Using a traditional needle shaped from a narwhal tusk was meant to be a healing experience and a powerful spiritual ceremony for Inuk tattooist Jana Angulalik.
And it was — though it triggered a medical emergency that left her recovering in Iceland for days.
Angulalik, who is from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, was in Selfoss for a solo trip earlier this month when she met up with her mentor and fellow traditional tattooist Marjorie Kunaq Tahbone, an Iñupiaq woman from Alaska.
Angulalik had had a personal tattoo needle made just days earlier from narwhal tusk — a dream of hers that she's had since she first began tattooing in 2017. Together, she and Tahbone held a ceremony, lit a qulliq and tattooed 10 dots on Angulalik's hands.
"The amount of healing that I did — it was pretty silent during the tattooing, because the only thing we were saying was, 'Holy crap, can't believe we're doing this,'" she said. "We knew it was big ... I was afraid to open up about what I felt like I was releasing, and it was something that was really heavy from intergenerational trauma when I was a child.
"I've been tending to my inner child ... and those tattoos were a way for me to go back in time, almost, and hold her, and just say, 'It's OK, you know, you can sit down now, you can go to sleep. And you're OK now.'"
It was a beautiful ceremony, said both Angulalik and Tahbone. But the next morning, Angulalik's hand began to swell. By nightfall, it was immobile. She went to the hospital and was taken to Reykjavik; doctors told her her hand was infected. But unknown to her, what had actually happened was part of the needle had broken off in her hand.
"Every tattoo that Kunaq has done before that one, and every tattoo that I have done before that one, has been immaculately safe," Angulalik said.
"It's been beautiful and healing — and not to say that this one isn't healing or beautiful, it just came with a lot of lessons. Now we know ... if I want to continue figuring out how to bring those old practices and those old ways of medicine back with those old tools, I need to figure out how to do it the right way."
In Selfoss, doctors couldn't say whether they would have to amputate her fingers or even her entire hand. She didn't know if she would regain mobility.
"That really added a lot of stress," she said.
"By the time I got to Reykjavik, the doctors there reassured me, 'No, no no, you're not going to get your fingers amputated ... I bawled my eyes [out] when they told me."
Tahbone, who took responsibility right away in a social media post when they thought it was an infection, was the first person Angulalik called when she found out it was a bone fragment instead.
"I felt validated ... Before, [I was] heartbroken — like, 'How could I have done that?'" Tahbone said. She couldn't believe she had failed to sanitize the needle properly.
"We're doing this revitalization effort together, and there may be bumps, and we're learning along the way — but we're learning together. Oh, it was so terrifying though."
She said it's also a reminder for tattooists to make sure they're being safe, especially as more Indigenous people embrace traditional tattoos.
Angulalik has since regained the use of her hand, though she has a bit of healing left to do before she can resume tattooing.
"It was just something that was very personal to me that I wanted to do and I wanted to have done. It's medicine. And I hope that in the future I can get back to it," Angulalik said.
She said her next vision is to see bone needles packaged, sterilized and safe to use the way modern tattoo needles are.
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Traditional tattooists persevere after 'scary' medical emergency - CBC.ca
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