Archive Note
The designs were crest property, known as at.oow, owned by specific clans and referring to origin narratives through crest animals such as raven, eagle, killer whale, bear, frog, and thunderbird; wearing a crest tattoo was a claim of lineage membership, not decoration. The practice is documented most strongly by the U.S. Navy officer and ethnologist George T. Emmons during fieldwork in Alaska between 1882 and 1896, who recorded it as an expensive commission performed by women specialists using a sinew-thread-and-needle technique with soot rubbed into the wound. Because potlatch ceremonies publicly validated crest rights, the late-19th-century U.S. and Canadian bans on the potlatch helped suppress tattooing as well; those bans were lifted in 1934 in the United States and 1951 in Canada. Contemporary Tlingit revival, led by artists including Nahaan, connects hand-poke work to clan law and cultural property.