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Kayabi and Ikpeng Tattooing

Xingu Indigenous Park · Mato Grosso, Brazil

Xingu Indigenous Park · Mato Grosso, Brazil

The Kayabi (Kawaiwete) of the Xingu in Brazil are one of the very few Indigenous peoples in South America documented as keeping a true hand-poke tattoo tradition into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with personal name-glyph marks applied at adulthood. The Smithsonian and the anthropologist Lars Krutak document the living practice.

Archive Note

Among Brazilian Indigenous peoples, body painting is widespread but true puncture tattooing is rare, and the Kayabi of the Xingu region are the most-cited surviving example, documented by the tattoo researcher Lars Krutak. The practice includes women's facial tattoos and personal name-glyph marks received and applied at adulthood initiation. It stands alongside the Matses of the western Amazon as one of the living Amazonian tattoo traditions, now treated as an active revival.

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