PAPA HUILA Pahupahu
If genealogy is the artery, then lineage is the life-blood flowing within.
Lineage connects a person to their cultural identity in the same way that body parts - the outermost extensions of one’s physical existence - connect to the heart and the brain. The connection is both incredibly fragile and critically life-sustaining. And like a body, when the connection between it and its limbs are arbitrarily traumatized, harmed, or cut off outright, the effects are deeply painful, occasionally becoming a mortal threat to the sustainability and survivability of the entire living system.
After the coming of Europeans and Americans to Hawai’i in the late 18th century, moral prescriptions about what was appropriate and inappropriate to Westerners, and Western culture, began to hold sway over endemic considerations which had sustained Hawaiians and their way of life for millenia. In order to transform Hawai’i and Hawaiians into a society which Missionaries, Merchants, and men of politics considered civilized, it became necessary to divorce the people from their traditional practices and beliefs. For a time, a Hawaiian in the midst of these sweeping changes was forbidden to speak, to dance, to worship, and to modify their bodies as their ancestors once did, not a generation before.
The amputation of cultural practices from their people and practitioners, by Western colonists and missionaries, was no accident. Its necessity was not merely justified in the early decades of colonialism, it was politically marketed as the only way for any people to live well. Otherwise, societal change in the Western model became a tourniquet, further choking what little lineage still flowed to Hawaiians living in the present from those who had come before. It was clear by the mid-19th century that Western colonialism would expand anywhere it wished, supplanting indigenous knowledge and traditions for continental counterparts, wherever it could. And even as the Hawaiian government of the late 1800s reclaimed certain traditions from total cultural oblivion, more obscure and stigmatized practices remained all but dormant well into the 20th century: Hawaiian tattooing - in the unmistakable tapping style popular throughout Pasifika - was among the casualties.
Traditional Hawaiian tattoing implements
By the end of the 20th century, an intrepid young Hawaiian from the Waianae coast of O’ahu sought out mentorship from an esteemed Samoan luminary renown as the world’s best indigenous tattooist, Su’a Suluape Paulo II - a tufuga ta tatau born in Matafa'a near Lefaga, Samoa. The bond between this young man and Su’a Suluape Paulo II would set forth a series of events culminating in a renaissance of traditional tattooing in the Hawaiian islands. The rebirth itself has organically evolved over its 30+ years of development, to encompass and also define a unique and unimpeachable legacy: the recollection of Hawaiian tattoo lineages, fortified anew with genealogy from Samoa, reestablishing authentic Hawaiian tattoo practitionership. This young Hawaiian who apprenticed for Su’a Suluape Paulo II, and who oversaw the revival of traditional Hawaiian tattooing was Keone Nunes.
Keone Nunes; Master Hawaiian Tattooist & Cultural Practitioner
In honor of Keone, Pā Uhi - his school of Hawaiian Tattooing, and his esteemed teacher and mentor Su’a Suluape Paulo II, it is with gratitude, humility, and pride that KAIROU proudly presents a series of four skateboard decks decorated in traditional Hawaiian tattoo motifs:
“Pahu Pahu” 01-04. Each deck is hand painted in acid-free acrylic ink, utilizing conventional Hawaiian designs emulating the uhi (tattoo marks) left by an able tattooist upon fresh skin, using a traditional mōlī (bone needle applicator) & hahau (hitting stick). Each deck is hand signed and numbered by KAIROU, made from 7-ply Canadian Maple wood, and decked in MOB grip.
“Pahu Pahu” 01,02,03, & 04 are currently on extended loan to the saVAge k’lub of Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand): For viewings and availability, contact Rosanna Raymond.
