Archive Note
A lifelong sewer turned tattooist, Tahbone took part in the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project and learned skin-stitching and hand-poke in August 2015 from the Filipino-American traditional tattooist Elle Festin in Los Angeles, after Festin saw photographs of her facial tattoos online. Her uptake of skin-stitching, drawn through the upper dermis with sinew thread, was shaped by her existing sewing practice, embodying the historic linkage between seamstress and tattooist in Inuit tradition. She is one of the practitioners carrying the circumpolar kakiniit revival forward across Alaska, and her training is the documented anchor for cross-Indigenous transmission of technique from Filipino to Inupiaq practitioners.