In Ice and Skin: Inuit Kakiniit Birth, Death, and Revival in a Modern Post-Colonial and Politicized Arctic

Abstract

This paper delves into the profound history of traditional Inuit tattooing practices known as kakiniit against the backdrop of a post-colonial and highly politicized Arctic landscape. The story of the birth, death, and revival of kakiniit is amidst many traces of Indigenous resilience and transformation following rapid socio-cultural changes within communities during assimilatory efforts. Highlighting the narrative perspectives surrounding the birth of kakiniit, this paper serves the history of the artistic storytelling model and form of cultural expression through Inuit cosmologies and ontologies and revisits sites of its cultural preservation and revitalization, interrogating lingering assimilatory perspectives within the Arctic wherein colonial impositions intersect with Indigenous agency. Through the study of ethnographic narratives across age groups and geographies and engagement with contemporary resurgence efforts, this essay illuminates the deep-rooted complexity and dynamic adaptation of kakiniit throughout the ages, navigating its creation, temporary expulsion from Inuit culture and its revival and repurposing as a widely used historical recognition and cultural reclamation practice across Indigenous cultures in the Arctic as an adaptive expression of cultural continuity and resistance in the face of ongoing colonialist ideals.