14th Annual Tisa’s Tattoo Festival

The theme for this year’s Festival is “Tatau: Off the Grid.” This Festival will focus on saving the tusk (traditional tool making, ink making), and all things local and sustainable in the arts and agriculture in partnership with the Alega Preservation Institute’s “Food Security 4 U” initiative. Only a very few Traditional Tattoo artists are still practicing this fine art today and they continue to use handmade tattooing tools as was done by their ancestors, centuries ago. Preservation and handing down of this knowledge is one of the main goals of the Festival.

History of the Festival: The first Annual Tisa’s Tattoo Festival was established by Tisa Faamuli to celebrate the Past, Present and Future of the Samoan Tatau.

The Art of Tatau was one art the Samoans could not part with, even with it being banned by missionaries in the 1830s. It took an act of bravery and patience, to revive this amazing skin art, which was the pride of Samoan culture. Seven years before the end of 1900s, the Tatau nearly became extinct with loss of declining generations. Tisa found it necessary to revive the Tatau. Tisa's Tattoo Festival sparked the revival of the Tatau movement in the Samoan islands and throughout Polynesia. Today, the tatau has become the symbol of Samoan identity and is proudly worn by Samoans for culture purpose and by non-Samoans to share a new phenomenon of Samoan Tatau skin art around the world.

In recent years, the Festival has focused on Education from the Master Tufugas and cultivating young Talent. The Tattoo Festival is an important community gathering where locals gather, collaborate, cooperate and compete at the Annual Festival. Through this process, they grow. The festival is not only an incubator for the Art of the Tatau, but other, but other art forms as well; the Fiber Arts, Traditional Canoe Building and other Fine Arts.

The Tattoo Festival continues its mission of safeguarding our culture and promoting American Samoa as a tourist destination. Each year for the past 25 years (14 years in its current format) Tisa and the local business community have made an Annual Tattoo Festival happen, creating a market for destination travel. Visitors now travel to our island to get traditional tattoos annually. Clearly, we have created a successful tattooing market for tourism on Tutuila Island.