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A tribal tattoo was a tattoo that actually designated what tribe you were in, or your status in that tribe. Sometimes the design was different for men than women, sometimes only men got it at all. It could be different if you were married than single. The thing is, it meant something that you understood if you were apart of the tribe, of that culture. What we think of as tribal probably comes from a poorly imitated Maori or other tribal community’s symbolic social structure. We take designs from African tribes, Pacific Islander tribes, Hawaiian, etc., and we try to duplicate them on ourselves without any understanding of what it means, or the significance behind it. It would be similar to an Asian country putting random letters of our Alphabet on their body just because it looked good to them.
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