BARROW -- In a modern twist to an age-old practice, a few residents in this Inupiat town are sporting tattoos on chins and chests to honor ancestors and whale hunting.
One whaler wants to create a one-dimensional whale-tail necklace commemorating kills. Two women have chin markings that symbolize family and ancient traditions.
It's perhaps the latest development in an ongoing effort by Alaska Natives -- at least two Aleuts also have facial tattoos -- to revive language, dancing and art.
Tattoos were common throughout Alaska for hundreds of years. Some elder seamstresses used bird-bone needles -- and later steel needles -- sinew thread and soot to decorate human canvasses, said Lars Krutak, an anthropologist who's studied the custom in Alaska and elsewhere.
For women who bore elaborate designs across faces and necks to enhance beauty or fertility, it was a painful rite of passage, he said. For hunters, the etchings -- usually dark blue -- boosted bravery and could ward off evil spirits.
Cultural tattooing in Alaska faded in the last century with Christian missionaries getting some of the blame for stamping it out, said Krutak. The Bering Sea Eskimos on St. Lawrence Island were considered some of the last hold-outs, and the practice largely ended in the early 1920s, he said.
Skin-stitched tattoos are extremely rare today, perhaps possessed by only a few elders.
But some people are embracing the old designs, even if the modern method is different -- and less painful.
Laresa Syverson, a 24-year-old Aleut raised in Unalaska and now living in Homer, wanted one since she was a child. She went under the ink gun in 2002. Blue bands, with dashes in the middle, extend between each nostril and ear, like tattoos sketched by European explorers. She did it because it's beautiful, and because she could, she said.
"It was a way of bringing back some of my traditions that were left behind," she said.
Barrow's Qaiyaan Harcharek, a 24-year-old harpooner on a whaling crew, wanted a tattoo honoring a late great-grandfather.
In November, he visited a Maori tattoo artist in New Zealand. He was there with an Inupiat delegation studying cultural revitalization.
The Maori are admired by indigenous groups for their success in reviving language and culture, in part with early immersion programs. They've also brought back facial tattoos, said Harcharek.
Standing in the arctic entryway of his house one August afternoon, Harcharek peeled off his shirt for a reporter and photographer.
Two graceful whale tails decorate his upper chest -- one for each whale he's killed. If he's fortunate enough to harpoon more, he'll create a permanent necklace, he said.
The dark-blue etchings -- about as big as life-size salmon tails -- are embellished with Maori motifs. Swirling lines, triangles and other designs symbolize growth and prosperity, Harcharek said.
But the idea hails from his ancestry, he said. Whalers from Barrow and the surrounding North Slope once had whale flukes tattooed at the corners of their mouths, as charms to improve hunting success or as tally marks, said Krutak, the anthropologist.
Harcharek's great-grandfather had seven tails on his chest for the whales he killed, Harcharek said. Family members have passed down legends about the decorated harpooner, whose name was Amayun.
"He did it and I wanted to memorialize him," said Harcharek. "And it shows how successful a whaler is, and that's another reason for doing it."
Harcharek, a University of Alaska anthropology student, said the skin art sparks interest in his culture. The flukes spreading near his collar bone are visible under a button-down shirt, so strangers often ask about them.
For a university project this spring, he gave a PowerPoint presentation on the ancient custom. Photos of his naked chest covered a huge screen in the lecture hall.
"I got a pretty good ovation," he said, and a top grade. "I don't know if it was for my shirt being off."
His mother and her friend also visited the Maori artist.
The friend, Fannie Akpik, is an assistant Inupiaq professor at the local college. She has several blue swirls drawn on her chin -- circles inside circles representing grandchildren, she said.
Her late grandmother had faded facial tattoos representing family -- whorls on cheeks and lines on the chin broken by wrinkles, said Akpik, 54.
"I'm proud that I had it done, because I'm a very proud grandmother," she said.
Jana Harcharek, who heads bilingual and multicultural programs for the North Slope Borough School District, wears a discreet blue stripe on her chin.
Decorated on either side with circles, the tiny tattoo is a physical way "to foster pride in who we are in our identity as Inupiaq people," she said.
The circles, imprinted with dots, are found on Inupiaq artifacts. She saw the symbol in New Zealand too, where it symbolizes conception, she said.
Cultural tattoos are rare on the Slope, she said. A relative has whale-tail tattoos he got years ago to celebrate successful hunts. At least one elder has a tattoo on his hand made the traditional, painful way, she said.
Early Christian missionaries may have helped stop the practice, she speculated. And a generation of children was away at boarding schools in the early 20th century when they would have received their first tattoos, she said.
Anthropologists cite those factors and others, including epidemics such as influenza, measles and tuberculosis that killed thousands and brought sweeping cultural change.
Jana, sitting in an office decorated with whaling photos and family pictures, said she got her tattoo to honor her late grandmother, who had a quarter-inch-wide stripe down her chin.
"We need to be proud of what we are," she said.
Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban@adn.com or 257-4310.
Alaska Native tatoos have long history and many meanings
Alaska Native tattoos had aesthetic, spiritual, medicinal and other purposes. The meaning varied among Native groups and even within families.
Some tattoos and their meanings include:
• Whale tails: Often decorated corners of men's mouths and women's cheeks or backs of hands and arms. Served as charms to improve hunting, as first-kill memorials or tally marks. Also honored husband's or father's hunting exploits, showed family's status or genealogy.
• Chin stripes: One or several extended vertically down the chin, sometimes from lower lip to chin. Perhaps the most common indigenous tattoo in the world. May have been status marks.
• Fertility face lines: Largely specific to Eskimos on St. Lawrence Island. Three vertical lines start at the temple, curve around the cheekbone and end at the jawbone.
• Joint tattoos: Largely specific to Eskimos on St. Lawrence Island. People were often marked with two dots on their major joints, such as the back of necks and waist, tops of shoulders, backs of knees and elbows. Pallbearers on St. Lawrence Island and first-kill hunters were marked with these to repel evil spirits from entering the body through limb joints.
• Cheek bands: Often extend from nostrils to ears.
Source: Lars Krutak, tattoo anthropologist and author who has studied traditional tattoos around the world, on people, mummies and artifacts such as masks and ivory figurines, with a focus on St. Lawrence Island.
