{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "kakiniit",
 "type": "tradition",
 "names": {
  "name": "Kakiniit",
  "local": "ᑲᑭᓐᓃᑦ",
  "local_lang": "Inuktitut",
  "aliases": [
   "tunniit",
   "kakiniq"
  ],
  "said": "kakiniq — from a root meaning to pierce or prick"
 },
 "region": [
  "arctic"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "family": "stitch",
  "status": "revived"
 },
 "when": {
  "from": -2000,
  "to": 2026,
  "circa": true,
  "label": "Suppressed by missionaries; revived deliberately from 2016"
 },
 "practice": {
  "method": "stitch",
  "tool": "needle-and-sinew",
  "ink": "soot-water",
  "placement": [
   "face",
   "chin",
   "hands",
   "arms",
   "thighs",
   "chest"
  ],
  "marked": "women",
  "marks": "women",
  "status": "revived",
  "countries": [
   "CA",
   "GL",
   "US"
  ],
  "first_record": 1475,
  "first_record_note": "the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland carry facial marks, dated about 1475",
  "break": [
   1920,
   2016
  ],
  "revived": 2016,
  "suppressed_by": "Christian missionaries and the residential school system",
  "note": "Women tattooing women. A threaded needle drawn under the skin, or a poked line."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Inuit tattoos: women's work on women's skin, stitched with a sooted thread drawn under the skin, or poked.",
  "story": "The method is the rarest on this site. A needle carries a sinew thread blackened with soot and is drawn *through* the skin, leaving the pigment behind it in a line — sewing, with the line left in. The same hands did the sewing that kept people alive in a cold place.\n\nThe marks answered to Sedna, whose severed fingers became the sea animals: hand and arm tattoos refer to where her hands were cut. A woman without hand marks was refused the good afterlife; a woman without face marks went to the land of the crestfallen, where the smoke rises from her throat and her head hangs down.\n\nThen missionaries, the schools, and a century of silence. The revival is recent, documented and deliberate: Hovak Johnston's project began putting traditional marks back on Inuit women in 2016, learning the stitch from the elders who still remembered it."
 },
 "text_th": {
  "what": "รอยสักของชาวอินูอิต ผู้หญิงสักให้ผู้หญิง ใช้เข็มร้อยด้ายชุบเขม่าลอดใต้ผิวหนัง หรือแทงเป็นจุด"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "stitch",
   "as": "The method, and the only one on this site that uses thread.",
   "rel": "method"
  },
  {
   "to": "qilakitsoq",
   "as": "The oldest Inuit faces that survive, and they are marked.",
   "rel": "find"
  },
  {
   "to": "revival",
   "as": "The clearest datable revival in the record.",
   "rel": "finding"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Kakiniit",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakiniit"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-kakiniit",
  "s:wp-inuit"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-kakiniit"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text_th": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "tags": [
  "women",
  "revival",
  "start-here"
 ],
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "kakiniit/kakiniit-fmib-46504-tattooed-woman-of-st-lawrence-island.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:FMIB 46504 Tattooed Woman of St Lawrence Island.jpeg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/FMIB_46504_Tattooed_Woman_of_St_Lawrence_Island.jpeg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFMIB_46504_Tattooed_Woman_of_St_Lawrence_Island.jpeg",
   "license": "Public domain",
   "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain",
   "author": "Raymond L. Newcomb",
   "credit": "Newcomb, Raymond Lee (1882)       Our Lost Explorers : the Narrative of the Jeannette Arctic Expedition, as related by the survors, and in the records and last journals of Lieutenant De Long, Hartford",
   "alt": "Tattooed Woman of St. Lawrence Island\nSubject: Eskimo women--Alaska, Tattooing--Alaska\nTag: People",
   "date": "1882date QS:P571,+1882-00-00T00:00:00Z/9",
   "primary": true,
   "sha256": "fb53bd4bc9b40bb1d085e82c023cc5f7c5684cd4c5101a7f924a108b4200e5d4"
  },
  {
   "file": "kakiniit/kakiniit-milukkattuk-36951.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Milukkattuk (36951).jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Milukkattuk_%2836951%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMilukkattuk_%2836951%29.jpg",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
   "author": "Diamond Jenness",
   "credit": "Canadian Museum of History",
   "alt": "Milukkattuk, Dolphin and Union Strait Inuk woman, wife of Avrunna (36926), front view with hood down, arm and hand extended showing tattooed hand, Bernard Harbour, N.W.T. (Nunavut).",
   "date": "July 1916date QS:P571,+1916-07-00T00:00:",
   "primary": false,
   "sha256": "05fa13542c43543e2191191741c62d9ecffae6c7dae03b5a111fab2da8d1bf58"
  }
 ],
 "geo": {
  "lat": 66.0,
  "lon": -85.0,
  "precision": "region",
  "source": "s:commons"
 },
 "updated": "2026-09-19",
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "stitch",
   "type": "method",
   "name": "Stitch",
   "as": "The tradition that carries it."
  },
  {
   "from": "needle-and-sinew",
   "type": "tool",
   "name": "Needle and sinew",
   "as": "What it makes."
  },
  {
   "from": "sedna-hands",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "Sedna's hands",
   "as": "The tradition it belongs to."
  },
  {
   "from": "hovak-johnston",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Hovak Johnston",
   "as": "The practice."
  },
  {
   "from": "revival",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Stopped, and started again",
   "as": "And the best documented."
  },
  {
   "from": "qilakitsoq",
   "type": "find",
   "name": "The Qilakitsoq women",
   "as": "The tradition."
  }
 ]
}