Leaving Her Mark

Shina Novalinga discusses her entry into throat singing, going viral on TikTok and getting her face tattooed

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Tattooing is a sacred rite within indigenous communities. In Canada, it links an individual to their ancestral past and preserves a culture in danger of disappearing after years of forced assimilation at the hands of the government. Shina Novalinga is Inuk and when she was 23, she got tunniit, which are traditional Inuit face tattoos. “I went to a program called Nunavik Sivunitsavut, which is all about the history, politics, governance and arts of Inuit culture,” Novalinga says. “I had this amazing teacher who taught us about the history, meanings and beauty of the markings and when I learned about it, I really wanted to get them for myself. It’s a rite of passage and the tattoos are very unique to each individual, not everyone has the same markings.”

The distinctive tunniit was banned in Novalinga’s native Canada, like many other aspects of Inuit culture, during the early twentieth century. Christian missionaries considered the act of tattooing to be “evil,” and within a generation it became increasingly rare to see women with tunniit. In recent years there has been a concentrated effort by many Inuit to reclaim those parts of their culture that had been suppressed by colonialism. This led to a slow and steady revival of the practice, which Novalinga felt compelled to be a part of.