-(Gordon): Traditional tattooing to me is important because it connects me to my roots.

It connects me to my ancestors.

It's learning and understanding the designs that go into the quillwork into the clothing, the motifs that were made.

It brings me, it connects me to that, and it connects me to the people of the land of Mi'kma'ki and beyond.

(theme music) -(narrator): The territories of the Mi'kmaq are collectively known as Mi'kma'ki.

Mi'kma'ki encompasses what is today known as Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and parts of Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Maine, in the United States.

Mi'kmaq tattoo artist and mask carver Gordon Sparks is from the Pabineau First Nation in New Brunswick.

He's recently relocated to Halifax where he can enjoy the outdoors and practice his art.

♪♪♪ -This lake is super special to Elena and I, and it's our sanctuary.

We come here to swim and get away from the city and we connect to the land and it has a very strong spirit here.

I received my first eagle feather on this rock.

I was walking up with Elena and Harley one day and I come up to the top of the Hill to make a fire and there it was right in front of me and I picked it up and I had no idea what it was until I did research on it.

Sure enough, it was an eagle feather, when I grabbed it.

From my teachings, I learned that's part of the messenger.

So, I knew I was on the right track.

So, I continued to come back here and discover and paddle these rivers... I mean these lakes.

It's a... Yeah, it's our sanctuary.

It's our home.

-Good boy.

(laughing) -(narrator): Professional machine tattooing for over 20 years, Gordon is now one of the artists at Halifax tattoo.

He weaves modern and traditional techniques to share his community stories.

Cultural tattoo practitioner Dion Kaszas is a guiding force on his tattoo journey.

-I think we'll do this.

It's what's called the Nicola eagle.

So, this is actually a pictograph that's found in the Nicola Valley.

You know, where the band I'm part of is the Lower Nicola Indian Band.

So, this is found maybe 15, 20 minutes from the band office.

-Dion is a mentor to me.

That's how I look at Dion.

He really put the work in and he's taught me that we have a gift.

What are we going to do with that for the next generation?

And how are we going to leave our mark for the next generation, for our people?

This is how we can do it.

I mean, he gives me that drive.

He gives me that driving force to continue to research my own culture, research and the understanding.

-The reason we're doing this is number one, to connect to me back to my home community.

And then second, it's a pictograph that's really connected to my family because we lost my father about two years ago in 2018.

And so, my sister has this, I hand-poked it for my sister and then my mom also has it, as a remembrance for my dad.

-And now it's my turn to see where I come from Mi'kma'ki.

Look and find the designs with pictographs, work, whatever it may be, to see it from the way I see it.

And then apply that to my tattoo work.

That's what he's taught me.

Dion has been working on my bodysuit.

That's up on the wall.

Kind of representation of the land that I'm from, to honour the land, honour our women, honour our men.

-His work is constantly transforming as he goes through ceremonies, as he goes through that journey of figuring out who he is and how he's connected to this place and the people of this part of Mi'kma'ki.

-Ah, it's cool.

It's just above your glasses.

-Yeah.

-That's pretty neat.

♪♪♪ Double-check.

-(narrator): Gordon moves on to Dion's next tattoo.

-So now we're going to spin the chair around and figure out how to get to the other side.

-Looks dope, man.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Stoked.

Thanks, man.

So, it means a lot for my family.

So, pictographs are considered rock art from painted in ochre on the rocks.

Sometimes you'll find them on boulders, which will be carved in which are petroglyphs.

So right now, Gordon is stencilling some coyote pictographs.

So, for me, the coyote is a transformer and one of my helpers.

-Around there?

-Yeah.

♪♪♪ -A lot of times people will try and look... Well, what were our tattoo designs, right?

And they'll be like, well, we don't have any, but the reality is, is that the quillwork, the basket work, the painted clothing for us, the rock art is all connected to a visual language.

-Yeah.

-You're really limiting yourself and putting yourself in a colonial box when you say: "Oh, well, we don't have any tattoo designs."

-Yup.

Looks dope.

-Awesome, man.

-(narrator): With both tattoos complete, Gordon looks to Dion for advice on a full back design he's been working on.

-So, this here is... I was using the one up on the wall there, I was thinking of a back, but this one is based on a quillwork.

So that was porcupine quillwork.

As I was filling it in, I wanted to have this here filled in solid black too, but I was playing in between not being too much, because if we filled it all in then it's a lot of blackwork, but then these negatives, these here spaces, what I figured I'm going to do is I'm going to transfer that into here.

-Well, I think you should make some more, you know, fit the contours, right, of the body.

So, then you're, you know, framing not only the pattern, you're fitting it to the musculature of the body so that it flows when you look at it, when the person moves.

You'll be able to see how it moves with it.

You're starting to answer that question that you had, right?

How do I come up with these designs?

Well, this is how you do it.

-Yeah.

-(narrator): Inspired by his tattoo session with Dion, Gordon heads home to continue sketching his full-back tattoo design.

-So right now, it's basically just sketching out the ideas and then once it looks good, then I'll go into it with a marker.

Make it look like this up here.

Right now, it's basically figuring out what is going to go where and how to move it around.

What inspires my tattooing designs is the porcupine quillwork that I find on basketry and on images that I've looked up of artifacts of the Mi'kmaq people.

It would be on chairs, baskets, birch baskets.

Basically, a lot of the porcupine quillwork is what this piece is based on.

And it's another way for the artwork to connect to my ancestors.

It's awesome.

(laughing) It's the beginning of full-body tattoos.

So, I'm not a quill worker, I'm a tattoo artist, but I love the designs, I love the patterns.

It's waking my spirit up.

It's waking me up.

-(narrator): Tattooing used to be a way for Gordon to mask his pain.

The Mi'kmaq creation story led him to a place of healing and to the transformation of his full-body tattoo.

-This tattoo, or this, my bodysuit that I've been working on originally started off by trying to be a living, breathing, walking demon.

I was very hateful and I didn't like humans very much, men or women, for the things that they were doing to each other, the way they treated each other, the way they talked about each other.

I just didn't want to be part of it.

So, the arrows in the front honour our women, right?

Because they're life-givers, they give life.

And then, I have seven arrows in the back that represent the men, the life protectors.

So, I always have them watching my back.

This here is representation of the vascular system of the human body.

But it represents the birch tree.

So, the birch tree is we use it in our quillwork, we use it in our basket work.

It's a representation of who I am and what culture I come from and where my heart lives.

My heart lies within the Mi'kmaq culture, and that's where I come from.

Texture in between everything is a representation to honour the spruce tree, the bark of the spruce tree which is also up here where you could see in behind the bear paw.

So that's all directly from a spruce tree and all the line in between that goes all the way around all that.

That's the same.

That's the spruce.

Eventually, my whole body would be covered in that too, where there will be no pigment of my skin left.

So now, when someone asks me, I can explain to them why that is just, this is who I am.

I'm Mi'kmaq.

I'm proud of being Mi'kmaq.

-(narrator): Gordon is honouring two people who have helped him on his healing journey by giving them the gift of hand poke tattoos.

Today, he is meeting with Chad and Daphne to design a tattoo on their sweat lodge ceremony experiences and to honour both the Mi'kmaq man and woman's heart, mind and story in the design.

-The meaning of the site in particular, for me, and to do a tattoo design of a sweat lodge ceremony is to honour the sweat lodge ceremony's teachings.

You know, this place is a place of healing, a place of gathering.

I'm looking to ask the ones that guided me there to help me design this particular piece at this particular site, because that's part of my life story.

You were here today to share in our stories so we can come up with a design to honour the sweat lodge, ceremony teachings.

And so, it always has something for us to have a dialogue, to have conversations.

So, if someone sees it, you can have that conversation about your life story.

It's another way to expanding the medicine of the sweat lodge.

I heard about the sweat leading up to where the dome represented the womb of mother earth or the womb itself, right?

And then the umbilical cord, you know, the path where the spirits go and then you have where the grandfathers go, you know, in the fire.

So, with those three elements, that's what I want to take from the stories today is... I'm not taking them.

That's a wrong word to use.

There's no taking.

It's being able to use those three-dimensional forms and those stories to put into the design that I'll work with you guys.

The fire licks.

-The fire licks.

-But small little ones in the side.

Enter and exit.

Altar... fire and stones.

If you're explaining the story to somebody like: "Hey, this is the dome, this is the door.

We walk in this direction for the one here in Shearwater."

-(Daphne): And all the stones around it.

And the five grandfather stones in the fire, which are being heated up to go into the lodge.

-Well, we have the mother's womb and when we go into the mother's womb, you have to go on all fours from this side.

So, to the right side, we go in on all fours.

-So now we can use it as a teaching tool as well as a tattoo, and I'm honoured to share this with you guys and I'm so happy you guys agreed to be here and be on this journey with me.

And now I'm a part of your life journey story now, too.

And for both of you.

So, thank you for allowing me to be part of your life journey.

-(narrator): Gordon is preparing for his first solo mask exhibit in Halifax.

He learned from master carver, Edward Ned Bear.

Mask carving has led Gordon to communities all across Mi'kma'ki, where he is sharing and learning stories through carving and tattooing.

-What started me to go into communities across Mi'kma'ki is discovering my roots through the artist sculpture, through the creation story.

It's not just take a tree and start carving and say: "Hey, here's a mask."

It's to go to the community, talk to the elders, talk to the women, talk to the men, you know, hear their life story and their journey.

And when I'm carving, I'm carving that to honour that community, the people that are there, the people that shared their stories with me.

So, this mask is very close to the healing that I'm going through at this particular moment in my life.

This mask is also about accountability.

It's about forgiving yourself and others.

When I'm carving these things, people ask me: "Why don't you use power tools?"

And I give the same answer that my mentor gave me way back in the day.

Nope.

I do it by hand.

The reason why I do it by hand is that way I don't lose the connection between me and the material.

It allows me to have time to think about the knowledge that's been passed on to me on the journey to where I got the tree.

It's healing, I get to connect to the stories.

I think about the ancestors across Mi'kma'ki.

It helps me think of the words going next.

And my guidance comes from these particular masks that I work on to continue to seek out other elders and learn their stories, their way of life and the way of thinking.

Yeah, that's the fun part.

-(narrator): Gordon is preparing to hand poke Chad and Daphne with the sweat lodge ceremony design they created together.

-I want to get this tattoo today because it means quite a bit to me, you know.

I didn't think I was going to get sober again.

I didn't think I was going to survive.

It's a remembering, the remembering where I come from and all, and that's why it's so important to have that tattoo because then I can explain to people, well, this is where I started.

That's where I am now.

-I find there's more of a connection between me and, you know, the design itself by drawing it because we drew it yesterday.

That way, they become their own original for that individual as well, knowing that it was hand-drawn on.

I think it has a stronger meaning.

So, we got the whole thing: sweat, symbol of mother, umbilical cord, altar, the door, the way to travel around the fire.

Now that I'm doing it hand poke, it's quiet, it's silent, it's connected.

There's a chance for a conversation, song.

It becomes more of a spiritual formation and healing.

All right, we're all done here.

-I feel pretty good with this tattoo, man, it was great.

It's a really nice piece.

Really enjoyed it.

-Yeah?

-Yeah, it's definitely different.

-So later, when we design onto it, we still have all this option.

I think it's pretty rad, though.

And it's hand poke, you look like pretty.

-No, it's really good.

-Yeah, it looks really good.

-Yeah.

-Pretty solid, eh?

-Yeah!

-Yeah, that's cool!

-(narrator): With Chad's tattoo complete, Gordon moves on to Daphne's.

First, he has to clean his equipment and reset his station.

-Dots are good, stones look good, and this top one... looks good.

This line.

So, I would say we are finished.

And I just feel honoured to be able to tattoo this on someone, on both, to be a part of, you know, the sweat and the teachings and pass it forward.

And the way that I can with being part of the revival and hand poke and it's an unbelievable feeling.

Thank my ancestors for allowing me to do this and guiding me this way to do it.

And let's see what happens next.

Ha!

Ha!

Ha!

-If you enjoyed Skindigenous, and would like to see more clips about these artistes or more about the locations featured in the show, head over to skindigenous.tv.

You can get everything you're looking for and more: biographies, videos and even Skindigenous swag.

Come check it out!

skindigenous.tv.

Closed captioning: Épilogue Technical Services Inc.