Transformative Marks Podcast

Seeing with Ancestral Eyes: Reviving Indigenous Visual Languages Through Tattooing and Creativity with Dion Kaszas

• Dion Kaszas • Episode 42

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#052 Imagine rediscovering an ancestral tattooing tradition with no roadmap or mentor to guide you. That's the challenge I faced as a Hungarian, Métis and Nlaka'pamux tattoo artist, and it's the journey I share in this episode of Transformative Marks. Through a decolonial lens, I reflect on the struggles of reviving these practices in the aftermath of colonization and offer support for those seeking to reconnect with their cultural heritage. This exploration highlights the importance of nurturing a connection to our roots and reviving the lost languages of our ancestors.

Ancestral visual languages are more than mere designs; they're rich tapestries of history and identity. Inspired by thinkers like Gregory Cajete and Frederick Frank, we explore how these symbols functioned as tools for communication, healing, and even harm. By engaging with objects and practices integral to our ancestors' lives, we can foster a deeper understanding and appreciation for these visual languages. This isn't just about tattoos or art; it's about reclaiming cultural sovereignty and reconnecting with the stories that shaped our communities.

Bringing these traditions back to life requires creativity and community collaboration. Through the lens of Syilx Coyote stories, we underscore the process of cultural reclamation as not only one of piecing together fragmented heritage but also of breathing life into it. The journey towards cultural restoration is filled with imperfections, yet it is in these very imperfections that we find the beauty of cultural resilience and creativity. Join me in celebrating the process of gathering and revitalizing our cultural elements, as we honor the legacy of our ancestors and strengthen our connection to the lands we call home.

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 my tattoo work at:
https://www.consumedbyink.com
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Speaker 1:

And so one day, coyote was off doing his coyote thing, walking along the path, and he looked up. 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 Kazas. I'm a Hungarian metis and intercut muck professional tattoo artist and ancestral skin marker. I started the work of reviving my ancestral intercut muck 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 and ancestral skin markers from across the globe, bringing you behind the scenes of this powerful, transformative and spiritual work.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to episode 52 of the Transformative Marks podcast. My name is Dion Kazzas, I'm your host and this will be a solo episode going into a different format than I have before. This week I'll be just sharing some thoughts and ideas with working with your or bringing to life your ancestral visual language, and what I've decided to do this week is to share with you some principles that will help you in your journey, because you know, I think about this podcast and specifically this episode. You know a lot of times I talk about from my own perspective, from my own understanding and my own experience. You know, I want to be clear that this podcast or this episode is, you know, not necessarily for those folks who are stepping into an ancestral tattooing practice that has set protocols, already has mentors, has guides, has leaders in that movement. You know, I think that if you are in that position, you should be listening to those protocols, listening to those teachers and to those mentors, because, you know, the reality is is I'm only speaking from my own experience and I never had a mentor, I never had set protocols put in place, because my experience is not coming from that privileged place of having already a tradition in place, working towards the revival and the resurgence of a practice that has been put to sleep through the process of colonization. So this is from a decolonial lens, coming forward to you, offering you some wisdom, some knowledge and a few little tidbits that I have picked up.

Speaker 1:

In no way do I position myself as an expert in the revival of Indigenous tattooing. I'm just sharing the story of my journey as we go into this topic of finding inspiration for the revival of your ancestors' tattooing, and I would say not only the revival of your ancestors' tattooing, but also the resurgence of your ancestral visual language, because that's really what we're going to go into today is some foundational principles, some foundational thoughts that I think are important to put forward as we go into the subject of the use and the research into your ancestral visual language. This conversation, although it may be beneficial for folks who are stepping into the revival of their ancestors tattooing and have the privilege of having a mentor, you know you may find this interesting. However, I would say that this conversation and this episode is really for those folks who are coming into the movement, you know, looking around and trying to find a place to begin, to find a foothold, to begin that movement for the revival of their ancestors tattooing. You know, at one time I had, I was in this place and so that's really where I'm coming from is just sharing where I have been and maybe, you know, by sharing where I've been, it will help you along the way. You know, in the beginning of my journey, I actually feel very thankful I guess is probably the right word. I feel thankful to have the work of the ethnographer James Tate, who married into our community, the Inflacutma community, and he wrote a little booklet called Tattooing, face and Body Painting of the Thompson Indians, and this was the beginning of my journey. But having said that, I know and I've spoken to many of you who have reached out and asked the question where do I begin? Where do I start? And so this conversation is for those of you who are in the beginning of your journey and don't have a lexicon that speaks to your ancestors tattooing.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you only have one sentence that says that your ancestors tattooed. There's no description of what those tattoos were, there's no pictures, there are no motifs, there's no even a description of what those designs were. It's just a statement that says that your ancestors tattooed. You know, as we begin this conversation, I think it's, you know, really important, especially for those of you who find yourself in a place where the colonial project did really well in putting to sleep your ancestral tattooing practice. You know, you come to a sentence or a description of the fact that your ancestors tattooed their body or their face or, you know, on their legs, their arms, whatever it may have been, but you don't have any description of what those looked like. You know, there's no description of a motif, there's no drawings, there's nothing there except for the reality that your ancestor's tattooed, or you may even find yourself in a place where family or community has shared that they knew that your ancestors tattooed, but you don't have any again, any description of what that was or what that looked like.

Speaker 1:

And so that's what this conversation is about, and I'd like to start this conversation by saying to you simply that you know it's not your fault and it's not your parents' fault, and it's not your grandparents' fault that they didn't have the ability or the resolve to give that gift to you, because they didn't have that gift themselves or they felt that it was more important for you to be able to go into the world and not to live through the tragedies and the pain and the trauma that they had to live through. And so we're really stepping into this conversation from a place of colonization, a place of a history of genocide which purposely put to sleep ancestral tattooing because it was so important to our communities and our cultures, it was so important to the connection that we have to our lands and our geographies. And, of course, the colonial project is primarily about the moving of Indigenous people off of important and valuable lands for the purpose of resource extraction and the commodification of our lands and territories, and so the best way to do that is to make us just simply the same as every other person in the colonial project. And so we are. You know, the colonial project was to kill the Indian and save the man, so to speak, in the words of those founding fathers of the residential school in the Indian boarding school in the US. And so this is the place that we begin this conversation, and I wanted to make sure in the beginning that I was letting people know that I'm not talking about the practices of other cultures and other communities, but really I'm talking about Turtle Island. But really I'm talking about Turtle Island. I'm talking to those of you who are here, who send me messages, who talk to me when I'm tattooing you or when I see you in a gathering.

Speaker 1:

You know, this conversation comes forward and that question is where do I begin, where do I start and what's the foundational principles that I need? And I would say that the first principle is to remember that it's not your fault there's no shame in not knowing, because that was the purpose of the project of colonization and so realize that it's not your fault and there's no reason for you to feel any type of way about that, except for maybe sad, because it fucking sucks not to know what your ancestral visual language is. It sucks to be in a place where you know that your ancestors had a vibrant tradition and now we're just rebuilding that and you're at the beginning of that long journey. You know that question always comes to me. You know where do I begin then? You know where do we begin.

Speaker 1:

If I don't have a document or I don't have a book, I don't have any description of what my ancestors' tattooing designs looked like. The first place that we need to go is to the dismantling of the supremacy of academic knowledge production. Many times we are told that we need to have a documentation that says that we tattooed in this way or that our designs look like that or this, but the reality is is that we have to back up a little bit further and step away from the academic and scholarly insistence that we need to be experts. We don't need to be experts. We need to look out and we need to widen our perspective to be able to see the reality of the entirety of our ancestral visual language, as opposed to just looking for tattoo designs. And so I'm just going to share.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to read to you a quote. I'm going to read to you a quote. I'm going to read to you a quote from Cecil King and it comes from here Come the Anthros in Indians and Anthropologists, vine Deloria Jr and the Critique of Anthropology, and it can be found on page 125. Cecil says we have been observed, noted, taped and videoed. Our behaviors have been recorded in every possible way, and I suppose we could learn to live with this if we had not become imprisoned in the anthropologist's words. The language that anthropologists use to explain us trap us in linguistic cages, because we must first explain our ways through alien hypothetical constructs and theoretical frameworks. So again, that's Cecil King, page 125 of Indians and Anthropologists, and it comes from his chapter here Come the Anthros.

Speaker 1:

And so, when I think about this, this is really the beginning for me, because you know, in my own experience, I started and I went out into the world and I looked into the archives, I looked into the books as many books as I could possibly find, because there's been quite a bit written about us as Inlikatmuk people and interior Salish people and I looked what is there that describes or shows or what visual record do we have of Indra Katmok tattooing, above and beyond the work of James Tate, in that little collection, that monograph, and or in the few things that he's written about us in terms of that larger canon of you canon of the Thompson Indians? And when I did that, I became very discouraged. It was a very discouraging project because the reality is I couldn't find anything else. There's been a few things that I found along the way, as myself and my friends have looked into some more obscure places, which I'll get into in a future episode. This is just the beginning of the conversation around. You know, what do we do and how do we find our ancestral tattooing and how do we find inspiration for our contemporary manifestation of our ancestors tattooing practices and how do we work that into the future? And so when I think about this you know this is my, this is where I started I started looking in all of these places and being discouraged because I couldn't find anything else and even some of the uh designs, patterns and motifs in the tattooing face and body painting of the Thompson Indians um, there weren't descriptions, it was just the symbol. And it's like what? Just a symbol. What does this mean? What is the interpretation of this design, symbol or motif, and so I was really discouraged until I looked a little bit deeper and a little bit further, and we're going to get into that as we move through today's conversation.

Speaker 1:

And I'm just going to share another quote with you, and that comes from Native Science, natural Laws of Interdependence, by Tiwa scholar Gregory Cahet, and he shares the thinking of Frederick Frank in the Native Science, and Frederick says Art is a way of seeing, of being and or becoming. But in order to see the expressive realities art presents, one must learn how to look. And so when we put this quote in connection with the quote by Cecil King, I think it's really important for us to think about the reality that we've been looking wrong. We've been really looking microscopically into just tattoo designs and I realized and I learned that we have to widen our field of view and to look at the whole canon of our ancestral visual language, to look at the whole canon of our ancestral visual language, and we also have to stop looking specifically for just a description of what that is and to look even deeper into other parts of our cultures.

Speaker 1:

You know, there's a few ways that I have been able to see differently, to look differently. And that really comes through spending time with my ancestral visual language, visiting the museum collections, spending time with baskets, spending time with those things that help to bring my ancestors through their life, whether that is, you know, burden baskets that are stained with the collected berry juice, or maybe it's the rawhide jacket or the pants that one of my ancestors wore, or the headband or the hat that my ancestors you know, the sweat from their brow has stained that object. And so for me, this is the way that we begin to see differently, to look differently is by spending time with the things that helped our ancestors to live long enough to bring us into existence. And then the next thing that helped me to see differently and look differently is by sitting with community, sitting with people and doing the work of the revival of our ancestors tattooing. So it's not just about looking at these various objects that you can find in museum collections or being out on the land visiting pictographed or rock art sites. It's not just those things, it's actually doing the work of revival. And again I re-emphasize the fact that it's not our fault that we never learned these things. We're stepping into this work because our ancestors' tattooing practice was intentionally put to sleep.

Speaker 1:

I guess what I'm saying here is I'm bringing forward the reality, or the very simple, simple thought that the thing that is the most important here is our ancestral visual language, and so it's not just looking for our tattooing designs or tattooing patterns. It's actually looking to the lexicon of our ancestral visual language, looking to the baskets, looking to the headbands, looking to the incisions and the designs that are put into our pipes or our arrowheads or the shafts of our arrows. It's looking at those things that are painted on the rocks or carved into the rocks. It's going out onto the land to see where our ancestors spent their time fishing and hunting, traveling whether that's walking or in their canoe or other mode of travel that they had, whether that was horses at a later time, whether that was horses at a later time. It's being in those places, in those spaces and with our ancestral visual and material culture that helps us to be able to see differently. And when I say it helps us to see differently, it's to look not in a very literal way, but in a metaphorical way. We have to look for the stories that our ancestors designed, symbols or motifs told, because that's very similar as I'm told about our oral language is, it's not just a identification of a single thing that's a rock. It's actually a metaphorical story that can be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Speaker 1:

You know, when I think about this, the research that you do is something very different than the research that the anthropologist does. The research that you do for this work and that I have done, is very different than the research that the academic does. It's completely different because you're not looking at these things to categorize them. You're looking at these things to build a relationship with them, and so I always think of Sean Wilson's book, you know, and his methodology, you know.

Speaker 1:

Research, a ceremony, and when I think about this idea of research a ceremony, I think of the ceremony of art, and when I think of this idea of ceremony, it's something that helps you to build a better relationship with something, whether that is with a spirit helper, whether that is with fishing, whether that is to help you to be a better healer, a better medicine person, or maybe it's a ceremony to help you to be a better person, to find a relationship with yourself or to find a relationship with your community. All of these things are ceremonies that help you to build a better relationship with something. And so I think that this research is a very ceremonial practice. When you go to visit, it isn't just to see these things, it isn't just to photograph them, it's actually to visit with them and to spend time with them and to build a relationship with them. Sometimes you'll know that when you step up and you go to visit with one of these objects, one of these kin, one of these baskets or one of these pieces of clothing, that you have to spend a little bit more time with this one because it needs it, and you'll just sense that, you'll just know that.

Speaker 1:

And so this is the ceremony of art, and when I think about that, I just want to make sure and I'm going to be very explicit and read this, because at this time I'm using the word language to mean a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures or marks, having understood meanings, and that's from the Merriam-Webster. And then I am using the word communication as a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs or behavior. And finally, I'm using the word art in the following way in this conversation the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects. So when I think about this and how it relates to this conversation, is that we're not looking to our ancestral visual language and looking for it to be the exact way that we communicate with words. It's metaphorical, it's something different. So I have a quote here from Deborah Dockstader, who states In basket, bead and quill and the making of traditional art, and Deborah says Like picture writing on utilitarian objects, basketry, pottery, clothing, or in wampum belts or pictographs, these objects as metaphors are not transcriptions of word-for-word, linear sentences, but of concepts and processes.

Speaker 1:

Each symbol does not correspond to an English phoneme which, when connected to others, form a word and sentence which explicate a meaning. Like the words in our languages, they emphasize movement, action and mean not one, but several things. A metaphor presents knowledge as an instant fusion, not as a narrated argument of one opinion. It involves the iconic flash of understanding of an idea, using both one's conscious or rational and unconscious or intuitive mind simultaneously. And so that's what we have to do when we go out to look at these, for these design symbols and motifs to remember that we're not looking at these things and trying to interpret them in the most literal possible way. When I think about that, uh, I think about um, you know, I I can picture a drum. There's an ancestral drum that talks about the uh, the rising and the setting sun, and you can see the way that it's depicted. You know, it's not just trying to depict that, it's actually showing the movement of that sun through the sky and you can see it when you look at it. You can see that that is the morning sun and that is the evening sun, and you can see the movement of that on a two-dimensional form. It's actually quite mind-blowing when you begin to look at these things with movement, with life, and start to see them not only as a single thing but something in motion.

Speaker 1:

Hey there, listeners, it's Dion Kazzas, your host from the Transformative Marks podcast, where we dive deep into the world of indigenous tattooing, ancestral skin marking and cultural tattooing. If you found value in our episodes, we've made you laugh or you've learned something new. Consider showing your support by buying me a coffee on ko-ficom. Ko-fi is this incredibly creator-friendly platform where you can support me directly for just the cost of a cup of coffee. No subscriptions, no hidden fees, just a simple one-time gesture that goes a long way in keeping me on the air. Plus Ko-Fi doesn't take a cut, so every penny goes directly into improving the podcast, from updating equipment to visiting with new guests as I go into recording season two. So if you like what you hear and you'd like to help me keep the lights on, head over to my Ko-Fi page, wwwko-ficom. Forward slash transformative marks. The link is in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

You know, when our ancestors used these symbols, they were not writing like we write, with sentences. Instead, they were telling stories, stories of their adventures in a variety of realms and with a variety of beings. Each drawing, writing or expression could be read. However, only some expressions were authored with the intent of understanding. So what does that mean? What am I saying when I say that? What I'm saying here is that, yes, for the most part, there was a lexicon or a common understanding of what design, symbols and motifs would have been, and so pretty much everyone in our communities could have looked at a tattoo design or a rock art design or a basketry, and it was conventional enough that each person could say that maybe that's a mountain, but the reality is that, without the contextual understanding of what's around, that it may actually be a house instead of a mountain, or it may be a set of steps instead of a mountain, and so it's actually the context of everything that's around it. And when I say that not every expression was authored with the intent of understanding is that sometimes those things were authored in such a way, or drawn in such a way, that it was hard to understand, because these aren't just simply design, symbols and motifs. Sometimes these designs were created to heal somebody, maybe it was to harm someone, maybe it was bad medicine, and so sometimes those things weren't meant to be understood, but just to do the work that they needed to do.

Speaker 1:

When I think about this topic, it's important to emphasize for me that it's not just the looking at of these objects, of these designs, these symbols. It's about using them. So, whether that's painting with them, whether that's designing with them as a tattoo design, maybe that's weaving them into a basket, maybe that's painting on your clothing Instead of getting a patch from your favorite band, instead of getting a patch from your favorite band, maybe create a patch of a pictograph or a tattoo design or of a basketry design and put that on your clothing instead of something from someone else's culture or community, us to begin to take the steps to become fluent in our ancestral visual languages, and just the same as our oral language. The only way that we become fluent in our ancestral visual languages is through the using of those languages, and the way that we use them is to create with them. So next time you're hired to do a logo design, if you're from the Antelokatma community or Interior Salish community or another community start to use the conventions and the lexicon of your ancestral visual language to tell the story of that business's logo, as opposed to telling the story with a more conventional Western understanding of an ancestral visual language. I would say that, in many ways, when these objects, these design symbols and motifs stay on the shelves of museums or stay in the book collections sitting on a shelf, they stay dormant and it's only through their use that they become alive again and are part of the visual sovereignty of our nations, and not only the visual sovereignty of our nations but the political sovereignty of our nations. All of these things contribute to the enriching of our community's movement towards political and cultural sovereignty. And so this is the beginning, when I think about it, this is the beginning of that work, of the revival of our ancestors Tattooing is going out and gathering as many pieces as we possibly can.

Speaker 1:

And I always think of this story that I heard from Childhood Richard Armstrong, seal, okanagan Knowledge Keeper and I also heard the story from Jeanette Armstrong, an academic mentor of mine, and then also through Bill Cohen in one of my classes, and it's the story of coyote. You know I always love coyote stories and you know they're very numerous all across the interior, salish. But this coyote story I heard and is, from my understanding, a seal or Okanagan story. And so one day coyote was off doing his coyote thing, walking along the path, and he looked up and he's seen eagles soaring on the wind, you know, on a cliff face. You know the wind will come up and it'll create an updraft, and so that's where Eagle was soaring, playing on the wind, swooping around, going up, twisting and twirling around, and Coyote looked up and he said those are my ways. Yep, those are my ways.

Speaker 1:

And so he started to walk up the back side of the mountain, up the back side of the cliff face, and, uh, as he was going, each and every step, he'd say to himself those are my ways, each step, those are my ways, until finally he got to the top of the mountain and by that time Eagle had flown off and he got up to the edge of the mountain cliff, the cliff face, and he dangled his toes off the edge and he stood there and he proudly proclaimed these are my ways. And he stepped to the edge of the cliff and pushed himself off into the abyss. And we know that, you know, the gravity acts very differently with coyotes than it does with, uh, eagles. And so coyotes, silly little arms and legs were twirling and twirling and twirling and twirling and his little tail was going and as he was flying, flying, closer and closer and closer to the ground, um, he pooped all along that cliff face, and there's a cliff face in Sealhookerokanagan territory that the elders there say that that's the poop stain of Coyote as he fell to the ground.

Speaker 1:

And so at that time, you know, of course, coyote went down, splat all over the place, and at that time, you know, each of us had another being that was responsible for us, a caretaker, a brother, a sister, a being who was there to bring us back to life when we got ourselves into trouble, which is a very beautiful thought that maybe we need to get back to that place where we have people in our lives that are actually there to bring us back to life when we screw up. So instead of casting people out, we need to find people to help bring us back to life, and so Coyote's person was Fox. So of course Fox heard that through the know, through the moccasin telegraph, that coyote got himself in trouble again, and so fox began the journey of coming to that cliff face and so finally got to where coyote had, uh, met his demise, trying to take something that was not his and make it his own. And so Fox began to collect little tiny pieces, little tiny pieces here, there and everywhere of coyote, every piece that he could possibly find, a few pieces of hair, a few pieces of bone, a few pieces of brain, a little bit of blood, and he made a pile. Of course he was not able to find all of the pieces of coyote, but he found as many as he possibly could and he made a pile and he breathed life into it and he stepped over it four times and coyote came back to life and, of course, in the same coyote fashion, he wiped his eyes, looked at Fox and said what are you doing? Why did you wake me up. I was having a real good nap, with no sense of thankfulness for being brought back to life or any acknowledgement that he had done anything wrong, but Coyote went on his way because of the care and the love and the action of Fox.

Speaker 1:

And so I would say that in many ways today we are like foxes, collecting little tiny pieces of our culture, little tiny pieces of C coyote, whether that's a few designs from a pictograph, a few designs found on a basket in your auntie's house, or in a book that you found at the library, or maybe from a story from somebody heard on the internet, or maybe a little booklet by a anthropologist. And you're starting to look, through those metaphorical eyes, at all of these design, symbols and motifs. And it's not actually the collection, or only the collection, of those pieces that's actually most important. It's actually what you do with them. It's what you the breath, the energy, the uh, the things that you do to bring it to life. And it's not just the breath, the speaking of it, but it's the breath, the energy, and then also the action of stepping over the pile of pieces of your culture that have been left on the trash heap of colonization. A trash heap of colonization.

Speaker 1:

And this is where I think it's so beautiful to look back to ancestral stories, to find the things that were most important to our ancestors, and that was bringing life back into alignment. So that's your job as you go off today to collect these pieces, to go to museums, to read books, to listen to your elders tell their stories and to understand that your job is to bring coyote back to life. It's to bring those pieces together and to breathe life into them. And that is our job. And I I would say that you know I always say this perfection is in the process. So I would just look out to you and I would just ask you, I would just implore you to, yes, look for tattoo designs if you can find them, but if you can't find them, don't worry about it. I'm going to say that again If you can't find the tattoo designs, don't worry about it, because your ancestors left a plethora, a large collection of baskets, pottery, clothing, whether that was beadwork, whether that was embroidery, whether that was painted with ochre or some other pigment, whether it was the face painting, whether it was the headbands that they used for the carrying of those baskets or some other thing.

Speaker 1:

You know, all of these things contain design symbols and motifs which are the foundation of your ancestors visual language, which then you can use because you know that they were from all of those places. And so stop worrying about just finding tattoo designs. It's all there, you just have to collect them. And you just have to find those little pieces, breathe, breathe life into them and start doing something with them, because that's how we bring coyote back to life in our cultures. And maybe there may be no thankfulness, there may be no joy in the things that you're doing, but take heart, because you are bringing your culture back to life by taking these actions. And this is where we begin.

Speaker 1:

And I know that I was thinking about talking about how to use your ancestral visual language. I know in the future I'm going to share with you the reality of how do we interpret these things, what are the processes of interpretation that I have learned, what are some of those principles that you could potentially use in the interpretation of your ancestral visual language not just my ancestral visual language and then what are some of the ways that I have transformed this ancestral visual language into tattoo designs. So I'm going to do that in a future episode. I didn't want to make this one too long, just share a little bit with you, and hopefully you found something useful. I didn't repeat myself too much and the road noise in the background wasn't too distracting.

Speaker 1:

I'll probably set up a little bit different next time, but this is all about growing and all about learning, and in the coming year I'm going to be doing a lot more to begin to learn how to film better, to speak better to camera and to do a lot of different things, and so I hope you will continue on this journey with me of the Transformative Marks podcast and as I visit with people next year, I'm going to be talking to a lot more people this year, not just ancestral skin markers, cultural tattoo practitioners, but also Indigenous artists who are beading, who are painting, who are doing a variety of other things, whether that's mural work, whether that's public art, whether they're curators. You know, I think there's some very valuable things, and all of these artistic expressions help to lift up our ancestral tattooing practices, and so I think it's with all of us together that we begin to transform our world, and so I'm going to lift up other voices outside of the world of tattooing, and so hopefully you will enjoy those conversations along the many conversations that I'll be having with ancestral skin markers, professional Indigenous tattoo artists, and also I'm going to be trying to do a few more solo episodes in the coming season, and so hopefully you've enjoyed this one and don't forget to like, share and subscribe and all of that good stuff, and leave a good comment or a bad comment if you need to, and I always like to hear all of those things because it helps me to improve as I continue this journey of the Transformative Marks podcast. Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by and taking this journey with me through this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll just ask that you would go and subscribe, if you haven't already done so, and if you have subscribed. Hope you enjoyed it.

Speaker 1:

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 are amazing, that you are 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. Remember, every coffee helps me to bring you the content that you love, so head over to my Ko-Fi page and let's make something great together. 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.