. Placement in the pe'a and malu has a meaning. We lose the meaning of the...