ABSTRACT
The tattoos called ‘Tahitian’ or ‘Polynesian’ today are different from those observed when the first European explorers landed in Tahiti in the late eighteenth century. This chapter considers the dynamism of creation and transformation in contemporary Tahitian tattooing and identity formation within neo-colonial and global contexts. It illustrate Polynesian and non-Polynesian interests in the tattooing of one another. The chapter examines the issues of ownership and transmission of tattoos and tattooing. It demonstrates the local way of exchanging, borrowing or using the other’s properties and knowledge in social relationships, and how this changes in the international domain, for example in Tatau i Taputapuatea. After providing ethnographical examples, the chapter discusses the transmission of ownership of tattoos between the collective, tattooists, tattooed people and photographers. The event of Tatau i Taputapuatea shows that Tahitian tattooists and tattooed people locate themselves both in the global tattoo world and in Tahitian society.
