Sean Mallon

This richly illustrated history tells the fascinating story of Pacific people and their relationships with, and contributions to, New Zealand society. Across fifteen chapters written by leading historians and writers, every aspect of New Zealand's relationship with Pacific people is covered - from migration to tourism, economics to politics, sport to the arts.

A beautifully illustrated history of Indigenous tattooing practices around the worldTattooing within Indigenous communities is a time-honored practice that binds the tattoo recipient to a deeply felt collective history. More than mere decoration, tattoos embody cultural values, ancestral ties, and spiritual beliefs. Indigenous Tattoo Traditions captures ancient tribal tattooing practices and their contemporary resurgence, highlighting a beautiful aspect of humanity’s shared cultural heritage.Transporting readers through history, Lars Krutak explores the art and customs of tattooing across numerous ancestral lands, including Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, the Arctic, Oceania, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Siberia. He illustrates how tattoos function as a form of writing that defines and structures community life, performing as rites of passage, symbols of rank, and signs of marital or religious devotion, among other facets of culture. We are introduced to the heavily tattooed Li women of China’s Hainan Island with their elaborate facial and body tattoos, the bold indelible markings of Papua New Guinea's Indigenous peoples, and innovative cultural tattoo practitioners who are rebuilding a skin-marking legacy for future generations to come.With numerous images published for the first time and an illuminating foreword by cultural historian Sean Mallon, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions opens a window onto one of the world’s most vibrant yet misunderstood mediums of human expression.

When Tatau was first published in 2010, Mark Adams' renowned images documenting a great Polynesian art tradition were a revelation. Mostly taken between 1978 and 2005, these photographs recorded the contemporary expressions of tatau (tattoo) and told the story of the late Sulu'ape Paulo II, the preeminent figure of modern Samoan tattooing. A brilliantly innovative and often controversial man, he saw tatau as an art of international importance. Tatau documented his practice, and that of other tufuga ta tatau (tattoo artists), and interpreted it within the contexts of Polynesian tattooing, Samoan migrant communities, and New Zealand art. As in the original edition, the book is also concerned with what photographer Mark Adams has done with tatau. His images provide powerful and indeed moving records of certain times and people, some of whom have now passed on. Yet, despite their documentary nature, his images do much more than record a technique of body decoration or a scene around it. They ask tough questions of the scene and its history--questions that may inevitably remain unanswered. And, despite their virtuosity, the images exude a certain discomfort with the business of cross-cultural image making, with its histories, and with New Zealand's culture and politics. Long out-of-print, this revised and extended edition, with its handsome larger format and texts by distinguished scholars, makes a cultural treasure available once more.

When Tatau was first published in 2010, Mark Adams' renowned images documenting a great Polynesian art tradition were a revelation. It told the story of the late Sulu'ape Paulo II, the pre-eminent figure of modern Samoan tattooing. A brilliantly innovative and often controversial man, he saw tatau as an art of international importance. Tatau documented his practice, and that of other tufuga ta tatau (tattoo artists), in the contexts of Polynesian tattooing, Samoan migrant communities and New Zealand art. Long out-of-print, this revised and extended new edition, with its handsome large format and texts by distinguished scholars, makes a cultural treasure available once more.

The Samoan Islands are virtually unique in that tattooing has been continuously practised with indigenous techniques: the full male tattoo, the pe'a has evolved in subtle ways in its design since the nineteenth century, but remains as elaborate, meaningful, and powerful as it ever was. This cultural history is the first publication to examine 3000 years of Samoan tatau. Through a chronology rich with people, encounters and events it describes how Samoan tattooing has been shaped by local and external forces of change over many centuries. It argues that Samoan tatau has a long history of relevance both within and beyond Samoa, and a more complicated history than is currently presented in the literature. It is richly illustrated with historical images of nineteenth and twentieth century Samoan tattooing, contemporary tattooing, diagrams of tattoo designs and motifs, and with supplementary photographs such as posters, ephemera, film stills and artefacts.