Archive Note
Documented from the early-17th-century French colonial encounter onward through the Jesuit Relations and writers such as Lafitau and Sagard, Northeast Woodlands tattooing was practiced across Algonquian and Iroquoian nations, with the densest early descriptions of the Iroquoian Wendat and neighbors. The method was hand-puncture with bone, fish-bone, or thorn needles, with powdered charcoal or soot rubbed into the punctures. Among the Anishinaabe the tattoo carried the doodem, the clan identity figured as an animal being, though the historian Heidi Bohaker is careful that the governance mark seen on treaty signatures and the tattoo share a visual vocabulary rather than being the same act. Other documented functions include warrior and exploit marks and therapeutic puncture associated with the Midewiwin medicine context. The practice declined sharply in the 19th century under missionization, the reservation system, and residential and boarding schools; a contemporary revival since roughly the 2010s runs through the Earthline Tattoo Collective, the Onaman Collective, and Anishinaabe hand-poke practitioners.