Embracing Identity and Advocacy: The Journey of Indigenous Tattooing and Environmental Preservation with Jody Potts-Joseph

Bonus episode # 004 Join me as we sit down with Jody Potts-Joseph, a beacon of resilience and revival, who shares the intimate tale of her path toward claiming her identity through the spiritual art of indigenous cultural tattooing. With Jody's brave heart laying bare the power of ancestral marks, we unravel the layers of healing and identity that these tattoos foster, especially when etched onto the face. Together, we navigate the sacred ceremonies and intentions that infuse this time-honored practice with life, illuminating its role as a potent form of medicine for those bearing the scars of historical trauma. This episode is a tribute to the strength found in our cultural roots and the courage it takes to wear them not just on our skin, but on our very souls.

As the conversation flows into the broader currents of preservation and activism, we confront the urgent struggle to safeguard the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and uphold Indigenous women's rights. Drawing on her journey through law enforcement and advocacy, we connect the dots between protecting our cultural traditions and standing firm against the tide of colonization. We pay homage to the wisdom of our elders, the vitality of oral histories, and the duty we all share as stewards of the earth. This episode is a rallying cry for embracing our heritage, finding solace in the stories of our ancestors, and carrying the torch of empowerment and preservation into the future.

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. This bonus interview is from my extensive archive of interviews, conversations and presentations I have recorded over the past 8 years. 

You can find Jody @
Instagram @iron.jody

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

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

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I would say since contact, both women in our lands are indigenous lands. Since 1492, since first contact in the Caribbean with the indigenous people there, the colonizers have been after our lands and resources and taking from that but also taking from our women. You know there have been man camps since 1492 and they have left a trail of missing and murdered indigenous women since contact.

Speaker 2: 0:29

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. My name is Dion Casas. I'm a Hungarian Métis and Intlacopak professional tattoo artist and ancestral skin marketer. I started the work of reviving my ancestral Intlacopak skin marking practice over a decade ago. I have 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.

Speaker 1: 1:14

My name is Jody Junabi Potts. I am Hong Wichun from Eagle Village, alaska. I currently live in Fairbanks and I have three kids, and I'm a say this with a lot of humility, but I have been a protector of my people and a hunter and single parent raising my children. So it's me in a nutshell.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Awesome, so tell me about the work that you do in cultural tattoo.

Speaker 1: 1:50

So I was first exposed to cultural tattooing when I was 18 and I saw a Wichun woman, a respected woman in our community, with her chin markings and I was very curious and interested in that and because of the way I was raised very traditional and out on the land really in my culture and way of life, hunting and fishing and living off the land I really identify strongly with my Wichun people and family, and so it was something that just seemed very fitting for me, like I felt really called to represent that with a cultural marking. But you know, it took me over 20 years to find the courage to do that and it does take courage to have markings on your face, cultural markings especially, and so but what was really interesting is, you know, just through my life and experience, I was exposed to Navajo culture through my late husband and he, the Navajo people still have retained and celebrate a lot of their ceremonies and one was a coming of age ceremony for young women and it's called the Kenalda, and it's one thing that I realized was really missing among our people was what was our coming of age ceremony? What were a lot of our ceremonies? But especially, you know, being a mother and very protective of my children and also trying to raise them up in our way of life in today's society and when walking in both worlds and in balance. I really wanted to do something for my daughter and we eventually, through life, became very close to that woman that I was first exposed to, adeline Peter Raboff and her children and I became very, very close friends throughout the years and my daughter wanted those markings for her coming of age and it just really felt right, it felt appropriate, and so my daughter was the first young woman to receive those markings by me her mother which culturally would have been appropriate as well, or another practitioner among our tribe would have done it and I marked my daughter for her coming of age when she was 13. And it has really, I think, grounded her. It has really helped her with her sense of identity as a Han Guichen young woman and I think it's really helped her with her confidence and boldness, with who she is, what she represents, you know what maybe she's eventually being called into, which right now is becoming a protector of our people and way of life through a lot of environmental justice and climate justice advocacy. So that's kind of how I got into it.

Speaker 1: 4:55

My first tattoo was my daughter on her chin, and then I was waiting for mine. I was not able to do my own, I didn't have enough experience or confidence to tattoo myself, and eventually several months later. So my daughter wore her markings for a long time. Several months later, my 16-year-old son at our home gave me my traditional markings as well my cultural markings, and so it just felt right. It felt like I had always worn them.

Speaker 1: 5:30

Since then, a lot of women have approached my daughter and I and asking about ours, being curious and some come from a strong culture of that as well whether they were Athabaskan or Gwichankwekan from our area or neighboring tribes of Anupyak or Inuit people, and so since then, more people have come to me asking for their traditional markings, and so it's just been a great honor to do that, for people offer that ceremony. It's very healing for the person receiving, and we do have ceremony. We talk a lot about what this means the responsibility, their intention, prayers, goals in their future, things like that and so that's been very healing for our people, and so it's just been an honor to be able to do this work and give this gift of healing. You know, it's really about our identity and re-indigenizing our people, decolonizing and really recovering from a lot of trauma. For a lot of women, that's what it's about too, and so it's really been just a beautiful honor for me to be able to be in this work now.

Speaker 2: 6:55

So you started to touch on some of the stuff that really intrigues me, especially about the work that a lot of the female practitioners do in terms of the healing we talk about. We frame a lot of our work around tattoo medicine, this idea of our tattooing as medicine. So when I say that, what comes up for you, could you share a little bit about that in terms of your experience and the work that you do?

Speaker 1: 7:28

Well, I would just say that, just going back through our people's history, colonization has really put our people out of balance and our people have really struggled with loss of identity and a lot of trauma and so the historical trauma through the generations. We have a lot of people today that have been lost and have sadly suffered from whatever trauma has impacted their lives and through this, through these markings, it's really helped a lot of people recover from trauma, identify, have strong identification of who they are, what they want to represent, what it means for them, and there's so much power in healing in that, the power of sharing stories. And I feel like for myself in a lot of the work I've done in my life, but now especially with tattooing. I don't think that I'm just a cultural practitioner, but I also find, in a way, just a cultural counselor. I've had a lot of life experiences and I've used my culture and my grounding and my way of life that I was raised in as my greatest strength in overcoming challenges and difficulties in my life and if I can share that with other young people and women.

Speaker 1: 8:58

So when we tattoo, there's so much conversation and there's so much prayers and ceremonies and intention that goes into this and I think for me as a female cultural practitioner, that's also what it's about. It's about the ceremony and the healing from loss of identity, loss of culture, historical trauma, personal trauma all these things that come with, sadly, being indigenous today. That's the sad part, is the impacts of colonization and so but we still have so much beauty to celebrate and so being able to mark women is a part of celebrating that and who they are and the beautiful part of our culture, not just the traumatic experiences for generations or people have been through, but that we're still here, we're still moving forward, we're still protecting our children and our way of life and maintaining our culture, and so it's healing. So really, I feel a lot of the work that I'm doing now is important, part of our healing process and getting stronger as a people.

Speaker 2: 10:09

You shared a little bit, especially in terms of the work that's been happening and the work that you're involved in, not only with tattooing but with activism for the land. So could you make the connection between those two? How are those two things you know intricately connected for?

Speaker 1: 10:27

you. So I would say, since contact, both women in our lands are indigenous lands. Since 1492, since first contact in the Caribbean with the indigenous people there, the colonizers have been after our lands and resources and taking from that, but also taking from our women. You know there have been man camps since 1492. And they have left a trail of missing and murdered indigenous women since contact, everywhere you go in North America or in other indigenous communities around the world. I feel like have similar stories of that and so you know I also do a lot of work in protecting our land and way of life from resources extraction, especially with fossil fuels.

Speaker 1: 11:18

In Alaska we are under a lot of attack from for years.

Speaker 1: 11:23

We have a sacred place where life begins in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and that's where the caribou, who are people, are caribou people.

Speaker 1: 11:32

The caribou give birth in this sacred place where life begins, where the government wants to open for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and so for generations we have been fighting to protect this area, and so my daughter is now the fourth generation to be doing this work and advocating, and she's constantly traveling to, you know, our nation's capital, washington DC, working with other partners and protecting this area, but it's so important for our way of life and you know, we have so many strong women that have been leading this fight, but we also have a lot of women that have also suffered from the impacts of colonization through sexual violence, and so also working to protect our women has also been a big part of my life.

Speaker 1: 12:29

I spent 10 years in law enforcement and I've been doing activism for some time and I just see so much the threats to our land is also synonymous with the threats and the experiences of our Indigenous women, and so being able to do that work and also the healing that is so needed in both of those areas, with culture, cultural markings, it just all marries so well together and I think it's all very intertied. And you know, as Indigenous people, wherever we are, we had traditional forms of marking ourselves and being. You know, marking ourselves with our identity and who we are, and I think it just these markings also help give us strength as Indigenous people today and things that we're facing as a people, as an individual, and so I think that just my daughter's markings have really given her strength and resiliency to go forward in this challenging work that she's in and for myself as well, and for the other women that also are doing this as well.

Speaker 2: 13:42

You know I have. You know it's a very broad and general question, but you know, part of the work that I'm doing in doing these interviews is building an archive, you know. So in the past, you know, the anthropologist wrote this stuff down but we're an oral culture. So we're building this archive. I always ask the question how, if you could speak to the future, what is the message you would like them to hear?

Speaker 1: 14:15

Embrace who you are and never forget who you are and where you come from and just be grounded in that. And you know we have a lot of resources and that is listening to our elders. That's such an important part of this Listening to their stories, their experiences and their wisdom. The oral tradition is really important and I think being here at this event or conference, that's one thing that I've really taken away, because I was kind of trying to figure out there are still people within our own culture that don't understand that this was a way of life for our people. You know, these traditional markings is something that we did and something that was really important, and so many of our own people are like, did we do that? And it's like, yes, we absolutely did. And so trying to get some of our own people to understand sadly, sometimes they wanna see it in archives from in the written form, you know. And no, it's in our blood. You know, it's in our DNA and who we are, and I know from my experience when I got it, it felt like it was always there and it was always meant to be, you know, and it was almost cleansing for me as a person, you know.

Speaker 1: 15:39

So I think you know to talk to the future is to just really dig deep and I don't know if analyzes the right word but to just really think about who you are and where you come from and find that you know. Whether it's just sometimes when I'm with my kids out hunting, we just stop and we just lay down on the ground in our traditional lands and take it in, take in that it sounds hokey, maybe new age, but that's our place of birth, that's where our people have been for millennia, and to just take it in. And so go find that you know and get that grounding. You know, because we'll always have our indigenous lands, our way of life and culture and we do need to carry that on. We do need because we are gonna be the healers of this earth.

Speaker 1: 16:25

We're the ones that have that knowledge and that sacredness. No one else holds a land sacred like we do. You know they just wanna take and then just throw away and you know that's a big part of who we are, that connection so and with each other. You know our relations and, I think, being here and you know meeting so many other indigenous people and hearing them talk about you know their culture and way of life and their lands and their ancestors is super, super powerful and I just feel so much, you know inspiration, leaving here and going home to my land.

Speaker 2: 17:03

So hey listeners, thank you for listening. 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 Marks podcast, 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.