JESSICA COFFEY: POWER IN KAKINIIT AND TUNNIIT
Frey Blake-Pijogge
The checkered rug under the mahogany table and vibrant green plants in the corners of the room feels like home.
Sunlight flows through large windows into the open space illuminating the walls and its mirrors. Located on 205 New Gower street in downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador is Nevermind Studios. This is a place of ancestral knowledge and healing.
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Fredericka Jessica Coffey, also known as Jess Coffey, is one of the few traditional Inuk tattooers in Canada and this is her studio that she co-owns with another artist.
Her Inuit family is from Hopedale, Nunatsiavut, which is located in northern Labrador. Nunatsiavut is one of the Inuit Land Claims agreement areas of Inuit Nunangat in Canada and in the world. Inuit across the borders of the world in the Arctic share vibrant cultures, though each nation has its own dialect of the Inuit language.
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Inuit Nunangat regions in Canada are comprised of: Inuvialuit Settlement Region in northern Northwest Territories, Nunavut in northern Canada, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador. Inuit Nunangat in the rest of the world is Kalaallit Nunaat in Greenland, with close relations of other Arctic Indigenous groups in Siberia and Alaska but are distinctly different, of which these areas also have a small Inuit population.
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Nunatsiavut has the dialect called Inuktitut or Inuttitut. Coffey says that her people on the northern Labrador coast has reached the point of an almost complete loss of culture and language as a result of colonization by the government, church, and settlers much earlier than the rest of other Inuit Nunangat across Canada. Coffey is working to restore this loss through the art of tattoos. One of the cultural practices that she is singlehandedly revitalizing is traditional Inuit tattoos. These cultural tattoos are thousands of years old, as Inuit have been creating them since time immemorial.
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Coffey credits Hovak Johnston for bringing back Inuit tattoos in Canada. Johnston is from Kugluktuk, Nunavut, and she had started the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project in Canada. She says that she has followed Johnston’s lead in reclaiming and giving these traditional tattoos that were outlawed by the Canadian government and deemed demonic by the church in Inuit communities for years.
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Coffey is now 32 years old and living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She has hazel brown eyes, and long brown hair. “These tattoos were to show where you come from and what an individual has accomplished,” she says.
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Traditional Inuit tattoos are called Kakiniit and tunniit in Inuktitut. Kakiniit are on the wrists, hands, fingers, thighs, and chest, while the tunniit are the tattoos on the face, either on the forehead, cheekbones, nose, and chin. Each tattoo has a significant meaning to each Inuk and they have different meanings in each part of Inuit Nunangat.
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Kakiniit and tunniit are traditionally done with a sinew twine and a needle historically, but the revitalization of these tattoos has brought the stick and poke method to be more common than what it was before colonization of Inuit in Canada.
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“When I first started it didn’t have anything to do with like the traditional Inuit side of it,” Coffey says. When she first started creating tattoos eight years ago, she first wanted to do stick and poke tattoos in general. “There were no handbook tattoo artists. I was at kind of the beginning of a resurgence of like the traditional methods, at least here in Canada.”
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“I really wanted to try my hand at it – and I wanted to aspire to create really crisp, clean lines,” and, “I wanted to almost have my tattoos look like they were done with the machine,” Coffey says.
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Coffey’s venture into learning about traditional Inuit tattoos and the process behind this all happened by mere discussion. “Me and my cousin were kind of chatting about our culture and everything, and traditional Inuit tattoos came up,” and “the reclaiming of them of which blossomed into me opening up the space to do the traditional Kakiniit for other Inuit.”
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The process of taking up the challenge of actively reclaiming the cultural practice of traditional tattoos came with great loss to Coffey and her relatives. She says that the first discussion about Kakinnit and tunniit was, “at the time, in 2014 – 2015, we were having a lot of discussions because a family member was lost to M.M.I.W.G.”
To Indigenous peoples in Canada, including Inuit, this acronym is not new. M.M.I.W.G is the acronym to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
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“There was a lot going on at the time. Indigenous people were really getting the space to communicate what had been taken and what they were feeling,” which was a new phenomenon to happen in Canada, as she says that Indigenous people were finally being respected for what they had to persevere and what they had to reclaim after colonial acts of genocide forced onto their communities by multiple state factors.
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The period in which Coffey is talking about is around the time that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commision had released its final report in 2015. The 94 calls to action were also released in this report, with the intention of giving the federal and provincial governments recommendations of actions to try to reconcile the relations with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis of which they colonized and tried to kill off with genocidal tactics like the residential schooling system.
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The open and vulnerable discussions that were going on at this time in Canada had allowed for Coffey and her relative to start conversations of what had been taken from them regarding their culture by the government and churches. Among the losses was traditional Inuit tattoos that Inuk women and girls have mainly had before colonization.
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“It all just kind of fell into place – and felt like the right time,” Coffey says.
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Reminiscing about how she started out almost nine years ago, “I had a bit of impostor syndrome as a very white-passing Indigenous person who felt like it wasn’t my space.”
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Coffey, physically, does not have what society deems to look like Inuit. She has hazel brown eyes and pale skin. She can be considered white-passing.
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“I had finally come to the point where it was important for me to be able to provide the skill that I have and help people with it.”
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Overcoming the obstacle of not feeling “Inuk” enough to be able to carry out her calling to do traditional Inuit tattoos, the calling of tattooing Kakiniit and tunniit had allowed Coffey to carry out her power as an Inuk to help other Inuit with reclaiming and reconnecting with their culture and people. “I’ve come to a really good place with that,” Coffey says.
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With Coffey’s understanding of the history of Kakiniit and tunniit before colonization and the outlaw of Inuit tattoos, “It was just a natural part of being. It was women, primarily women, getting tattooed and going through these big life changes and having these markings on their body to show their fortitude, and show their skill set, and show that they were capable of leading, and having a family, and taking care of their community.”
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Kakiniit and tunniit are permanent markings to express and show the world who an Inuk is and where they come from. The meanings behind each marking, whether on the face or body, have different meanings.
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To each Inuk woman or individual who has these markings, it is up to the individual to disclose the meaning if they so wish. Kakiniit and tunniit are a closed practice, meaning that only Inuit can get them as they are Inuit culture and way of being.
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Kakiniit done by Jessica Coffey – photo from Instagram via bespoke_poke
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Coffey explains that with this integral part of being Inuk with colonization it left many Inuit and herself feel incomplete. “Having that lost has left people, you know, kind of missing something, and a lot of people didn’t even know what they are missing. Like my aunt, she made a joke once and was like ‘No people in Labrador didn’t have tattoos,’ and we were like, ‘No - we are pretty sure we did.”
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Coffey further explains what her aunt told her, “Oh, well I actually did give myself a tattoo when I was a little girl’ ... and she had told us that she tried to do it with a sewing needle and thread. Then we had to tell her like that’s how our culture did those tattoos, with a sewing needle and thread. She had no idea but as a child, she still instinctively went to do it in this way.”
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“So, I feel like even with the colonization and the loss there, there's this like longing in us that’s always king of residually in us that calls us to reclaim and find those missing pieces,” Coffey says.
Doing people’s tattoos for them and sharing emotional exchanges where both are letting their guard down and learning from each other is what feels most important to Coffey regarding tattooing these traditional Inuit markings.
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“There’s so much shame in our culture and, you know, just built-up shame when you are Indigenous and to be Inuk. When people can come and finally have pride, and feel happy, and proud about who they are – being able to see that transformation in front of my eyes,” Coffey says. It is what gives her happiness and meaning to each individual session of tattoos she does on other Inuit.
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Other obstacles that Coffey has faced and still does, is the navigation with her clients who are not Inuit that are trying to get these sacred Inuit tattoos, along with the obstacle of wanting to keep Inuit tattoos not ostracized by people who will appropriate said tattoos.
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“There’s a part of me that does feel like it’s important for people to see, then there’s the part of me that doesn’t because I don’t think it’s for anyone else,” Coffey says.
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“I’ve had non-Indigenous people ask me if they can get these tattoos and I have had to set hard boundaries with them.” Traditional Inuit tattoos, Kakiniit and tunniit, are a closed practice and meant only for Inuit.
Navigating whether or not her clients are Inuk or not, and actively trying to get Kakiniit and tunnitt done by her, Coffey still offers her non-Inuit clients to do a tattoo that shows appreciation for Inuit culture and not appropriating it instead.
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“We can do a tattoo that shows you appreciate the culture, but it does not have to be these cultural markings – you can get a tattoo of an ulu (English translation: woman’s knife), or an uppik (English translation: snowy owl; other Inuktitut spelling: okpik), you can get a tattoo of a seal, or a whale. You can get a tattoo that connects you to the culture but not the cultural tattoos,” Coffey says.
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Although there are non-Inuit who are trying to steal from Inuit culture, Coffey does not let this stain her experience as a tattoo artist who does Kakiniit and tunniit.
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“I do think I’ve gained a confidence now, that I’ve never had before, in my culture ... and for anybody who is questioning it or anyone in our culture who has been thinking about it – you can always start small,” Coffey says.
“If you feel like you are being called to do it, but you are feeling a bit of impostor syndrome or feel like you are not deserving of it, even just the feeling of wanting to do it shows that it’s being called to you and that you can always start small – you can get a couple dots or you can get some lines done.”
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The permanent markings that Coffey has tattooed on her clients have given power to her reclamation of being Inuk and to the individual who now has the beautiful Kakiniit and/or tunnniit. Each dot and line are seen by her ancestors, and by those of each Inuk who has them done.
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Many Inuit families and communities are now reconnecting with their culture and with the Inuit way of being through the ink of these markings. Thousands of years of practice simply cannot be stilted by colonial powers, as even after being outlawed and deemed as evil for decades - the soul will remember.
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