Tatatau

I’ve been meaning to get my head back into thinking mode for the last month or so, and having some time to spare, I did some browsing on the internet on issues of interest. Thus I’ve been led to think and reflect on important issues relating to what I’m doing as a self-proclaimed artist and my connection(s) to my culture and ethnic background as a Tongan. First of all, there’s the issue of recovering and revitalizing the practice of tattooing in the traditional sense. Indeed, such is an issue that may seem simple and straight forward, and to some extent, it may consider a little knowledge of history. However, the task at hand continues to prove that it is a very laborious process made not for one person and his or her generation but for us and those that have yet to come. The work of Dr. ‘Okusitino Mahina is a very good start in terms of where our knowledge and history may be found, put together and retold. His is a philosophical understanding and methodology for recovering that which has been lost. And although we all encounter elements in which we disagree with such thinking, we know that the process towards decolonization isn’t always in unison.
Dr. Mahina’s work is first of all a highly philosophical and sophisticated labor, both in Tongan and English. His is a movement between Western philosophical traditions such as that announced by the early Greeks and Tongan aesthetic. Thinking in Tongan is an art. Tongan language is complicated with poetics and metaphors – like Old English. By this, I am comparing Tongan language with the kind you’d read in Shakespeare and drama class – that type of talking where everything is referential and poetic. Tongan language consists of complicated and intricate levels catered towards a highly stratified culture and way of living and thus thinking.
This alone is a near-impossible element of our culture to comprehend and to make things more difficult, one has to understand also how it connects to our history and arts. From here, you may begin the process of recovering tattooing or tatatau. But also, you have to take into consideration the fact that the practice has been dead for more than a century or two. And, to make things worse if you are a proud-arrogant Tongan, you have to learn it from the Samoans.
One person I know of who learned partly on his own and from the late Su’a Sulupae Paulo 2, who has already begun part of this process is Aisea Toetu’u. For this, the mana has to be passed to you from the people that have continued the tradition from our past, those that have kept the genealogy in continuation for generations. By now, the task at hand you can say is doable but as I mentioned before, it isn’t for one person and his or her generation, but also for those that have yet to exist. …