George Nuku regulated his breathing to get through the pain of being tattooed but still found it excruciating.

George Nuku regulated his breathing to get through the pain of being tattooed but still found it excruciating.

A tattoo is more than a painting on the skin; its meaning and reverberations cannot be comprehended without a knowledge of the history and mythology of its bearer. Thus it is a true poetic creation, and always more than meets the eye.

To endure the excruciating ordeal inherent in the decorative techniques was not only to pass in initiation from innocence to experience and from childhood to maturity, but also to establish an explicit connection between the individual and the realm of the spirits. To be tattooed or effectively scarred was to be human, and to be human was to know the gods.

Moko has many meanings to those who carry it. Moko is about identity; about being Maori in a Maori place, being Maori in a foreign place, being Maori in one's own land and times, being Maori on Maori terms.

It is about survival and resilience. It reflects Maori relationships with others; how they see Maori, and more importantly, how Maori want to be seen.

Wearers become experts in communication, exponents of the art of explaining symbol and significance, because the outsider needs to be reminded that Maori are different.

Different from them, and different from one another, and in this difference there is celebration, on a metaphysical as well as physical level.

Everyone with ink, every thinking or conscious tattooed person on the planet, has an awareness of the colour beneath and on their skin. Is it different for Maori? For us, it is more than skin deep; neither pumped in, nor painted on, it is a resonance through the blood that rises to the surface, it stains the needle and blends with the ink, it marks the chisel; it moves with heart rhythm and breath.

ORIGINS

People have lived in the islands of the western Pacific for many thousands of years, migrating through the south-east Asian archipelagos to gradually become a distinctive cultural group. As the Lapita peoples of New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and other islands, capable long distance navigators, they colonised over 50 sites across 4000km of the western Pacific Ocean and left the remains of distinctive settlements marked by unique pottery forms, and design. They also left reminders: small tattooing chisels in Lapita sites suggest that the Lapita people also had the Polynesian custom of face and body tattooing.

Tattooing was (and in some parts of Polynesia still is) a major component of adornment and identity. Bone tattooing chisels are found in archaeological sites of all ages in New Zealand, as well as in early sites in Eastern Polynesia. The Moriori do not seem to have practiced tattooing.