Every so often, Travelin' Mick, Lars Krutak and Chris Rainier submit visually rewarding but profoundly sad articles about vanishing tribal tattoos. They write about small bands of indigenous people who have been seduced by modernization and no longer wear the traditional designs that identified them for centuries.

The fact is, this catastrophic shift is not only unfolding in some remote region you have to ride a donkey cart to get to, it's also happening in our front yards.

I have become acutely aware of how fragile our tattoo traditions can be, but never so clearly as during a recent trip to one of our very own United States, specifically, the legendary land of the hula. I'm talking about Hawaii, the island of Oahu, the city of Honolulu and, more specifically, Waikiki Beach.

When I first visited Waikiki, several decades ago, the Royal Hawaiian was the only hotel at water's edge, the elevator operators were all stunning Polynesian girls and the beachfront was alive with suntanned surfer boys. The flowers were blooming and the air smelled like perfume. The flight from the mainland was glorious. I remember uniformed stewards rolling dinner carts down the aisles and hand-carving fresh-baked roasts and turkeys, while the stewardesses served drinks in hollowed-out pineapples.

No more of that. On our recent trip, the flight attendants were rude beyond belief, the lunch was, basically, a TV dinner and cookie, and there's so many hotels and skyscrapers, the only way to see Diamond Head was to stand on a chair.

The day we arrived, the locals of Hawaiian ancestry were protesting a decision by mainland legislators to make an existing private school, which was open only to indigenous students, available to everyone, regardless of nationality. This would, to those with Hawaiian blood, be yet another insidious step toward erasing any claim to their homeland.

Thanks to Keone Nunes and others, traditional Hawaiian tattooing is making a popular comeback among the natives. But is this encouraging or simply civilization's usual jive and shuck? Ever since the mainland preemptively made Hawaii a state in 1959, the slippery slope of commercialism and political power-grabbing has pretty much turned yet another paradise into Disneyland with water.

The last, symbolic hold the Hawaiian's have on their land and culture may very well be their tattoos. This fragile relationship is like the canaries in a mineshaft. Once they stop singing, run for your life!

Bob Baxter
Editor in Chief