Reviving Maori Sacred Art: An Inspiring Journey in Moko with Julie Paama-Pengelly

#002 What happens when an ancestral skin marker decides to carry the torch of Moko, a sacred tattooing practice integral to Māori culture? Join us as we navigate this intriguing question with our guest, Julie Paama-Pengelly, a Māori artist and Moko practitioner. Over a fascinating journey spanning 35 years, she has seen Moko evolve and regain its spiritual power, profoundly impacting cultural preservation.
 
 Embarking on this journey wasn't without its challenges. We delve into the complexities of reviving Moko, the connection between the term "Kirituhi" and Moko's evolution, and the responsibilities that come with wearing it. However, the conversation doesn't stop there. A crucial part of our discussion revolves around the gender roles within the Moko community. We spotlight Julie's struggles as a female practitioner in a predominantly male field, emphasizing the need for more recognition and representation of women in Moko's revival.
 
 We also explore the importance of Indigenous tattoo and design beyond it being a trend. Echoing these sentiments, Julie, a luminary in the indigenous tattoo community, speaks about the significance of these designs and the need for community-oriented practices. We touch upon the creation of robust Indigenous spaces and the importance of indigenous voices in the discourse surrounding Moko. So, join us as we immerse you in the transformative power of Moko and the inspiring journey of a woman determined to keep this sacred art alive. 

I hope you have enjoyed this 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. 

Check out Julie's work at:
Instagram @julesartistmoko

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

Julie : 0:00

I was just so disheartened by the way we were being used overseas.

Julie : 0:06

You know just how powerful that was and how it affected our mana in a really personal way, and for me I could see that. You know, you can go on about appropriation forever and ever, but always there's an easy way to consume. It's really easy. You see it, you want it, you take it. You just go to someone down the road and you'll get it. But by doing something like this, by creating this space, we're creating power of voice, you know, in that and people are going to go wow, maybe I don't want, you know, maybe I go see them. You know the.

Dion: 0:43

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. My name is Dion Casas. I'm a Hungarian, Métis and Intlakaupok professional tattoo artist and ancestral skin marker. I started the work of reviving my ancestral Intlakaupok 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.

Julie : 1:29

So my name is Jelly Parwik Pingali. I'm from Tatawa Tawaka. I'm from Moua Tumuna. I'm from Tairanga Tumuaana. I'm from Ngaiti, tairanga Tawaka. I'm from Tairanga Tumuaana. My name is Jelly Parwik Pingali. I'm from Tatawa Tawaka. I'm from Tatawa Tumuna. I'm from Tatawa Tumuna. I'm from Tatawa Tumuna. I'm from Tatawa Tumuna. I live here in Tatawa Tumuaana, my Hokkainga, my whenua, and I'm a Maori.

Dion: 2:12

So what was the journey that you took that brought you into the work of Moko?

Julie : 2:21

Yeah, I mean I've been on an art journey ever since school and that was kind of I think that's fairly common with a lot of us that we didn't really enjoy our Western teachings, school teachings and I was pretty good at art but I didn't really think it didn't really resonate with me you know, Figurative painting and I did like conceptual stuff. But I went to university and I studied.

Julie : 2:50

I actually started studying psychology and education and I was already doing some kind of commercial art on the side and I didn't like any of those subjects either and I just happened to take anthropology first year and I just really I think that's again another common one. In my era that was kind of the in-road to understanding our material culture.

Julie : 3:15

There was nothing in the arts, maori visual arts, but material culture, of course, is where it sits you know, in museums at that particular time, and it wasn't really until I attended a teacher training course and I was exposed to Maori art teachers and yeah, there was a similar moment when I kind of understood that there was. I was exposed to Moko Pu Ho Do particularly, and it was right on that cusp of revival. It was Derek La Dali and I kind of for me it had meaning you know I suddenly realized that art wasn't just depicting what we saw in a figurative sense, and that kind of started my journey.

Dion: 4:12

Wow, so how long have you been doing the work?

Julie : 4:18

I forget to count sometimes, but I think it might be about I've been doing Maori visual arts for 40 years, but, Moko, I think I'm on about my 35th year.

Dion: 4:29

Wow, that's been a bit of a journey. You know when I think about the revival here, you know what? That's pretty much right at the beginning of the start of the revival work, hey.

Julie : 4:43

Yeah, I mean Derek was pretty much the first person to really, I guess, visibly be reviving and while I was teacher training I actually witnessed Derek doing a large Pu Ho Do piece on a very prominent figure in Maori and the newly coined Mana magazine came out and this particular Piti Cessia was on the front and I'm not sure what he was doing at the time, but he ended up being the head of, basically, maori Language Commission. So he was fairly middle-aged and here he was with his full buttocks on the front of early Minton Maori magazine which would have been pretty radical at the time and I actually saw him receiving his Moko.

Julie : 5:38

And at that time I'd had a friend who then became my husband and we were corresponding and he was saying oh, I hear you. You know, derek, I really want to get my Pu Ho Do. And I was like, oh, I really want to do Moko. And he was like I've been waiting for my Pu Ho Do and no one answers me back. And so we ended up reacquainting with each other and we started that journey together.

Dion: 6:05

Wow. So when you think about that journey of the reigniting of that flame, and then also the time that's gone on to the point where now you have people that are making a living doing Moko, you know that's quite a change, you know, in those few 30 years, you know. Would you like to reflect on that a little bit?

Julie : 6:34

Well, you know, it's not often that I do reflect on it. Probably in the last 10 years I have, and I don't think we ever understood that it was going to be where it is. You know, we'd hoped, and in that fledgling revival stage, I mean, we spent most of our time going to Marae, going to community environments, educating them. So someone might approach us to do Moko and we'd go and we'd spend three or four days educating and maybe one or two days working and I guess you know from at that particular point, we probably spent three days preparing needles. Oh, yeah.

Julie : 7:24

You know, maybe two days out of ten we actually got to do Moko and the rest of it was actually political campaign to reeducate our people. And also we always situated it within a community environment.

Julie : 7:39

We did have the opportunity to do it in museum environments as well. So we did have a national organization, which still exists, for the arts, for Māori visual arts, and they embraced it fairly quickly. And there have been some quite high profile issues with someone doing traditional hand tap and there had been some sickness and some death, and so they were pretty proactive in getting onto it really quickly and going okay, what are we going to wrap around it in terms of health and safety and, at the same time, promoting it as a group and having a standard, and so that really helped because, along with performance, kapa haka Māori occasions, the Moko would come in and we'd be educating about not just health and safety but where it belongs in our world, and so it was a really dynamic phase and it was really highly political. It's a bit like being on the front line of a landmark you know that's what it felt like.

Julie : 8:49

and continuing to kind of review to ourselves are we going to do pākia? What would the designs look like? What do we consider as the right manifestation of contemporary articulations? Why are we using needles? All of those things constitute a really dynamic environment, and it was a number of years before there were more than maybe half a dozen to 12 maybe you know practitioners and we'd all support each other. We'd go to gatherings together.

Julie : 9:33

We weren't usually in isolation, and we'd have national meetings and then, maybe 20 years on, a lot of students came out of art school and they went straight into looking for moko because, they started to see that well one, it had a high profile and secondly, they didn't have to hang some artwork in a gallery and wait for it to move.

Julie : 10:01

So it started to gain traction. And some of those, like myself, were teachers as well, so I put it into our curriculum. Because we had a Māori visual arts school very quickly put the training in the curriculum where it doesn't sit in any curriculum actually because tattoo artists have been resistant about having any formal training. You know that apprenticeship, that even formal rules and standards you know, like in America, you have to have certification.

Julie : 10:36

In New Zealand it's region by region by law basis. So and that's only fairly recent Headresses have more of a more stringent rules around them. So, yeah, it's only, and so we're all teachers, because it's mostly a handful of us and we had other art schools.

Julie : 10:57

obviously, that's how we constituted our language, by sharing those art schools, and now we're at this stage where it's almost flipped and we're getting to the stage of saturation you know like less students are considering the whole art journey and a lot of them are choosing to move straight to Mokko for financial reasons and also, I think there's some sort of kudos attached to it, but also because they haven't taken that political journey. The work risks, I guess. In my opinion it risks becoming something that isn't grounded. It risks that hybridization that happens when you start embracing tattoo industry, particularly you know the kudos that goes with prizes and moving around tattoo expos, moving overseas into tattoo expos and all that kudos.

Julie : 12:01

That appears to go with that other paradigm, and so the actual design is starting to lose its base. I think it's starting to become. The artists are perhaps losing their integrity in some sense, and they're not politicized in it and so that's kind of a scary thing because they'll make generalizations that they can't back up.

Julie : 12:31

Yeah, and I guess that's when I look at some of the other countries that have never had to think about. You know things that might have been challenged. If you're a majority culture, yeah, you have the slacks of days of cool nature about you. Know what it looks like yeah but when you've come from a revival space, you'll really you've really measured on how you approach it yeah and so you know I'm continuing to revise where my energy gets spent and challenging what authenticity looks like.

Julie : 13:05

Yeah, even though I'm a contemporary artist and trying to find not only that, but in revival, you look back and you pull everything that you can find. Yeah, and you're very pure to it. For a while, yeah, and then you start moving because we were artists we always have been but then you start getting brave with it, yeah, and elaborating more than some armbands, and because that was what it was oh yeah, very quickly, and now people barely do an armband.

Julie : 13:37

Hmm, and then you start to go well, what is the quality of the design that we had and the teachings and the knowledge around it and the protocols and all those? What are the things, the intent of those, and how do we, how do we express a dynamic movement forward? And those things without in my mind. You know, the more you move to hybridization, the more you risk it being copied.

Dion: 14:08

Yeah, yeah, it's a. I want to circle back to that, but the one observation I think that's important to pull out of that kind of history and reflection for me is highlighting the amount of education that you had to do, and so you know, and I, the reason I pull that out, you know, pull on that string a little bit, is so that you know those people who are in the beginning of their own revival movements, understanding that it does take a lot of education to bring, say, elders, community members around to understand how valuable and how integral these marks are for our communities there there's a lot of fear.

Julie : 14:55

There's a lot of a lot of fear of retribution from, you know, of persecution. Yeah, there's a lot of fear from a lot of our elders about the you know, the trauma around it disappearing and the violation of their ways, and and also this fear around whether it should belong you know whether it should stay buried with some of our people yeah

Julie : 15:24

and so all of those challenges are really real and and there's a lot of criticism criticism too, you know the eyes are on you in terms of how you conduct yourself. Are you saying ritual? I mean, we've had situations where we've been told not to do it, and you know the Fadi Nui, because blood was never shared. And then other people are saying, well, we brought our dead into there so there's all those debates that go on.

Julie : 15:48

Yeah, and it's a really difficult process, but it's a beautiful process because our people actually have to consider you know their views they can't just sit behind those views when and it gains a momentum- yeah a worthy momentum, because you can't you can't revive something without your community.

Julie : 16:09

Yeah, and I think that that time I feel blessed to have spent that time with the community, because now you know it's a given, artists can just pick their tools up and do it if they want, but that isn't necessarily grounded in their community yeah and nor are they sometimes.

Dion: 16:28

You know they, they work backwards if they work backwards yeah and I guess, coming back to that one thing that I said I wanted to circle back to, was you know you and correct me if I'm wrong, but there is this world word called Kiri Tui. Is that the word?

Julie : 16:49

Kiri Tehi and so is that kind of connected to what you were thinking about is, in terms of the hybridization starts to change it to such a degree that maybe it's not as connected to that sacredness of what Moko is yeah, that's kind of a complex question, because Kiri Tui was kind of erected as a name by some artists who thought that there should be an explanation of Moko when it appeared on non Maori, and so the intent wasn't to hybridize yeah the intent was to give value to what they were doing and to what they were applying to non Maori, but also delineating it from Moko yeah and, in my perspective, moko is something that my hands carry on behalf of my ancestors the language, my knowledge and everything else that manifests when you work in that space, yeah, so I can't turn that off you know and I can't go.

Julie : 18:01

Oh sorry, you're not Maori, you're getting a half pie yeah, you know so for me that was kind of a bit of a red herring that that term, and, and you know, at the beginning of the revival I was very certain that there was no room for Pakiara to get or non Maori to get pieces yeah and that's because, if our own people didn't feel entitled, and it wasn't within our communities then, we were risking them being intimidated you know, by that and not feeling it belonged to them at all.

Julie : 18:35

And so impoverished communities. All those reasons, faka Ma, you know, shy, not feeling entitled to it, all those reasons that our people didn't get it. You know, the disparity between Pakiara that seem entitled is because of their privilege, their historic privilege. So why would I give them something that's our inherited privilege, you know?

Julie : 19:01

yeah so I felt very strongly about that. But at the time when the revival became a safe it's safe. You know what I consider a safe space and I guess you could pretty much say, if you know, if there's a 3% critical mass of yeah, you know energy in it, then I could move to Pakiara receiving that. And I and I moved to it also because the international community will all gathering on this bandwagon and we're starting to copy our things ago. And then they were starting to call it Kiri Tuhi, because you know Kiri Tuhi's for Pakiara. So if I'm a Pakiara and I do it, then I'm a Kiri Tuhi artist. So that's where the the tomb actually became bastardized. Really, yeah, and but at the time when everyone was appropriating our stuff, then for me it was like, okay, I can see that there's our community, understand where it sits. Now there's non Maori that want, really, really want it yeah so how do I convert them to one of our soldiers?

Julie : 20:06

yeah, you know yeah other than just going to a book and ripping something off and then they're none the wiser yeah if they, if they become one of our soldiers, then they're one more voice for us yeah and especially overseas. When you see how much we're being ripped off, yeah, I think it's really important that we work in that space, not for money or any other reason other than claiming it yeah and it's authentic form.

Dion: 20:30

Yeah, yeah, and it's also, I guess that's taking up that space to be able to offer it in a way that ensures that those who wear it understand the responsibilities they have when they wear it. You know, when you get it from a local practitioner, a Maori person, then you have a responsibility to that person who gave you that mark and also the, the stories, the responsibilities that that artist instills in their work. So, yeah, that's a I love how you phrase that. You're making them one of our warriors.

Julie : 21:07

Yeah, absolutely and they will do it no matter how shy they are about it, because they they're proud that they have authenticity yeah you know that they've actually engaged and those people normally permanently sit in that space yeah you know, and those are people that would resist us in everyday life.

Julie : 21:26

Yeah, often, yeah, so that, yeah, that that term, kiriti is a red herring. On the other hand, when I talk about hybridization, I'm talking about quite, quite often, I'm talking about the design space. That's the bit where, you know, people think that our language is like three basic designs, you know, the puhuru, the mangalpare, the kuru, and they use those and they think, oh, I've run out of ideas and so they start pulling things apart and putting illustration in there.

Julie : 21:59

Okay, and so even we, even ourselves. We tend to start putting carvings illustrated in there. We start blowing out that area, whereas the space for us holds very distinctive, fluid designs that are mean the other meaning yeah and so if we look at that design language and we go, okay, so that represents a hammy head and it represents these things, how might I represent a pigeon in that language without drawing a pigeon?

Julie : 22:31

yeah you know so that for me that's the challenge, because is, the more we draw pigeons, the more people go. Oh, I can draw a pigeon yeah therefore, I just put some kuru around. Therefore it's. Maori illustration and so.

Julie : 22:45

I have, you know, I've had that argument with people that continue to rip off our culture, saying they're doing hashtag time, local, yeah and I'm like, no, you're not. You're illustrating a tiki yeah, with some Kuru on it you know that is not what Moko is, but we're falling into that trap because we're looking at flashy pretty, shading and color yeah and we're going. Yes, if we put an illustration in there it's only looking prettier, but we've actually just transformed our visual system yeah and we've made it a hybrid system and it's not read the same way yeah, you know yeah it's not.

Julie : 23:21

I mean, seeing the Tahitian would be the same thing if I suddenly draw a figurative piece in there. Yeah, I'm actually not reading it yeah in the same manner.

Julie : 23:29

So I think we've become lazy in that way and we've been lured by the pretty yeah and when I, when I teach my apprentices it doesn't really matter where they come from, you know I teach them to move into the, the roots of the symbolic system and create new things, even if it was an ice cream truck yeah you know it doesn't look like one. It has to be in our system yeah yeah the, the visual grammatic structure.

Dion: 23:57

I suppose you could say yeah very.

Julie : 24:00

You know. It's highly symbolic, always was yeah there's a reason for that, yeah you know, because once we put it in the space of being a visual object, then we've put it in, we've actually taken the language to our Atsua, to our protectors, our ancestral language, from it. And it's not like we didn't hybridise. In a way, we were quite innovative. In the houses we put pot plants, for example, to represent the land, but they were still not figurative pot plants.

Julie : 24:36

They were still symbolic of. They weren't a pot plant, they were symbolic of how we felt about the way westerners were treating our land. So you've actually got. I think that's where my education in Māori visual arts was very much about looking for the abstract concepts and the abstract language. First, it's really full grounding on surveying everything and understanding our language, how that sits with our language, which is a metaphor. So if you say the language is a metaphor, the visual language is a metaphor. And the other thing is that we didn't put our ancestors actually physically on us. Physical representations of our ancestors were the deceased and to put them physically on us is actually like if I said I wanted my daughter on me and I physically put her on me then I'm actually condemning her in a way.

Dion: 25:50

Yeah, it's a beautiful the way that you have done that work and started to speak about it. I think it's quite inspiring for me, my own work of starting to do that work for myself and for my own community, and I would also say, maybe a caution as well, an opportunity for me to think a little bit deeper in a few different ways. So I hold you up for being firm in that conviction and in that understanding. You know the reading, your reading of your ancestral language is quite inspiring, so I appreciate you sharing that with me. One reason I wanted to have a conversation with you was to bring forward the reality that you know the. You know as in most and a lot of tattoo spaces, it's a male dominated you know process, and I wanted to give opportunity for you to speak to that in the world of Moko, just because I, you know, I'm somewhat ignorant of it. I had no bit of your story, but I'd like to just open that conversation up.

Julie : 27:06

Yeah, I think being the one in that space is really different to being the minority in that space. So when I started I was the only one in that space and you know, I kind of thought, maybe because we were a partnership, that I was safe in that space.

Julie : 27:27

But probably, you know, I had to grow some balls really to be, in that space, which is which is not a comfortable thing, because I don't think that woman should have to do that, but that was the reality of the first thing in that space is that, predominantly, if Maori, if men, stood up and talked about the Moko revival, they talked about the language coming from Kaido, from carving, and carving was one of the first things that we basically in any revival in contemporary world. It restricted women from practicing. Like any art school that had carving in the early days. There were no women allowed in there.

Julie : 28:12

They weren't allowed in the carving house, because it was considered that woman would take the tapu off, because women have the ability to do that, and so men would stand up and go. Oh, you know, the language comes from carving and I'm like that's really lazy, because it doesn't, otherwise I'd be drawing carvings on people. So that was the first exclusion. No one really asked me where I got it from. And then the second thing was is that woman didn't do it?

Julie : 28:43

So, that was an intentional exclusion and ignorance, because there were women that did it. And the third one was is that woman, you know, is kind of minimized? What woman wore? They didn't wear major pieces on their body. They wore their chin and not a lot else. You know, and so those were quite powerful, but in the other senses I was quite ballsy.

Speaker 2: 29:08

Yeah, and I did my research, so I could justify that space.

Julie : 29:12

I wasn't always confident when we were sitting all at the table working, yeah, but I was confident enough to validate why I was doing it. And then, I guess, working at Te Papa in 2004,. You know that was an opportunity that one was quite seminal in the sense that, you know, even though they didn't necessarily, I guess, as a group want to, I was on the committee and I was one woman and I was going to be doing it in public and I was going to be doing it a mucle form that most of them thought woman didn't wear, yeah, so, even though they might have resisted it, I did it and from that moment they couldn't really deny it. Yeah, but it continued to challenge me, like whenever.

Julie : 30:01

I pop photos up or anything like that. People would go. A woman didn't do that and I'd have to quote back. Or you know, woman didn't practice and I'd have to quote back. And then you know there's now there's a number of women and you know I'm quite inspired that some of those women actually they fed off the fact that they saw me doing that- yeah.

Julie : 30:21

But most of them and not all of them, but most of them began thinking that woman didn't do it either. You know what I mean. So it's like you're still that pre-colonial paradigm Even after 35 years. You know, as little as 30 years ago I heard a mucle artist, a woman, stand up and say woman didn't do the puhudu and woman didn't practice. And I'm like, well, it's now 30 years of revival. Why would you say that? Because you have no, you have no idea how to situate your practice even yourself, because you went to a man and you learned. But there's a woman been doing it for 30 years and more women been doing it for that for a length of time too.

Julie : 31:06

So you know that's the disadvantage of not being located in that, and so I feel quite blessed that I did persevere. And the other thing, and it's a difficult one, because even though I had a partner that supported it, saying it and doing it are two different things, you know. So the woman still has to do everything else and find the time to do mucle and still stretch for you and find it out and basically be secondary to your practice as well. So you know that was a constant battle. And then I think I alluded to it in one of my talks that the wives of were very cruel, yeah, yeah. And so that, because for me, you know, I didn't position myself as a man, I positioned myself as a woman and I felt stabbed by that sort of behaviour.

Julie : 31:58

Yeah, but just because they didn't want to work in that space or they couldn't, for whatever reason, didn't mean that I was flying after all their men you know, which was just, even though I had, you know, largely we worked in a married couple of cents, but I did my work alone, you know. But yeah, it's still seemed that that is an ongoing kind of issue. Yeah.

Julie : 32:26

Woman. That it's like putting. It's like the good old scenario of woman allowed to fight the front line now. But the problem is the men and the woman. Yeah, the problem isn't that the woman does it, it's the problem that you know. Yeah, it creates a dynamic.

Dion: 32:43

Yeah, yeah and I guess I was playing a little bit ignorant and asking you that question because I do know some of those things about your journey, and it's one of the reasons that I asked you to become part of the exhibition I'm working on for the Museum of Vancouver was to put you forward in that international sense and to help to lift you up, and I know that the work that you do here is obviously a huge inspiration for the women, the local practitioners here, the females who do the work here but also in Turtle Island, and so you know, I always like to lift you up and I want to acknowledge you for that and I want to make sure that people know of the work that you have done, because then, when I my perusal or my research into, especially the beginning of the documentation of the revival of Moko, it has been predominantly that male voice in there, and so I want to help to, you know, bring that to light and to what would you say, continue to help with the legacy that you have put forward and you have fought very hard for here, but also to help inspire those who are maybe going through similar struggles in their own communities, in their own cultures in their own revival movements.

Dion: 34:09

So, yeah, I lift you up on that and I thank you for that hard work, because you know it needs to be acknowledged and it needs to be held up.

Julie : 34:18

Yeah, I guess. Just another comment on that. Like I don't do it for that validation. Obviously, people women who need to find me find me. But as recently as 2018, the documentary series started the Moko series on TV and that started well. The film crew went to Mordia and followed our crew explicitly because they knew that there'd be a lot of other indigenous communities there and because I was head of that contingent. Well, I chose the contingent actually because I already had connections to Tahiti.

Julie : 35:04

It was interesting that when we got the documentary to review, which was just maybe a year ago, we got sent it. There's a really prominent and really well-known New Zealand anthropologist that actually promoted an alternative view and there's a couple of things underlying that One. She never acknowledged my partner either, so she didn't like him, so he got left out of the history, he got written out of the history and her basis for actually her professorship in everything is being an authority on Mokko and she basically put forward a second paradigm, which was that another woman who started doing Mokko I'm not sure, maybe two or three years after me she was in the South Island that she was the first one to do it at some age of eight and said there was only ever one woman in that space and totally ignored, even though she knows I work in that space, changed the narrative and when your own people are doing that, it's really disappointing.

Julie : 36:24

I don't want any great thing about where I started or whatever, but to write me out of that history book is actually a really powerful for your own community to do that and to have kudos for that. Because I'm not a professor, to be promoting that narrative is really disappointing as a woman too.

Dion: 36:51

Yeah, and I would say it brings up an interesting point that I always like to kind of push home. And that's even more interesting because usually when I talk about it, I'm talking about non-indigenous academics positioning themselves as experts in a given practice. And I find that challenging because there's no way someone can be an expert in something that they don't practice, and I think that that has to be a bit of a paradigm shift in terms of positioning people as experts in things that they just look at. You can't be an expert in something you just look at.

Julie : 37:35

I mean the university space is famous for that right. Yeah, oh for sure You're talking about people like you're making your career on talking about people and I remember going to an anthropology conference it was in Australia, Australia, New Zealand and there were 10 white people talking about Aboriginal people and there were 10 Māori talking about Māori and not a single Aboriginal person to be seen. So, yeah, it's everywhere in that and not coming to the practitioner and asking them what centres, their practice, what they've done, etc. It's, yeah, some armchair anthropologist.

Dion: 38:17

Yeah, no, and I think that the work that I'm starting to do is to try and change that a little bit, so that part of this podcast is part of it. Some new writing a book that I'm going to be working on is to try and help to change that paradigm so that we don't have to quote those who are outside of the work in the things that we need to express, because a lot of times you'll read those books or watch those documentaries and they all look pretty much the same.

Julie : 38:52

And then I got accused a number of times, and usually by men in the mokko practice, of being an academic and not actually being a practitioner when I talked about. So that was like we have to put you as one or the other. If you're going to be an authority on it.

Dion: 39:10

You're not practicing it you're a woman, yeah, wow, yeah, yeah, I mean, it definitely is a harder space to live in. I understand that from my own practices. The time to write and the time to do the work those things sometimes counter each other, but I think that the way that I talk about it is that our theorization about the work comes from the work, and you are sitting with someone who is working through whatever they're working through whether that's coming to know who they are as an indigenous person, bodying their indigeneity, or whether that's working through some type of grief or whatever they're working through while they're being marked. Those ideas come to you, those observations come to you, which show a depth of understanding that people who sit and observe could never understand.

Julie : 40:12

I mean, that is what instinctually we've been working on to be those mediators. We know as practitioners that we become the psychologists and quite adept at it, managing that for our own health as well as their health. But that's immediately what comes to the surface for them. And I think and the other thing is since seeing the success of the revival, because now we're at the point where faith's tattooing, particularly on women, is almost like it's almost a birthright active now is that it's really important that we have our say, that we actually undocumented in every way we can, because in the past our proof of reason was white male history book. So it's really important that we sit in the moment and we contemplate what we want our people to hear from us. So I've learned to not be silent, because I was also a very shy person, even though I was quite smart intellectually. I processed it and kept it to myself and it wasn't until there was a growth in the woman practitioners that I went oh, I have a responsibility. It was so responsibility.

Julie : 41:45

And they go. You know, my mentor did this and blah blah blah. What do you think about this? And how do I do a pool? Or I'm like, oh okay, and I need to share stuff now and.

Julie : 41:56

I need to look for ways that they don't have to navigate some of the crap that our own people put on them, and so that was why I also used my experience in the international community to allow them to find their research without going through the gatekeepers. And so when people stand up and go, oh you know, you do more like this and you get it from this and you get it from this, and I go no, you don't not. If you're a woman, that's not. That wasn't my journey, and I need people to know my journey wasn't there, because otherwise they're going and doing the wrong things. Yeah.

Dion: 42:33

Yeah.

Julie : 42:34

Yeah.

Dion: 42:35

Yeah, Thank you for sharing that. When you think about those things, what do you think is important to share at this moment? That needs to go out there in terms of where you see Moko at the moment, and you know, of course it's a bit of a hard question Put you on the same yeah.

Dion: 43:02

But yeah, no, it just came to mind because you know you were sharing. You know some of those observations that you have. You know what are some of the things that are going through your mind at the moment that you feel need to be put out there.

Julie : 43:16

Well, there's some really good work being done and bring everybody in and start dealing with the real issues about practice.

Julie : 43:25

Some of the things I talked about, like where's your language come from? How do you connect to your community? Where should Moko sit for the future? Those are things being contemplated by a series of Wananga which I, you know, I haven't I've been to one, but it's really for those that you know don't have that, and for me, for me making the Indigenous connection I realise for many communities they're not as fortunate as Māori and that that that connection actually can make us really strong. Because the first thing is, I think, that you have to be, you have to be able to locate yourself. Yeah.

Julie : 44:08

And if you can't locate yourself, you're in a really unsafe space for yourself and for everybody around you. So you know taking your bearings and going who, who are my mentors, because I'm not someone that believes in. You know that it's valid in New Zealand to have a Tohunga Tunga structure.

Julie : 44:27

You know, we've now become to a proliferation of realities for Māori. There's already a number of people doing Moko that wouldn't sit in the Tohunga structure probably including myself because I'm a female and that that it's appropriate to be able to and I teach my students to do it too is to process information and the reality of everything you know and continue to re-evaluate it. Don't get caught into saying what. What mainstream like to say about us is everyone did this or everyone did that. Yeah, because it's not.

Julie : 45:04

It never has been valid. We've been tribes forever, we've been creatives forever, and so we're not a moment in time, we're an evolution. So keep locating yourself and challenging yourself in that. Don't throw back those same old stereotypes. The second thing is, I think that we have a real challenge with language I don't want to say the credibility of people to practice, because I think people are picking it up for various reasons and they have a journey, but I think that we need to question sometimes whether what we're putting on is any more valid than what someone, a non-Maori, is putting on.

Julie : 45:45

So you really do have to. I think the design language is what's starting to to falter, and we're at the stage where we're starting to copy each other and artists are talking about it oh, I did that like that and someone's just done it like that and I think I spoke about. You know, I think it's really great to bring weaving, basketry cloaks, all of those things into our designs, but not just because it looks pretty. Yeah. You know. So do your homework on your design, make your catalogue. Yeah.

Julie : 46:18

You know, be methodical in what you do, Don't just go. Well, I've got a pen and a machine and I'm just going to go for it, yeah, you know. And and work as a community, yeah. And for me, you know, I've always been a teacher, so it's embedded in me that I'll do that. I don't always work with a community that don't support me. I look for the community that understands. Yeah.

Julie : 46:44

So that doesn't mean you have to just go and find every you know, turn everyone into your champion, because they're not going to be, yeah, but actually located in community, not as an individual practice. I sometimes get challenged about putting it in a studio and I would never have done that 30 years ago. Yeah. But hang on, you know you're just going to go and open a studio. I've done a journey, yeah, and I understand why I philosophically I'm, you know. I know what I'm doing in that space. I want to recolonize a space. Yeah.

Julie : 47:16

I want people to come in and be exposed to the difference. Yeah. People often come into our studio that has mainstream artists and says, say, oh, this doesn't look like a tattoo studio. Yeah, I'm used to that too. With art I'm like, oh, this doesn't look like Māori art. They're prepared to be prejudice, yeah, but they realize there's a nice quality about it and what is that that's? Because I've turned it into, you know, in a working paradigm that I'm feel as Māori. Yeah, the way we look after people. Yeah, it's not about me. Yeah.

Julie : 47:48

It's about the way we look after the needs of the client. And also it gives me permission because I've worked mainstream and I hated education and I hated what it did to our people. Yeah, I'm able to educate in my space the way I want to educate yeah, yeah, so it's. I think it's to be more conscious of what you do and continue to keep revising where you locate it. Yeah, you know yeah. Especially in a design sense, because it's really dangerous just to see it as the newest thing.

Dion: 48:22

Yeah.

Julie : 48:23

The newest picture, Pokemon or whatever.

Dion: 48:24

Yeah.

Julie : 48:25

That just yeah. And following trends of tattoo yeah. And that's why I think it's important. It's not the ritual that locates it. Yeah, it's not those things that locate it. It's actually and deeply embedded in the language. That connects us to why we actually do it and why it manifests who we are.

Dion: 48:46

Yeah, yeah, that's powerful. You know, this is probably the second conversation that has helped me to begin to refine my own understanding and also to begin that journey of reconnecting those design symbols and motifs back to our oral language as well. You know, I think my conversation with Julius helped me to understand the importance of being able to connect that to the oral language as well and the value and importance of it.

Julie : 49:23

Yeah, I think we've become very much a factual culture. You know like the mainstream is about facts. And so if you say oh, this symbolizes that someone goes away and keeps saying that, Whereas that wasn't how our language worked. Our language was layers and layers depending on how you laid it out of meaning, and that's what our mokul should be as well, you know. And as soon as you put a picture in, well, actually it's a bird.

Dion: 49:51

Yeah, yeah.

Julie : 49:52

You just stop thinking.

Dion: 49:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you start. You stop translating the language. Instead, you look at the pretty, the pretty.

Julie : 50:01

We've already got a language for understanding a bird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not.

Dion: 50:08

That's not the message that our language tells us. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. You have, for the past couple of years, been pivotal in spearheading a Indigenous tattoo or skin marking conference, symposium and festival. You know what was the drive to put that forward.

Julie : 50:33

Yeah, I don't know. I do know but it's just like I'm never like, I'm never comfortable with accepting what we have.

Julie : 50:44

You know, for me, I'm impatient to change our legacy and I've worked in education and I've worked one-on-one and I feel what colonialism does to us. You know it puts us behind the eight ball all the time. So I've learned a long time ago about driving a development paradigm. If you like, I'm over there before anyone else gets there. And for me I think I alluded to it before situating ourselves in an indigenous space rather than the colonised actually gives power to us all, and acknowledging very directly that I understood early on that our genealogy is specifically linked to all these people out there, and I knew it was not just the Pacific.

Julie : 51:41

I knew it was the Aegean region, and then it's actually on the American continent, and then, if you look at our markings and our belief systems, it's all the way through the indigenous, and we all sit in a similar paradigm of being colonised and we are less fortunate than many of the others because their history of colonisation dates back more years. So for me it's like if you find, like I said, find your community, and the bigger that community is, the more power we have the mobilisation. If you think that a multinational is transborder, then indigenous is transborder as well.

Julie : 52:21

So, we can actually, you know, we've got more role models. We've got more ways of being when we go somewhere else and our own people can sit in boxes that are this small and so reaching out to people that have those bigger ways, I mean just share exposure.

Julie : 52:43

We see what happens when Tuikiri happens and how much we feel akin to each other, and the other thing is how safe we feel. You know, on a daily basis we don't realise how ground down we are by being minorities. Our visual language is hardly visible and one of the most powerful ways it's visible is on our person, because we carry that. But if we look around our landscape, nothing. And so you know, as a trust at the regional level, we're working on that landscape as well. You know we're working to bring our visibility back to our land.

Julie : 53:24

But as a mokko practice like, I was just so disheartened by the way we were being used overseas. You know just how powerful that was and how it affected our mana in a really personal way, and for me I could see that. You know you can go on about appropriation forever and ever, but always there's an easy way to consume. It's really easy. You see it, you want it, you take it. You just go to someone down the road and you'll get it. But by doing something like this, by creating this space, we're creating power of voice.

Julie : 54:05

You know, in that and people are going to go wow, maybe I don't want you know, maybe I go see them you know, so there's the power of voice, and there's the power of educating, and there's the power of communicating to our people and making it accessible to other people as well To show respect for what's there. So I started off, I guess, really wanting to show the tattoo industry, but in the end it's like actually no, we've just got a really we can have a really comprehensively big voice to help our people move to the next step you know, and have compassion for the fact it's not taken for granted what you've got, because people are still working, they're still reviving, they're still on the tender hooks of doing it and dealing with their own communities that can't deal with it.

Julie : 54:56

So, yeah, I just think there's this strength in that listen, and I get my strength from moving around these communities, too, and appreciating where we've come and what we've got.

Dion: 55:09

Yeah it's.

Dion: 55:12

I guess it's a larger realization of the conversation that I'm continually having back home, where Indigenous practitioners from other communities on Turtle Island reach out to me and they say, hey, I'm going to this convention.

Dion: 55:28

You know this Western convention and you know these are the things that I've experienced racism, you know erasure, you know misrepresentation, etc. Etc. Etc. And I have to continually, always help people to remember that you're not at those spaces and those places for those people. You're in those spaces and those places for the people that come to your booth, those Indigenous people who are in those Western spaces. You're there to help them and help them in their journey and their walk. And so really, what you have created is, instead of saying we're going to be that little Indigenous voice in this right, in this whole space, you're like no, we need to create our own space so that we're all there together and we have a bigger voice, a bigger place and so welcoming people to come in and experience it and understand that we're all holding each other up. We don't have to feel those same way, that same way.

Julie : 56:33

Yeah, and I guess it kind of goes back to the whole reason Western world was fascinated by tattoo in the first place, you know, but actually you should want to be us. Yeah.

Julie : 56:46

Not just where we are at. You should see us, because taking parts of us and then treating us the same way is not good enough, but actually seeing us as something that is actually really precious is part of that conversation as well, and holding ourselves is more precious than sitting Like. I won't go to a tattoo convention anymore. If I did, I'd want to take 20, 30 brothers and sisters with me A crew. Yeah because that gives us, you know it gives us voice.

Julie : 57:19

And people are going to stop and go. Oh, what are we doing? Or even if they go oh, what are we doing? They're saying that there's a difference.

Dion: 57:28

Yeah, definitely. And the people and I would say that, the people that enter that space, whether it's here or you know, when we took over the Indigenous alley, I like to call it when we were at the convention over here it's more than how it happened. You know, people walk down those spaces and they could tell the difference. The people who got marked in our boobs could tell the difference between what was happening on the other side of the convention compared to what we were doing.

Julie : 58:01

I still would like to see that happen. Yeah.

Julie : 58:05

That was an unsafe space, the way we were treated, but we made it safe by doing what we did with the Wananga, because for me that's really important, that we become respectful of each other and one. And yeah, we felt safer because we did that Wananga. If we'd just all walked in as Indigenous people and went in that alleyway, you know we would have been picked off pretty much. But what I'd like to see is more like I don't hold what we do as the only model, you know, because obviously I went to Tahiti and that was a really powerful experience too. I would like to see us creating more and more spaces where we edged out you know the way people, because I feel in New Zealand we've converted, because we have a large number of Pacific Islanders and Māori. I think I saw it first in the carving space, but I see it in the mokko spaces that we've converted, the way people see Tatu. Yeah.

Julie : 59:06

You know I don't get people coming in and going. I want that on the wall. Yeah. You know they come in and they have a conversation about someone dying and you know what they were like and how they feel, and that's a conversion of what Tatu used to be. Yeah. And so I feel that the more work we do there, the more respect we get you know, and we're in. We have the opportunity to be. I think that we're the dominant hand. We shouldn't let the industry tell us what we should be. Yeah.

Julie : 59:35

And unfortunately we are free machines hashtag you know all that sort of thing. It plays a part, for sure, because we can show some mana in it, but we need to be careful of who we are in that space.

Dion: 59:50

Yeah, for sure. And I would say, you know that's a. I would say that I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking about. You know, that's what I'm trying to do in my own work now is to transform it. Where, you know, we have a conversation about what we're going to represent and we have that story and we give opportunity to be able to inspire you know the design, symbols and motifs and my knowledge and understanding of it and represent it the way it needs to be from my ancestral visual language, as opposed to someone saying this is exactly what I would like to get done Right, and so it's a. I'm starting to do that work back home. You know, of course, it's a slow, slow journey because people aren't used to it, you know so in the consumerist mode where I say I want this, this and this and I'd like a few.

Julie : 1:00:51

If you could just put a little bit of floral in there.

Dion: 1:00:53

Yeah, A few little little feathers and a couple of beads, and so for me it's, yeah, starting to do that work back home, where we start to work in that indigenous way of storytelling Visual storytelling.

Julie : 1:01:10

Actually determine what that space looks like.

Dion: 1:01:13

Yeah, yeah.

Julie : 1:01:15

And that's where I've started working as well, and I think even as a festival, if you could call it that, or a gathering that we you know, unfortunately, we don't never have enough time but wouldn't it be? Great, if we just could sink right in there.

Dion: 1:01:31

Yeah, oh yeah.

Julie : 1:01:33

And if it's out of that, for sure we all get the deeper stuff that we need, which I feel like. You know there's still conversations that just like whoa, they just really get me and we're all moving in a way together, we're all bouncing off and you know, like you and your exhibition, it's like for me it feels a little bit like when we pushed for carving to be in a fine art gallery. Ah, yeah.

Julie : 1:01:58

You know, it was the same thing. Carvings didn't belong there. There was still this museum, art, gallery paradigm. And that's one of the reasons I work in a studio space, because I don't want to be the poor paradigm. Yeah, you know we belong actually where the first ones that created that space. Yeah.

Julie : 1:02:16

It's like now we push and we've been able to do it in New Zealand for a wee while because our funding funders recognize Tamuqo as a practice of art, whereas mainstream don't recognize tattoo as art. Yeah, so that puts us in a powerful space, but where you can go into an art gallery and determine the outputs that you're looking at, the story that you're looking at, that mucle belongs in there. Yeah.

Julie : 1:02:42

And I've performed in a lot of art galleries, to be honest, and that's a great thing. I mean, still, sometimes you're a little bit of an oddity in there, yeah, but you know, just to enrich that context that is happening in there. So you're not just an oddity in there. Yeah, you're a performing artist. Yeah. That you know has got, if not more, validity than someone that's proposed to canvas. Yeah, you know that's a powerful way forward as well.

Dion: 1:03:11

Yeah, and I would you know when I think about that I have to hold up the Canada Council for the Arts because they're a part of the funding for this podcast and my ability to travel in a lot of ways and have these conversations, and that funding in the Canada Council of the Arts is as a ancestral skin marker, as a cultural tattoo practitioner, and so I do hold them up in that way of recognizing that.

Julie : 1:03:37

Yeah, you've become an advocate. That's become an advocate for what you do.

Dion: 1:03:41

Yeah, and so I hold them up and you know I acknowledge always their support and the things that I do, because it is a forward way of thinking, I would say, compared to a lot of other spaces where you know tattoo is reserved to another space in another place, but they're recognizing it as a art form and so, yeah, I hold them up for that and it's cool to see that. You know, in here in Aotearoa that's the case as well.

Julie : 1:04:13

It's probably. Your project is quite ambitious in that. I don't think we've quite held it up there. We've you know we've had performing Mokko. Yeah. But where you uphold an artist and their whole practice as a way of looking at Mokko rather than from an anthropological perspective, is actually, you know, we could learn something from that. Ah, cool, cool.

Dion: 1:04:39

Well, you know, and I always say, a lot of these ideas come from those conversations that we have, and so, you know, it's always great to be able to have these conversations and also now to share them in a certain type of way. As I start to think about us winding down to the end of this conversation, I always like to give an opportunity. Are there any questions that come to your mind in terms of you know, something you might want to ask me in this conversation or something else you might want to explore that we haven't explored yet?

Julie : 1:05:14

Hmm possibly I might need to drink water.

Dion: 1:05:20

You know, because I always, I always get to ask all those questions. But there might be, something that comes forward.

Julie : 1:05:31

You know, I can see that you're doing really transformative work in there quite, quite quickly you know, which you know I think is amazing, and I actually hear practitioners saying not just practitioners, but recipients saying that they accept that as your tradition. You know, that you're already in that that history book is a valid practice. How do you because I know that it's really awkward with so many different tribal identities how do you feel like what you're doing might be taken, not in its visual form, but as a model for how communities might deal with?

Julie : 1:06:21

you know obviously not at the beginning many communities, but I know that instinctually people look at basketry, that, look at pottery, that, look at all those things. Yeah, do you think there's a room for some kind of because I've been thinking this myself in terms of writing some kind of handbook on the way forward?

Dion: 1:06:44

Yeah yeah, yeah, I would say that you know everything that I do. I try to do it and outline it in a certain type of way that people could find inspiration, and you know what would I say? You know, academically, I think the the phrase is to leave Indigenous signposts, right. So I'm always trying to leave Indigenous signposts for people to go.

Dion: 1:07:09

Hmm, this is something I can think about, maybe a way for me to start to do that in my own community, and I would say that in Turtle Island in North America, canada, in the US, us, as Implicot McPheople, are actually very fortunate in that we do have at least a little booklet that talks about our own skin marking practices, whereas many other communities don't even have that. You know, they, many, many of them have like a sentence, not even a full paragraph, that says that there are people marked, and that doesn't talk about motif, that doesn't talk about design, that just says that they did it. You know it doesn't say they did it on their face, it doesn't say they did it on their body. You know, it's just one parent, one little sentence that says that they did it. And so I'm always going well, how can we, how can I start to put forward signposts so that people can at least start to see a path, to start to walk down not think it's an impossible yeah, it's a.

Dion: 1:08:11

It's a reachable goal.

Julie : 1:08:13

To begin to envision what that looks like should we say how many years it takes to get to each step? The other question that comes to mind is, like you know, I looked for clues and found clues, obviously, of women's practice. So how, how do you see a way forward for groups that say and I can use Papua New Guinea as an example where men didn't practice it? Hmm, how would you suggest to navigate that to, because I think it's not fair to have.

Julie : 1:08:49

For me, it's not fair to have one without the other, either practitioners and or markings. Yeah, how would you suggest to navigate that?

Dion: 1:08:57

well, I think when I think about that, it is beginning to think about it in terms of I guess it's hard to say how I would say other people should do it, but I think for us, as into the comic people, as into your Salish, we are a very egalitarian and in our practice, it was actually a practice where women and women tattooed each other, men and men tattooed each other.

Dion: 1:09:26

It wasn't across genders and that same type of in the same way as it is now. But I would also say there is a lesson in that in itself, which says that in some cases, that would be appropriate because it creates, in some cases, a safer space. Yes, right to be able to navigate that space in a way that you may have a better ability to help someone navigate that space. But you know, that would be the only thing that I could, you know, say in terms of maybe a way forward, just to start to think about it in that way and maybe the right and it really depends, I guess, on the amount of tradition that sits within that community but maybe the right, after 400 years of evolution, to be egalitarian yeah you know to say well, actually, let's create a space for our men, yeah, or a space for our woman, yeah, to be part of this, because if we acknowledge it's an ancestral talisman, if you like it to, you know it's something that helps our journey, then why would we leave someone out of it?

Dion: 1:10:44

yeah, for sure of being having that power yeah, definitely, and you know, and you know it's a challenging thing to say maybe and I'm not saying about any specific practice or any specific people, but the reality is is sometimes those things are written down in a certain type of way by certain people.

Dion: 1:11:05

And then I would also say that in some ways, many of those knowledge keepers and some elders and things have been influenced by Western culture, christianity, those type of things, and I'm not saying that in any specific sense or pointing any fingers, but it's something to be always, ever conscious of when we're doing that work and we're looking in those places and having those conversations.

Dion: 1:11:31

And I would also say that I think what you said is also very important is to understand that maybe when we look back, we don't have to be tethered to what we did in the past. We can start to think oh well, maybe there is a better way to do this that aligns with the principles, the true, traditional principles of, you know, compassion and care and love for people. You know all of our communities were always about and everything that we did is lifting each other up, caring for each other, you know, for those that were within our circles, and so if our practices currently do not fit with that very foundational principle of care and compassion. I think we have to actually relook at them, yeah, and see who are we excluding, who do we need to reach our hand back and bring them back into what we're doing today, you know?

Julie : 1:12:30

and in the same sense, I think we can still revere our elders and challenge them yeah, you know, I think society is always negotiated. No, no matter how much you revere yeah you know, there'll always be someone that secretly has a niggle about what the other elders say yeah, yeah and is going. Well, you know, he's got about a point there.

Julie : 1:12:51

Yeah, you know and actually, why are we excluding all these people on the basis that they're impoverished or whatever? Yeah, yeah, just being aware that we are as individual manifestations of our ancestors. Obviously we're not gonna go out there. Yeah, but you know there, there, when you look at the evidence and you look at the way things lie, you might make decisions to make radical change yeah that's how most change happens, with some bravery in that space. Yeah, yeah, that's what I always post because I see the phases happening with people.

Julie : 1:13:34

They look at the old language and and they look at particular ritual and they look at the very holding the glass to what they learn yeah and then I'm like you know, but I've already accepted that what's in the box is not my narrative, right, it's a third-hand narrative and well, even then it's a male narrative and that there's a whole chunk missing and therefore you know what could potentially be that chunk you know, yeah, definitely and and work in that space as well yeah, and I would say, you know, in many conversations I would also say, you know, there is a large population that is always missing in those conversations and that is two-spirit and non-binary people, people who don't fit in that binary of the gender constructions of male, female.

Dion: 1:14:25

And so, you know, finding opportunities, or finding, finding those little tidbits, you know, I have in my own research found for my own community, little tidbits of inclusion and talking, and so it's like, well, if we find these two little tidbits, you know, then we have, you know, an opportunity to bring that forward and go look like you haven't looked hard enough because our two-spirit people are in there. But then the reality is also like those people were erased intentionally. And so now, you know, I think this is one way that we can begin to, like you said, look between the lines of those male, dominated, anthropological, you know, colonized, a Christian eyes. You know, many of those narratives were written by priests, right, and some of that was also propaganda to send back to the colonial structures to justify the theft of land and the you know, you know, civilizing the savages, those type of things yeah, totally, and so yeah, I think that's an important thing to also bring forward and to highlight and begin to have those conversations.

Dion: 1:15:43

And how do we open all of those spaces up to include as many as we can within that visual structure?

Julie : 1:15:52

I think, like you say, yeah, and that's come to under my radar more recently because as I see people talking about non-binary labels for themselves and I have moving around the younger people that have an acute awareness of it I realize that the Muckel community is way behind in it yeah you know, and we've, and they've tended to throw people under the bus to choose one or the other.

Julie : 1:16:20

So, yeah, it's a space that I'm interested in facilitating as well that conversation around what what is. If we understand what the symbolism is of the language, then why can't we be creating one?

Dion: 1:16:34

yeah, represents, yeah, you know, various, yeah, other dispersions of of non-binary anyway yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's an important conversation to have and to bring forward and you know I'm in the future, I know I have a few guests that I'm going to bring forward to have some of those conversations who are part of those communities. You know, because in many ways, to be honest, I'm just in that journey of becoming to understand those things and to in no way shape or form an expert and, you know, make my own blunders, etc. But you know I want to provide space to have those conversations in the future and you know I was really thankful that you opened that space up as well. In the panel discussion and over this whole time that we've been here, some started to help those conversations to move forward in your community and so, yeah, it's cool to see how you are starting to see that in terms of your theorization of the literature and how those spaces we have to start to look through. Yeah, yeah, any final thoughts before we end off.

Julie : 1:17:51

I don't think so. As you can see, we kind of just yeah, I mean continuing to move forward and yeah, and keep that space intentional for our future. Actually yeah you know, because I would never have considered those things, maybe five, ten years ago. But now I see our youth and I see the need. Yeah, you know mental health and all these things, and and I'm just like, well, I've reached this and I've done this and I've done that, so now I need to be considered yeah about what I'm gonna spend my time, yeah doing in the next ten years, sort of yeah

Dion: 1:18:25

yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. I look forward to you know next year and what the next years you know are going to bring forward, and I look forward to our next conversation here and see what those new developments are. So thank you for sitting down with me thank you, yeah hey listeners, thank you for listening.

Dion: 1:18:49

I hope you enjoyed this episode. I just want you to remember that, no matter who you are, where you're from, what you've been through, what you've done, that you are amazing and beautiful and I'm excited to see you next week. If you haven't already subscribed, please go and do so, and if you have subscribed, I appreciate you. Following the Transform of Mark's podcast, head over to the next episode, where we feature Echo Alec, an intricate Muck, an interior Salish ancestral skin marker, cycle breaker and creative entrepreneur. In this episode, we will be journeying with Echo as she shares the process that she went through in receiving a full body suit tattoo, and also the different ideas and processes that Echo uses as an ancestral skin marker and the work that she does in her business, and some beautiful and amazing insights that she has about the healing process. 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.