Every tā moko tells a story. Every line has a meaning, connecting the body to the tūpuna that came before it. But after the arrival of Pākehā settlers, and after the repression of Māori culture, tā moko saw a decline alongside te reo Māori. Some of the artistic meaning, specific to individual iwi, was lost. Much of it survived, through oral history, and through surviving tā moko. Today, tā moko is seeing a revitalisation, but it still has a while to go.
In 2020, the first mataora-sporting lawyer was admitted to the bar. But in the same year, young Māori men and women were being barred from clubs for violating their “no neck tattoos” dress code, despite those clubs being built on indigenous land in a country whose culture is upheld, quite literally, through tattoos. Kiritea told us that this past summer, she was denied entry to a club because of her tā moko: “I even knew the bouncer, and he was Māori!” She said that the bouncer cited the “no neck tattoos” policy, “and I was like, it's not a tattoo. It's a tā moko.”
Te Ariki Mana-Wagner (“T.A.”) told us that while tā moko is a birthright, some of the more visible ones, like the mataora, can be “a bit of a statement… Having a tattoo on your face really does open you up to a lot of discrimination.” He said that for Māori considering tā moko in this day and age, it's up to “whether or not we’re ready to face that in our journey, as well as to uphold what it is to be Māori, what it is that got us here.” Tā moko is not just a tattoo - it’s a connection to your whakapapa, your tūpuna. It’s history.
“The oral history of Māori is denounced by western scholars,” explained Sky. “Our history has always been challenged by Pākehā who think they are so superior to us because they have written language… but we don't need words, we have our tā moko. Those are our words.” She added that Pākehā “are also the same people that said ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and then they denounce the images on our bodies.”
Judgement and discrimination over tā moko is not just limited to Pākehā viewing Māori. “Something we don't talk about a lot is the impact of colonialism on a very matriarchal society,” explained Sky, “we've gone from giving tā moko to our children to now questioning our women for getting their kauae. I remember my mum telling me I had to do something really amazing in my life to get it, contribute this and that… but no. I just have to be Māori. And that's what I am.” “It shouldn't be like that,” she said, “[but] it's because of the sexism that colonialism introduced.”
Kiritea told us that her mum, a master weaver, has refrained from getting a kauae because she was afraid people would approach her speaking Māori, and she wouldn’t be able to respond. She feared the judgement. ”But with the mataora, if you're a boy, you've already earned it. They're not like ‘you need to do this, you need to do that’, they’re encouraging, no matter what.”
But that might be changing. While the older generation might be “stuck” in those ways, the younger generation, especially on the east coast, is going all-in on revitalising tā moko, especially moko kauae and mataora. Over the last year, they’ve hosted monthly mokopapa, celebrations in which folks gather for kai and waiata while several others receive their tā moko. “That’s why now when you go back there, everyones got moko kauae, mataora, and it's great,” said Kiritea. T.A. agreed, saying that “Going back to the east coast, I had never seen so many moko kauae in my life! All my aunties and stuff. It's inspiring, seeing tā moko out there.”
As tā moko rises to its rightful place as a national identity, it will have to face the scrutiny of the outside world, one that is very much still in the grips of colonial attitudes. “If we're talking white America,” said Kiritea, “[the reception will] probably be a lot more racist. They wouldn't understand why someone would put tattoos over their face… but that's probably because they've got people like the lizard man fulla [Erik Sprague, an American ‘freak show’ performer], and they probably think of tā moko like that, like that's what we're doing. But it's like, nah, that fulla just wanted to look green. We’re doing it to show our story.”
With the increasing visibility of tā moko comes risk of an increasing rate of appropriation by Pākehā, who sometimes feel as if they’ve “earned it” by learning te reo, and by others who just think it “looks cool”. “In terms of general Pākehā wanting tā moko just because they speak Māori, that's not a good enough reason,” said Kiritea. “I speak English, so what? Our designs have meaning, they can be traced back thousands of years, they're part of our culture, our lineage, our whakapapa, it's not right for someone who's not part of that whakapapa to get a design that has so much meaning, one that represents our ancestors.” Sky agreed, saying “Our tūpuna are looking down on them like ‘What? I don’t want you to be wearing me’.”
Sky said that there are “a lot of Pākehā that want moko, or kirituhi, which they justify it as, which is not the same. There's a lot of Māori-speaking Pākehā who are like ‘oh, but I've dedicated myself to learning your language’, but we're still a recovering culture, you need to leave that to us. Once that's recovered, then the door might open.” Tess, a Pākehā who dedicated her studies to learning te reo Māori, agreed: “I certainly support the gatekeeping of tā moko practices,” she said, and encouraged other Pākehā to “be part of a protective barrier for a culture that has endured so much to survive”.
Te ao Māori is not the world’s only recovering culture, and tā moko isn’t the only recovering traditional tattoo. T.A. said that indigenous tattoos have been lost across the world, citing the Bible’s denunciation of tattooing as the reason for their global decline after Christian colonial influence. He explained that “native tribes in Canada have their version of moko kauae, but we're not gonna get their version of moko kauae just because we think it looks cool. Theirs has their meaning, ours has ours. And it's that understanding that has been lost, it's an understanding that everybody needs to be aware of.”
“Māori designs have become a nationally recognized pattern, and [wanting to get them is the Pākehā] way of saying 'oh I live here too, now’,” said T.A. “We've gone from 200 years ago where we were told tattoos were the gateway to hell, to getting rid of [tā moko], to now, [where] we’re getting it back and people are like ‘oh it's actually our national identity, why can't I get one?’ because we've lost the tikanga behind it.” He said that “for those that don't know [the tikanga], there isn't much of a discussion until they are ready to ask what it's about. We're not gonna go to them and tell them, but if they wanna know, that's why we're here: to share our whakapapa, our history, with everyone that we come across.”
The history and tradition of tā moko goes back for generations, but as we move into a modernised society, some of those traditions are changing. Sky said that many people stick firmly to the belief that only the standard green-black ink should be used, because “your tūpuna didn’t have colours.” But “they didn’t have tattoo guns either, did they?”, she retorted, “So to what extent do we keep it traditional?” Back in the old days, tā moko were given by a tohunga tā moko, using an uhi tā moko (chisel). For a large piece, like a puhoro, this could take several weeks of constant chiselling. Your stories were physically carved into your skin, writ large across your kikowhiti, your kauae, for all to see. Some people still choose to have their tā moko given this way, to uphold that tradition.
Traditional or modern, the experience of getting a tā moko is a birthright, one that can be shared by all Māori. And after the socially-ingrained barriers to that first tā moko come down, it’s hard to stop. T.A. said that the desire to keep adding tā moko came from “knowing I have something that I can read, that I’m the only one that can translate. I can see my family, I know that they're here with me. It's just having that connection. Everybody carries a little bit of their family in their heart, but having it on your body is a different kind of appreciation.”
Kiritea said that “When you do get tā moko, you know it's for something important… To permanently have something on there to remind you of your whakapapa, your story. Most of the time I’ve gone to get mine I’ve been through hard times, and it's been great to get a tā moko, which is painful, but at the end you have something beautiful and meaningful to you, and you went through all of that, for this. I'm safe.”
In 20 years, we probably won’t be talking about tā moko in the same way. We might just be asking “oh, cool, how many do you have?” or “which hurt the most?” or “are you gonna get one done traditionally?”. T.A. and Kiritea hoped that in 20 years, the conversation about tā moko would feel as normal as any other, like how kapa haka is casually talked about, free from controversy. Kiritea imagined a motu where tā moko can be deciphered by anyone, where every line can be understood for its meaning, where tūpuna live on, proudly, through the carvings on her skin.
Because ultimately, tā moko itself exists beyond conversations. “Tā moko and the Māori culture transcend verbal communication,” said Sky. “It lives on through us, and it dies with us.”