Introduction to the Transformative Marks Podcast with Indigenous Tattoo Artist Dion Kaszas

#001 What if you were given a chance to navigate the world of ancestral skin marking and indigenous tattooing, and understand its profound healing aspects? Well, that's just what I cover in this episode of Transformative Marks. I reveal the beauty of these practices and how they bolster individuals against premature death and suicide, serving as a powerful beacon, reconnecting them with their roots, cultures, and communities.
 
 In this episode your host Dion Kaszas share my journey into ancestral skin marking. I share the healing that comes to individuals who have chosen to embrace ancestral skin marking as a core facet of their identity, and learn from their stories of resilience and transformation. This episode also recounts my personal journey as I find solace in grappling with imperfections through the medium of ancestral skin marking. I shine a light on the heroic efforts made to revive indigenous tattooing practices and their potential role in anchoring individuals to their respective cultures.
 
 Join me as I try to better understand the topics surrounding health, indigenous identities, spirituality, and the medicinal aspects of tattooing. Remember, every one of you is astounding, loved, and needed in this world. 

I hope you have enjoyed this first episode, and I am excited to travel the world of Indigenous tattooing with you as we visit with friends and colleagues from across the globe doing the work. 

Don't forget to share this episode with someone who might need to hear it today! See you next week!

Check out my tattoo work at:
https://www.consumedbyink.com
Instagram @dionkaszas

Buy me a Coffee at:
https://ko-fi.com/transformativemarks

I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

Transcript

Dion: 0:00

So it was through that research that I began to develop a hunch, and that hunch was that our tattooing has the ability to be a protective factor against premature death and suicide.

Dion: 0:15

The Transformative Marks podcast explores how indigenous tattoo artists, cultural tattoo practitioners and ancestral skin markers transform this world for the better, dot by dot, line by line and stitch by stitch.

Dion: 0:28

My name is Dion Kaszas. I'm a Hungarian Métis and Nlaka'pamux professional tattoo artist and ancestral skin marker. I started the work of reviving my ancestral Intlacopmuk skin marking practice over a decade ago. I've helped, supported and trained practitioners and tattoo artists here on Turtle Island. In this podcast, I sit down with indigenous tattoo artists, cultural tattoo practitioners and ancestral skin markers from across the globe, bringing you behind the scenes of this powerful, transformative and spiritual work. Hello everyone, my name is Dion Kaszas. I'm a Hungarian Métis and Nlaka'pamux cultural tattoo practitioner, ancestral skin marker and podcaster. I'm thankful that you have decided to join me on the journey of the Transformative Marks podcast. This podcast is about indigenous tattooing, ancestral skin marking and the healing aspects of this process, whether it is as a customary quote, unquote traditional practice using bone tools or ancestral tools and technology that are applied using hand techniques, or in the process of the contemporary construction of indigenous tattooing or ancestral skin marking using tattoo machines. So stoked that you'll be able to go with me as I go to visit, with friends and colleagues from across the world, people and guests from across the world, including Samoa, hawaii, tahiti, tonga, all across Turtle Island, from the Klinkit people up in Alaska all the way over to Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia.

Dion: 2:13

This podcast is called the Transformative Marks podcast because I feel that the work that we do in ancestral skin marking and tattooing is a transformative process, and sometimes that process is transformative because it simply transforms our external appearance. You know, the marks on our faces and the marks on our bodies helps us to view ourselves as more beautiful or more connected to our ancestors and in other ways, it's a transformative process that helps us to feel more connected with our ancestors, with our communities and with our cultures, because the reality is is that the colonial process was a process of erasure, erasing our marks from our bodies as well as erasing our connection to our communities, our cultures, our lands and geographies, and also to other indigenous people from across the world. So in this podcast, we'll be taking you on the journey of the work of ancestral skin marking, whether again using traditional tools and technology or tattoo machines. Really, this podcast is first and foremost, in my mind, this podcast is for indigenous people, whether that is for other ancestral skin markers or whether it is for community members wishing to learn more about this practice, and I hope that every episode will give a little jam or a little insight to whoever's watching. And when I think about the reason for this podcast, I think it was really birthed out of a comment made by my friend, holly Nordlum, an Inuit cultural tattoo practitioner and ancestral skin marker from Alaska, who said at the Kohala Hawaii Institute in Hawaii, we were there at the traditional tattoo festival and while we were there, holly said I want to hear about us, from us and I want to heal us for us.

Dion: 4:25

And so when I think about this podcast, that's what this podcast is about is sharing the work that we do as cultural tattoo practitioners, ancestral skin markers and professional tattoo artists for ourselves, for our communities, for our families and for the earth and all that is. And I think this is important because there has been a real push in the academic world, in the world outside of indigenous tattooing, indigenous communities, of presenting and putting forward non-indigenous and non-practitioners as experts in these practices, but the reality is that the only people who can be truly experts in these practices are those who do the work and those who wear the work, and so I will be asking ancestral skin markers, cultural tattoo practitioners and professional indigenous tattoo artists about their practices and their processes, allowing each person to speak from their heart, allowing each person to share the things that they need to share, because I think truly when I think about the reality. The reality is is that us, as indigenous people, we sit in that circle, sometimes around a fire, but sometimes just in that circle. Sometimes that is a physical circle, sometimes that's a metaphorical circle, but we ask for my understanding, for every opinion who's sitting at that circle. This process and this podcast is not about a hierarchy.

Dion: 6:03

For me, this podcast is about asking everyone to share the words that they have, and sometimes I agree with the people that I'm interviewing and interacting with. Other times I don't agree, but I think it's still important to give people the opportunity to share their heart, because there's always one gem in that conversation that you can take with you on your journey, your life's journey, whether it is as a community member or it is as a cultural tattoo practitioner, and you don't have to be wearing transformative marks to find some little gem from each conversation that you can take with you and to make your life better. I also want to emphasize that the reality is is that these conversations, or conversations that are happening in real time and we are not editing out our conversations and our voices, because we're just free flowing, exploring ideas, and sometimes those ideas aren't fully formed, aren't fully brought out or thought out, and sometimes we're thinking about them in the moment, at the time that we're talking about them, and so sometimes we may say shit that, you know, maybe isn't the best, or sometimes we will think through a thought and not really realizing the things that we're saying. And so I just ask for your graciousness as I reach out to people, community members, colleagues and other ancestral skin markers, so that we can explore some of the important topics that we need to as Indigenous people, because the reality is is, if we're not talking about the difficult topics, if we're not talking about the things that are scary, we won't open up ways of transformation through conversation. And so I just ask for your graciousness, and I also want to highlight the reality is that I don't expect any of my guests, the folks that I'm sharing time and space with in this podcast, to be perfect.

Dion: 8:11

You know, a lot of times in our cultures and our community today out in the western world and it seems to have seeped into our own lives and our communities and the reserves and our urban communities that we expect people to be perfect, and when I think about that, I think about. You know, one of the reasons I call this just transformed with Mark's podcast is because I take the lessons from the stories from my community of Coyote. You know Coyote is one of those beings that transform the world into the world that is today. You know many stories of Coyote getting into his variety of antics and in some of those stories is a pervert. Some of those stories is greedy. Most of the time he transforms the world, despite his ego and his selfishness, into something beautiful, and so I just want you to remember that all of us here on this podcast, those of us who are walking in the world as real human beings, living a human experience, that we're not perfect.

Dion: 9:14

You know I used to work in the nightclub industry. I used to be a preacher for a very conservative Christian church. I have a very interesting and challenging life. You know a life of living as an alcoholic. You know we'd start drinking and I wouldn't stop drinking until either I passed out or we ran out of booze. And so you know I'm not perfect. I've lived a difficult life in many aspects, but I'm very thankful for the human beings my mom, maxine, and my father, larry, who raised me, my cousins, my brothers and all of my extended family who ensured that I was protected and became who I needed to be to sit in front of you.

Dion: 10:01

So, instead of thinking about people as perfect beings you know, like the character or the being of Jesus Christ, think of us all as Coyotes, walking the world, looking for the next thing that we can get up to or get into, and realizing that that lesson, that story, all the stories of Coyote help us to understand that we each have value, despite our imperfections, despite those things that we're ashamed of. We look to Coyote to feel encouraged and to know that we have value and that we have purpose and that we can, in the next moment, transform the world, because the reality is we are only now. We, yes, we have lived through a past and, yes, we'll be going into a future, but we're only in the now and we can only make a choice to change and transform our lives in a way that makes the world better and answers the creator's question what will you do for the people to be? You know I'm always asked, as someone at the forefront of the revival of ancestral skin marking here in the nation state of Canada, to give an interview, whether that's for the New York Times, a German TV crew, an academic in Europe or a reporter in New Zealand. You know I'm asked to share about my thoughts, feelings and emotions about the process of ancestral skin marking. And when I asked them, you know I replied to them and I asked them well, why do you give a shit? Because you know, when I think about Linda Tuhuiwa Smith's seminal, you know groundbreaking work, where you know decolonizing methodologies, that in that amazing book Linda asks the question, you know, why are you interested in researching? Why are you interested in talking to me? Why are you interested in recording? Why are you interested in writing about me? And so, really, in the next little portion of this conversation, I'll be sharing with you why I give a shit.

Dion: 12:17

And the reason I give a shit about ancestral skin marking, the topics that we'll be covering is because it's at the core of my being. This is the thing that I wake up to every single day and I think about, because, you know, I always grew up loving. You know creating things with my hands, and so, of course, that manifested usually as a line drawing, you know, sometimes with some developed shading or coloring, but mostly just a line drawing. You know copying comic books. Here behind me you can see all my comics. You know the Freak Brothers Grew Comics. You know, of course, all of the Marvel and DC characters, as well as you know Spawn and all of those characters. You know drawing from those books. You know that's.

Dion: 13:09

You know, when I think about the way that I worked through some of the stresses in my life, some of the anxieties that I had, it was always going into my room picking up a comic book and begin to draw and to recreate from. You know, observing those designs, those drawings and those comic books and recreating them by hand. And then, you know, as far as I can think, you know, the first people that I can remember seeing tattoos on is my uncle, tony, and he had, you know, some a little cross, I think, on his hand and then some marks on his arm and I, you know, I always used to look at him and just think those tattoos made him look so tough and so cool. And then I think about my uncle, ernie, who likewise had some tattoos from the time that he was in the military, in the army, and again I thought, oh, those things are so cool. And so those were the first memories I have of tattoos and I always thought, oh, I want to get some of those, you know, because of course I wanted to be cool, I wanted to feel tough, right.

Dion: 14:22

And then, you know, I look back and I think I always had a stack of, you know, tattoo magazines. A lot of people don't remember that time. That, you know, every time you wanted to go look at a tattoo, you had to go to the magazine store and pick them up. In fact, I always tell the story of the first tattoo that I got. I was at the local magazine shop looking through, flipping through the pages, and I found this little dragon tattoo, a little tribal dragon, a picture, and I just ripped it out of that magazine, put it in my pocket and the next day we went off to Kamloops. I went to Kamloops with my friend Lanny, and we got, you know, I got my first tattoo. So that's, you know, the first beginning of, you know, the work that I have on myself was that little tribal dragon that I ripped out of a magazine. So somebody bought a magazine out there, so, sorry about that, you're missing that page that has the tribal dragon. But anyways, you know, and all my walls would be covered with posters of, you know hugely tattooed models and you know tattoo artists, et cetera.

Dion: 15:37

And you know that was my youth growing up with tattoos. And you know, when I went and got that first tattoo I thought, oh, this is fucking something that I'd love to do. You know, just because the reality of you know, the freedom that he had that tattoo artist had in people coming in, bullshitting with them. He made his own hours. He, you know, had such amount of freedom and that was the thing that really drew me to becoming a tattoo artist.

Dion: 16:03

And then, of course, life took me on a journey, another journey, where I went and worked as a pastor for a conservative Christian denomination and then I got into working in the nightclub industry for a number of years and, as I said, you know, while I was in the nightclub industry I became an alcoholic. You know I've been through many violent experiences, either as a person being acted violence upon or acting in violence on other people. You know some of those things I'm not really proud of, but those are the things that live in the past and that you know will always haunt me when I think of some of those things that I've been through and some of those times that you know, violence visited my life and that mixed, of course, with the ever present reality of alcohol and drugs. Thankfully, I never got into any of the hard drugs, but the reality is is that I became addicted to alcohol, and so it wasn't actually until I met my wife, jane, that I changed my life around and I started to look in a different direction. You know I started to go back to school and it was at school that that, you know, I began the work of thinking about and researching my ancestral tattooing practice, and I just got to back up a little bit.

Dion: 17:34

Because the reality is is that while I was still working in the nightclub industry I think around 2006, I went in to get work done on my culturally appropriated Mari sleeve and I always laugh about that. You know I was going to get a Mari style tattoo from a white guy from a local tattoo shop and you know I've since had it covered. But yeah, it was always. It's always important to emphasize to people that we don't know what we don't know, and once we do know we, once we know better, we do better. And so I went and got I just had that sleeve blacked out by my friend Julie, but anyways, I was going to get work done on this right sleeve and you know I've told this story in numerous places. But I was sorting through the magazines and the books on the waiting room table and there was this little pamphlet and it was entitled tattooing face and body painting of the Thompson Indians. And I told you earlier that I'm an intercontamoc ancestral skin marker and intercontamoc is one of the words that we use today to refer to ourselves in the past, thompson Indians, because that's one of the three or four major rivers that goes through our territory. That's the way that we were referred to by non intercontamoc people, by academics, so-called explorers, etc. But anyways, you know I always say that my head just about popped off when I realized that my ancestors had a tattooing practice and I would say that that was the seed that sat in my mind and in my heart when I think about the revival of intercontamoc tattooing.

Dion: 19:18

So, of course, fast-forwarding 2008 and 2009, I went back to school at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna and it was there that I was asked by my academic mentor, margot Tamez, who was a Leap and Apache scholar, and I was in the class I think it was called Indigenous Historical Perspectives, and we were asked to look into something that had to do with our ancestors and to research it. And so I remembered that booklet back then in 2006, and I thought, ah, that's something that I can do research on. And so, of course, at the time I never wrote down the name of the book, the title, the author, any of that stuff. And finally, in that class I did the work of looking at my ancestral Inka Kutmuk tattooing practice through that booklet entitled Tattooing, face and Body Painting of the Thompson Indians by James Tate. And I am very thankful for the opportunity that I had, the push that I had from Margot in that class, to begin the research into Inka Kutmuk tattooing.

Dion: 20:39

And in the beginning stages it wasn't only about researching Inka Kutmuk and interior Salish tattooing, but also what was the revival of Indigenous tattooing doing in communities that are not my own so, for example, the Maury in Aotearoa, new Zealand, the Samoans and the reinvigoration of a practice that never went to sleep, or the waking up of Tongan tattooing, and then the work that was being done in California, in Northern Southern California, and began to realize that the revival of ancestral tattooing has a way of anchoring us and our youth to our communities and cultures.

Dion: 21:25

Because El Frank Manriquez says, who's a Tongvana, jocma elder says that today we are like seaweeds without roots, you know, just going through, going along in this life's journey, and that the observation that they made is that our tattooing, our ancestral, customary tattooing practices, have a way of rooting us into our everyday lives, communities, cultures and helping to anchor us and to keep us here. So it was through that research that I began to develop a hunch, and that hunch was that our tattooing has the ability to be a protective factor against premature death and suicide, and we'll come back to that a little bit later, but I just like to put that forward. That was the original hunch that I had, and so when I, as I began to move forward, I realized, or I found out, that my mentor, carla Romanuck, was looking for an apprentice at her shop in Salmon Arm, bc, where I grew up. And I went and asked Carla for an apprenticeship and I brought some drawings of course again just some line drawings, to show some of the work that I could do. And she said, okay, these are good, but go bring me back finished drawings. And so I went and did some finished drawings. Of course, that meant using pencil crayons to do some color studies, using charcoal to show different depths and different forms, making things look three dimensional. And so I went and did that and I came back and she said, okay, go do some more drawings. And I came back again and finally she said, you know, you can come and hang out at the shop, and this was in 2009. And so I came and hung out at the shop and, you know, eventually she said, okay, you don't have an apprenticeship. And so in 2009, I began that work of a tattoo apprentice and later, you know, as I was going through my undergraduate degree, I was a kickboxing instructor. So I was doing my tattoo apprenticeship, taking my classes and indigenous studies at UBC Okanagan.

Dion: 23:53

Then, to help pay the bills, I was a kickboxing instructor and one of my students, a young man decided to take his own life and to exit, and so it was actually at his funeral that I say that the seed that was planted in 2006 was watered and began to bloom and to begin to grow, and it was the tears that I cried at his funeral that began to help me to realize that the revival of Inklikatmak tattooing was my answer to the creator's question of what will you do for the people to be? And that question comes to me through my mentor, janet Armstrong, who's a silken Okanagan academic scholar, knowledge keeper and language speaker. And that question comes from the Four Food Chiefs story of the silken Okanagan people, and I'm just going to share a short piece of it because it's had such an impact on my life. And the creator came to the animal people, and so this was the time before this time, and when I say that, what I mean is it was at the time before we as human beings existed in this plane of existence. And so the creator came to the people you know the animal people and asked them what will you do for the people to be? And so what the creator was asking is what will you do to help human beings when they come to this plane of existence, and when I think about that, I realize that, as animals, we're not that well adapted to our environment because we don't have fur to keep us warm, we can't run that fast, we don't have sharp claws or teeth. We can't gather nutrients from our leaves, like the plants, we can't absorb nutrients from the grounds, like the roots, you know, we can't swim in the water the same way that the fishes do. And so the creator asked what will you do for the people to be? And that's a longer story, but the only the important part for this conversation, this story that I'm telling, is that the creator asks what will you do for the people to be? And that question sat in my heart and mind until I realized that my answer to the creator's question was the revival of inficott-mc tattooing and the revival of interior salish tattooing.

Dion: 26:31

And so, in 2012, I began to hand poke and skin stitch, and I did that. You know, I think it was it was after watching a documentary film, and I can't remember the exact documentary, but I realized that it was my responsibility and it was my answer to the creator's question, and so I went down to the tattoo shop. The reality was is that I knew about the health and safety aspects of tattooing and now I knew sanitary practices, I knew how to apply a tattoo. I also knew the importance of the revival of indigenous tattooing and I realized that we, as inficott-mc people, had a rich, rich history and a rich practice of tattooing. And you know what, when I think about James Tate and that text, james Tate says that at one time, each person nobody in my community, in my culture, in inficott-mc communities, up and down all of the rivers nobody past the age of puberty was without at least one mark. And so I always. It always blows my mind to think that at one time, everyone in our communities who was an adult had a tattooing mark, and it came down to the reality that I didn't know we had a tattooing practice.

Dion: 27:58

And then, you know, come up to 2019, I began to imagine what a contemporary inficott-mc tattooing practice would look like. You know, I think that when I look back, I realized that, yes, we have to reach back and hold hands with our ancestors from the past to find inspiration from the things that they left in the museums and left for us to visit with in our communities and our homes. You know those baskets, those different pieces of regalia that great-grandmothers have left. You know, it's important for us to visit with those ancestral objects, those kin, to learn the lessons of our ancestral visual language. And so I began to research the ancestral visual language of my community and my culture, and I was doing that with the express purpose of developing a catalog of our design symbols and motifs that I can share with the community. And I finally completed that and it will be going to press pretty soon and that will be distributed in our community.

Dion: 29:09

And then I started to imagine what would a contemporary, inficott-mc tattooing practice that I could share with the rest of the world look like. Because the reality is is that we have a practice, we have a customary practice that has this different variety of design symbols and motifs that are appropriate to be shared with our own community. And so, you know, I have shared some design symbols and motifs from our ancestral practice, our customary practice, with people who are not from my community, both indigenous and non-indigenous, and began to feel like it wasn't appropriate for me to share those customary designs in the customary places. And so I began to think how can I share my ancestral visual language in a contemporary world with non-inticott-mc, non-indigenous clients and collaborators, and so I started to develop what I have come to call intercut McBlack work, and intercut McBlack work is a contemporary intercut Mc tattooing practice that uses large sections of black and also incorporates the ancestral patterns that are found on basketry, found in Our painted clothing, found it painted on our rocks, you know, etched into some of the stones in our territories, and also, think, coming from designs that were painted on our bodies, and so I've stretched those outside of the ancestral and customary placements of, usually just on the forearms, you know, sometimes on the lower leg and then on the face, and I've done that so that I feel good about sharing these patterns, designs, symbols and motifs with non-community members and non-indigenous people, and one of the things that you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to start this podcast is explore the observations that I've had throughout the work of Creating transformative black work and intercut McBlack work, realizing that you know, of course, there are amazing healing aspects, medicinal aspects to our tattooing practices and that a lot of times, that is comes through the Acquiring of a larger tattoo, a big tattoo, and so it's really the observations that I made there that have helped me to understand that it's important to share these things with the world through solo episodes.

Dion: 31:56

So an episode like this, where I explore a certain topic, we talk about something important, or expound on a conversation that I had previously, or you know. The second type of episode will, of course, be interviews, and so that will be the largest portion of this podcast will be interviews with ancestral skin markers, customary tattoo practitioners, cultural tattoo practitioners and and professional indigenous tattoo artists, and I would also say, in the future, I hope to talk to indigenous and non-indigenous academics About topics that relate to the things that we explore in those conversations, in those interviews. Some examples I can think of Academics or people who think about how trauma is stored in the body, the, you know, people who Think about the healing aspects of body work, all of those type of things I hope to explore in the future, as well as, of course, indigenous academics who talk and think about indigenous identities, because so much of the healing work that happens in this practice is the healing of our connection with our self, and so not just as indigenous people, but also as human beings in a world that you know is Part of a technologic civilization. So, really coming back to the reality of us as human beings. And then I will also include some interviews with non-indigenous tattoo artists and practitioners to explore topics like cultural appropriation, to explore topics like working in Marginalized communities that don't have to do with people of color, that don't have to do with being an indigenous person, and so I'm really excited that you will be joining me here on the transporter marks podcast. I hope this you know winding story of my journey into tattooing and the reasons why I give a shit about this topic Help to inform you as we step into this journey of the transformative marks podcast.

Dion: 34:22

Yeah, I just want to give you a bit of a preview or a highlight of some of the things that we'll be exploring in this podcast, and some of those include Having conversations about the importance of the health aspects of tattooing. You know that includes cross-contamination blood-borne pathogens, but also Ethics of care. So how do we care for our clients, our collaborators and our customers as we go into this work of Marking each other through transformation? And then, you know, we'll also talk about indigenous identities. We'll talk about pretending the, the issues around pretendians and Indigenous identities. We'll also explore some of the spiritual aspects of tattooing. We'll look at some of the ways that we walk into this work as practitioners. We'll also explore, of course, cultural appropriation. We'll also Talk about a variety of amazing subjects, including the medicinal aspects of tattooing, the transformations that we each feel and understand.

Dion: 35:32

Some of the interviews that I'll be doing not only with practitioners but also with recipients, people who have received transformative marks, and so I'm just super Excited that you were journeying with me.

Dion: 35:48

I just want to let you know that, if you've enjoyed this introductory episode, two more have been uploaded, so go check them out. And then also, if you're interested in the conversations that I've had here, I've just finished uploading close to 30 30 interviews that I've done from the past eight years on my YouTube channel, you know, called the transformative marks podcast, and so those interviews are from the last past eight years and they will not be included here as a Conversation or interview that will be included in the main transformative marks podcast, but there's a collection of there for you to go and watch and to, you know, listen to the conversation I had with Keone Nunez, or Listen to the some of the conversations I had with Mati from Tahiti, and you know some of the older Interviews that I did as part of my master's thesis. Yeah, so go check those out If you have enjoyed this episode and the other two that have already been uploaded. Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by and taking this journey with me through this episode. I hope you enjoyed it.

Dion: 37:00

I'll just ask that you would go and subscribe, if you haven't already done so and if you have subscribed. Thank you very much. I appreciate you Following this journey. I just want you to remember that, no matter who you are, where you're from, what you've done or what you've been through, that you were amazing, that you were loved and that we need you here today and Going into the future so that we can transform this world for the better Through our collective thoughts, actions, feelings and our Compassion for each other as human beings.

Dion: 37:38

Head over to the next episode, where we feature Julie Pama, bengali, who is a Mari Moko practitioner who has been involved in the revival of Moko and Mari Tattoo In for over the past 30 years. In this episode, we talk about many of the aspects of Mari Moko tattooing and also some of the processes that Julie shares with her Students and her apprentices around the importance of the customary Visual language of the Mari people. There's some amazing insights in this episode, so don't miss it, and the last thing that I will ask you is to do me a solid and share this episode with somebody that you think will enjoy it. Thanks a lot and see you next week.