Tapping Into Ancestral Wisdom: Reviving the Nearly Lost Art of Native Hawaiian Tattooing | NMAI Magazine (2025)

Hanohano had dreams of designing and screen-printing his own clothing, but after seeing those markings, he felt traditional tattooing was the ultimate art form. Inspired by his student’s interest, his teacher invited Nunes not only to talk to his class about traditional Hawaiian tattooing, or “kākau,” but also to demonstrate it. In front of his wide-eyed students, the teacher laid down on a mat woven from “lauhala” (leaves of a hala tree) and Nunes tattooed his hand with distinctive Hawaiian designs by tapping ink made of candlenut, or “kukui,” soot into his skin with an instrument made of sharpened albatross bone called a “mōlī.”

Hanohano had hoped that he might receive his own “uhi” from Nunes one day. But he didn’t imagine that just a few years later he would be an apprentice to the master and be part of reawakening a tradition that stretched back more than a thousand years.

Skin Art’s Journey to Hawai‘i

The Polynesian Triangle stretches from Easter Island in the East to New Zealand in the South to Hawai‘i in the North and includes thousands of islands. Tattooing began almost 2,000 years ago in the Polynesian islands of Samoa and Tonga as a way to indicate cultural status and genealogy, and it gradually spread across Polynesia. While in Tahiti in 1769, British explorer Captain James Cook wrote letters to Britain about the practice of “tatau,” which means to tap upon or strike patterns into the skin. Cook referred to it as “tattaw” in his letters home, and this morphed into the word tattoo in England. By the time Cook sailed to Hawai‘i in 1778, he and his crew had already explored most of Polynesia and had seen tattoos throughout the region.

Cook was confounded that he saw shared cultural practices such as tattooing across Polynesian communities on islands that were located far apart. The physical, linguistic and cultural similarities between these cultures led him to believe that Polynesians had migrated across the vast Pacific and formed “the most extensive nation on Earth.” He also realized that even without Western ships or instruments, these tattooed Polynesian sailors had been incredibly skilled ocean navigators.

Cook’s sailors were intrigued by the tattooed island inhabitants they encountered and began receiving their own. Successive generations of whalers, traders and other mariners would also be inspired to be tattooed, bringing Indigenous skin art to Europe and the Americas. But when the first British and U.S. missionaries arrived in Hawai‘i in 1820, they began a growing crusade against what they considered “pagan” rituals such as tattooing. Eventually, they banned the practice completely in Tonga, and only in Samoa did it continue unabated.

Traditional tattooing continued in the Hawaiian Islands, but the movement against it grew. U.S. plantation owners and descendants of the original missionaries on the islands gained influence and they worked with the U.S. military to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. The United States annexed Hawai‘i in 1898. For the next century, traditional tattooing in Hawai‘i sharply declined.

While traditional Polynesian tattooing almost died out in Hawai‘i, Western tattoo parlors grew increasingly popular around the world. Cultural practitioners using traditional handmade tools were replaced by self-taught artists using tattoo machines. The process of getting a Western tattoo is often more of a commercial exchange where a customer pays for whatever image he or she chooses. However, a traditional Polynesian or Hawaiian tattoo design is usually intended to be reflective of a person’s genealogy and passed down for generations.

The recent resurgence and interest in traditional Hawaiian tattooing can be traced back to the Hawaiian renaissance that began almost 50 years ago. In the 1970s, Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug was considered to be the last wayfinder who could navigate ocean-voyaging canoes by the stars. Fearful that his knowledge would die with him, Piailug made the bold move to share the ancient celestial navigation techniques of wayfinding with a young Hawaiian sailor named Nainoa Thompson, who navigated the voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a to Tahiti without instruments in 1980. After this, Piailug and Thompson worked together for decades to perpetuate these skills among younger generations of students in Hawai‘i and across the Pacific. Under Thompson’s leadership, young Hawaiian navigators launched an epic four-year voyage in 2023 to circumnavigate the entire Pacific Ocean in traditional voyaging canoes using only the stars as guides.

Piailug’s choosing to transfer his wayfinding knowledge was a pivotal moment in the movement to bring back traditional voyaging. It also helped spark a renaissance in Hawaiian culture, inspiring youth across Hawai‘i, including Keone Nunes, who sailed with Piailug.

A Tattoo Renaissance

Keone Nunes grew up in Wai‘anae on the west side of O‘ahu. His parents divorced when he was young, and he ended up spending a lot of time with his Native Hawaiian elders, including his aunt Muriel Lupenui. As a young adult, Nunes became a talented hula performer and teacher who wanted to tap into ancestral practices. He asked his aunt’s advice about getting a traditional tattoo as well as the distinct patterns and what they meant.

Years later, in preparing for a hula competition in 1990, Nunes decided to get his first tattoo.He recalled what his aunt told him, and he said, “I found someone to do the work with the proper protocols.” His first traditional tattoo was an “alaniho,” which stretches from hip to ankle. But it was done with a tattoo machine, and that bothered Nunes, who wanted to learn the traditional method of “kākau.”

Because no Hawaiian teachers at the time were available to show Nunes the traditional tapping method of creating a tattoo, he began with Western tattoo guns and inks to create the ancient symbols and patterns. A well-known tattoo artist from Holland named Henk Schiffmacher took an interest in Nunes. Impressed by his designs and dedication to reviving the ancient art form, Schiffmacher interviewed him for a film he was putting together about the growing popularity of skin art.

Schiffmacher introduced him to the Samoan master tattooist Su‘a Sulu‘ape Paulo, who was featured in the documentary. Nunes said that Paulo was considered “the best traditional tattooist in the world at that time.” Paulo invited the Hawaiian to New Zealand and then Samoa to study with him.

During their trip to Samoa, Nunes learned about how Paulo prepared his tools and designed his patterns. On the third day, Paulo asked him if he wanted to learn how to make his own tapping tools with different kinds of “mōlī” to make distinctive patterns, and he jumped at the opportunity. He didn’t eat anything the whole day because he spent all his time making the tool. He was anxious and hardly slept that night. “In the morning, I had the tool finished,” Nunes recalls. “He tested it and said, ‘Not bad.’ He took that tool and he kept it.”

The next day, Paulo gave him another set of materials and asked him to make another tool. After he spent the day making that one, Paulo said to him, “Do you know why I had you make the second tool? Because you would have forgotten how to use that knowledge.” The importance of perpetuating the cultural protocols and knowledge bonded them. “That’s when I became his student,” Nunes said.

After years of serving as his teacher, Paulo came to Hawai‘i to recognize Nunes officially and pass on his tools. During a ceremony in Nānākuli, he asked elders of the community to witness the passing of this sacred knowledge. “He gave me the tools and said, ‘This is not for you. This is for your people,’” Nunes recalled. “It’s a different way of looking at things. My knowledge is not for me to hold; it’s for me to give to people who deserve it.”

Nunes said this kind of knowledge is usually kept within families and communities and is not something to be shared with people from other tribes or cultures, but Paulo didn’t want this tradition to die out. Likewise, Nunes has begun teaching a new generation of students the traditional method of tattooing. In 2001, he formed a tattooing school called Pāuhi in Wai‘anae.

Traditional Hawaiian tattooing has several protocols, such as “interviewing” potential candidates, asking them questions about their genealogy, intentions and readiness to go through the process. Based on this information, the “kākau” artist then decides if the person is ready to receive a tattoo as well as where it will go. Coming up with the design is an interactive process, but the artist has the final say.

One lesson Nunes has imparted to his students is that the art of “kākau” is not only visual but auditory. “The tapping is like a whisper of our ancestors, and that’s important to hear,” Nunes said. While his students were practicing, he would go into another room and just listen to the rhythm of their tapping. If they were tapping wrong, he would tell them, “Listen to what I’m doing—don’t watch what I’m doing.” Each student needs to develop a consistent rhythm. Eventually, they can develop their own rhythm and reinterpret that song. Like language and writing, he explained, you have to learn the rules before you can break them.

After Paulo’s sudden death in 1999, Nunes was devastated. According to tradition, he was given his teacher’s name to show the cultural continuity of this ancestral knowledge, so his full name is now Sulu‘ape Keone Nunes. “I took up the Sulu‘ape name not because I wanted to, but because I took up that responsibility,” Nunes said. “When Paulo taught me, I continued that tradition. Through that genealogy, it takes us back 2,000 years to his ancestors.”

Halena Kapuni-Reynolds, associate curator of Native Hawaiian History and Culture at the National Museum of the American Indian, said Nunes has “played a very prominent role in its revival, teaching new generations of kākau practitioners to do the art form.” Nunes continued teaching on O‘ahu for 30 years before moving to Thailand in 2020. He still returns to the Islands to lead workshops and visit friends and family, but now it is up to his four apprentices to keep up the tradition, including Kamali‘i Hanohano. Nunes said of his students, Hanohano “is the only one who has title to continue that practice” as he “carries on the traditions that were given to me in totality.” Others can and have diverged from the traditional protocol, but they can’t carry the titled name of “Keone‘ulaikapōpanopano,” which Nunes said means “the sacred sands of the deep dark night.” This was to honor the place where Taemā and Tilafaigā, women twins, landed after bringing tattoo tools from Fiji to Samoa.

The Weight of Skin Art

A Native Hawaiian, Kamali‘i Hanohano also grew up on O‘ahu. When he first started his apprenticeship with Nunes in 2010, he was awestruck being in the presence of the “kākau uhi” master. For Hanohano, the act of lying down on a lauhala mat to receive his first tattoo from Nunes was life-changing. He said he could feel the presence of his ancestors, who also experienced the pain of the sharp tool tapping their skin.

Hanohano said for those receiving such a tattoo,“There’s a ‘mana’ or energy that can’t come from the daily mundane world.” Whether it be the sound of tapping that creates traditional tattoos on skin or the ancestral patterns inked onto “kapa” cloth, Hanohano describes this sound as “the heartbeat of our people.”

Hanohano echoes Nunes’s comments that traditional Hawaiian tattoos should be about the continuation of a person’s genealogy and lineage as well as the necessity of following protocols in passing on this sacred art form from master to student. “We place a strong emphasis on the words of our ‘kūpuna’ [elders] and those who sit at the helm of these practices. They serve as the mouthpiece of those who have passed on,” Hanohano said. He laments that so much ancestral knowledge is being lost in the modern world. “More and more, their words are falling on deaf ears,” he said.

The artists also worry about tattoo shops imitating traditional designs. Hanohano stresses that those receiving a traditional Hawaiian tattoo need to focus more on the process and less on the image or design. He said that they should be doing it to connect to their ancestors and ask themselves “How do you fit within the collective culture?,” as opposed to “What’s good just for me?”

The resurgence of receiving these traditional tattoos is being seen across the Hawaiian Islands. “Folks are feeling more pride in being Hawaiian and reclaiming that identity,” said NMAI’s Kapuni-Reynolds. “The tattoo is an opportunity for them to really do something with their own body to claim that identity and to make sure that other people can see it.”

These tattoos also appeal across generations. Born and raised in the Islands, Willy Lee said he decided to get a Hawaiian tattoo later in life because he wanted to honor his culture and find a connection to his ancestors. He talked with his mother about their genealogy and the traditional patterns she remembered seeing in the previous generations. Lee spent years trying to find someone who could do it in the traditional way and was eventually referred to Nunes. “I think he was the only one that started to bring it back,” Lee said.

Lee’s mother, wife and daughter accompanied him to meet with Nunes and to share stories about their family. He also told Nunes his personal reasons for wanting to get a tattoo. A week or so later, he laid down on a lauhala mat and for the next three hours Nunes tapped out an elaborate pattern of an “alaniho” from hip to ankle. He received it on his left leg, which is associated with more feminine energy, to create balance.

After witnessing the tattooing of her father, his daughter, Kari Lee, decided she also wanted to go through the experience. As a woman, hers would be on the right leg to tap into a more masculine energy. She wanted to do it not only to honor her family and connect with her ancestors but to help her recover from a recent loss. “I had gone through my boyfriend’s death at the time, and I just couldn’t function,” she said.

Kari Lee had already received a Western-style tattoo—an image of two paw prints so her cats could go wherever she went. The image was personally meaningful to her, but she said it didn’t have the same deep cultural connections as the “kākau uhi.” She found the process painful but also healing. “Once I got my ‘alaniho,’ I had so much strength, and I felt the presence of my ancestors,” she said. “I could feel the mourning going away and the strength coming back.”