This is the kit Amanjano uses to make Mentawao tribal tattoos, of the sort he (and shaman like him) wears all over his body. The top item is a palm-wood hammer that is used to tap the wood-mounted nail (note lower item) when injecting tribal ink under the skin.
Tattoos are one of the first things I knew about Mentawai culture, since, when I first heard about the tribe 20 years ago, the Canadian traveler who told me about his Siberut visit lifted his shirt and showed me a tattoo he’d gotten there.
Looking back, it’s no surprise that the Canadian guy had elected to commemorate his Siberut visit with a tattoo. The Mentawai have also traditionally sharpened their teeth as part of a time-honored tribal rite, but there’s something more universal (and faintly bad-ass) about getting a culturally specific tattoo in a place like Siberut.
In the case of the Mentawai, tattoos are made of charcoal ash and burnt sugar, and the person getting the tattoo undergoes a regimen of mental preparation and traditional-herb disinfectant to prepare for the stresses of the tattoo ritual. The Mentawai with the most extravagant tattoos are shaman, and my guide Agus told me that full-body tattoos are, in effect, a kind of uniform for shamen (who are locally seen less as holy men than as doctors).
I asked Agus if he found it strange that tourists come all the way around the world to the Mentawai jungle and then ask to get shaman tattoos – but he didn’t really understand the question. I had been hinting at the way tattoos seem to be signifiers of shamen in Mentawai culture, but Agus knows that the tattoo isn’t what makes a person a shaman.
The tourists who come here and get tattoos, he told me, are experiencing something authentically Mentawai, even as it has nothing to do with shamanistic culture. Another tourist, he said, a Brit, chose to wear a loincloth during his stay – and that phenomenon, like a tattoo, was simple a way to get a taste of Mentawai life while clearly not being a part of it.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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