Lazy Sunday Afternoon
The sun was shining and the bees buzzing and I started to read my book that I got for my birthday The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman .
"Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. "The Blue Tattoo" tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapais Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own."
It is interesting to see how tattoos once considered savage/or common are now accepted culturally and socially.
Indigenous Tattoos resurface after 95 years
"Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. "The Blue Tattoo" tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapais Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own."
It is interesting to see how tattoos once considered savage/or common are now accepted culturally and socially.
Indigenous Tattoos resurface after 95 years
Tattoo History Museum
Maori face design on a stone, maori call it Tā moko
This is" Sweetum's" who lives on a shelf in Yellow Springs somewhere.
I found the doll at a Garage Sale and painted her with black gesso, sponged white acrylic paint, black acrylic for the designs, and a final coat of resin.
So, err even Barbie has tattoos now, ahem!
Tattoo Barbie Project
Tattoo Doll Project
Maori face design on a stone, maori call it Tā moko
This is" Sweetum's" who lives on a shelf in Yellow Springs somewhere.
I found the doll at a Garage Sale and painted her with black gesso, sponged white acrylic paint, black acrylic for the designs, and a final coat of resin.
So, err even Barbie has tattoos now, ahem!
Tattoo Barbie Project
Tattoo Doll Project
Comments
In many native cultures, young children and women who were captured were not "enslaved" so much as adopted into the tribe, so I'm interested in what happened with your book's gal. Mary Jemison wrote a famous captivity narrative; she was adopted and fully assimilated into the tribe that kidnapped her; she had the chance to return to white society, but chose to remain with the Seneca people. She became a respected tribal elder and skilled negotiator. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jemison--includes links to her narrative.)
It is a fascinating book, not just that she was a captive but how she had to navigate the social/religious/moral/cultural mores once back in white society. I feel she was victimized twice.
And your lazy Sunday afternoon picture makes me want to curl up on the porch and take a nap in the sun