Inking Indigenous Knowledge, Embodying Collective Resistance: The traditional tattoo revival(s) in present-day Indonesia

This thesis explores how the revitalisation of Indigenous tattooing practices in present-day Indonesia embodies resistance to the colonial erasure of Indigenous cosmo-epistemologies. Building on Indigenous, postcolonial, and performance studies scholarship, it conceptualises the tattooing body as an embodied archive of ancestral knowledge, heritage, and identity. I conducted multi-sited fieldwork using various qualitative methods in Mentawai, Kalimantan, Java, and Bali from August 2023 to December 2024. This critical ethnography reveals that Indigenous ancestral knowledges are not only living on but also alive through the body, as handtapping tattoo practices adapt to contemporary contexts with new meanings. It also attends to the different positionalities and backgrounds of traditional tattoo practitioners, thereby underlining that embodied resistance to colonial erasure is relational, intersectional, and contextual. Through a reflexive narrative, this thesis ultimately tells a...Show moreThis thesis explores how the revitalisation of Indigenous tattooing practices in present-day Indonesia embodies resistance to the colonial erasure of Indigenous cosmo-epistemologies. Building on Indigenous, postcolonial, and performance studies scholarship, it conceptualises the tattooing body as an embodied archive of ancestral knowledge, heritage, and identity. I conducted multi-sited fieldwork using various qualitative methods in Mentawai, Kalimantan, Java, and Bali from August 2023 to December 2024. This critical ethnography reveals that Indigenous ancestral knowledges are not only living on but also alive through the body, as handtapping tattoo practices adapt to contemporary contexts with new meanings. It also attends to the different positionalities and backgrounds of traditional tattoo practitioners, thereby underlining that embodied resistance to colonial erasure is relational, intersectional, and contextual. Through a reflexive narrative, this thesis ultimately tells a story of negotiated resistance shaped by the body and situated within larger structures of living colonial legacies, global capitalism, and classism. It is a story of different voices and counter-perspectives, where Indigenous co-resistance is articulated through ink. As such, this thesis speaks to both students and scholars interested in critical heritage studies, Indigenous epistemologies, body studies, and Southeast Asia, while opening space for conversations between academic scholarship and embodied activism.Show less

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Inking Indigenous Knowledge, Embodying Collective Resistance: The traditional tattoo revival(s) in present-day Indonesia