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NOVEMBER 1, 2021
NATIVE
AMERICAN
WATCHLIST
Watchlist: ‘How Alaska
Native Women Are Healing
From Generations of Trauma’
(Editor’s note: It is estimated that there are approximately 149
billion videos on YouTube, and the number continues to grow.
Grand Ronde Tribal member and Social Media/Digital Journalist
Kamiah Koch sifts through those myriad videos twice a month to
recommend a worthwhile Indigenous video to watch. Follow her
bimonthly recommendations and enjoy!)
By Kamiah Koch
Social Media/Digital Journalist
Al Jazeera’s YouTube channel,
AJ+, focuses on telling stories of
human rights and equality. In
2017, it published a three-part
series sharing different Alaskan
Native stories.
The final installment in the
series is a video following Mar-
jorie Kunaq Tahbone, an Inupiaq
woman from Nome, who is heal-
ing her community by reviving
the Indigenous tradition of facial
tattoos.
“How Alaska Native Women
Are Healing From Generations
of Trauma” is a six-minute vid-
eo explaining the historical and
contemporary uses of Native
tattoos.
Originally, facial tattoos were
a way of honoring spirits and an-
imals. Now, Tahbone says they
are used as a way to heal from
historic traumas.
The video describes practices
like tattooing and dancing that
were banned in Alaska in the
early 1900s by missionaries and
outsiders.
“They truly believed our way
of living was demonic and we
were heathens” Tahbone says in
the video. “Our ability to come
together as a community was
broken.”
Tahbone says she felt the gap
in the community’s ability to ful-
ly practice its cultural traditions
back in 2012 so she took it upon
herself to learn how to tattoo.
The video shares clips of Tah-
bone preparing to apply a chin
tattoo and the ceremony behind
it. A seal oil lamp is lit as a way
to bring ancestors into the pro-
cess and the tattoo is applied by
hand, without the use of a tattoo
gun or machine.
“I wanted to give other woman
an opportunity to get their tra-
ditional tattoos in a traditional
way because there wasn’t that
opportunity back in 2012,” Tah-
bone says. “They didn’t want
a tattoo parlor, they wanted it
to mean more. I realized it was
much more than just putting ink
into the skin, that it’s a really
powerful ceremony.”
Tahbone says traditional tat-
toos in Alaskan Native com-
munities are always done by
women and symbolize strength
and womanhood. Being able to
reclaim that tradition and give it
new meaning today is powerful,
she says.
The video shows that reclaim-
ing Native ways of life is seen in
many other aspects of Tahbone’s
life as well. Clips of her dancing
with her community, eating tra-
ditional foods, wearing tradition-
al clothes, learning the language
and displaying her facial tattoo
proudly are seen throughout the
video.
Tahbone finishes the video by
calling every day an act of defi-
ance against the colonizers and
their failed attempts at erasing
her Native ancestor’s traditions.
To watch the video yourself,
you can go to https://youtu.be/
FKJO1YyQMmY or visit the
Smoke Signals YouTube chan-
nel and find it in our Watchlist
playlist. 
Smoke Signals screenshot
Marjorie Kunaq Tahbone (Inupiaq) applies a tattoo to a woman’s
chin as part of her effort to help her fellow Alaskan Natives heal from
historical traumas in an Al Jazeera YouTube video called “How Alaska
Native Women Are Healing From Generations of Trauma.”
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