Austronesian peoplesThe Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Malay Peninsula, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands.
VisayansVisayans (Visayan: mga Bisaya; bisaˈjaʔ) or Visayan people are a Philippine ethnolinguistic group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, the southernmost islands of Luzon and a significant portion of Mindanao. When taken as a single ethnic group, they are both the most numerous in the entire country at around 33.5 million, as well as the most geographically widespread. The Visayans broadly share a maritime culture with strong Roman Catholic traditions integrated into a precolonial indigenous core through centuries of interaction and migration mainly across the Visayan, Sibuyan, Camotes, Bohol and Sulu seas.
Body artBody art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. Body art covers a wide spectrum including tattoos, body piercings, scarification, and body painting. Body art may include performance art, body art is likewise utilized for investigations of the body in an assortment of different media including painting, casting, photography, film and video. More extreme body art can involve mutilation or pushing the body to its physical limits.
Human brandingHuman branding or stigmatizing is the process by which a mark, usually a symbol or ornamental pattern, is burned into the skin of a living person, with the intention that the resulting scar makes it permanent. This is performed using a hot or very cold branding iron. It therefore uses the physical techniques of livestock branding on a human, either with consent as a form of body modification; or under coercion, as a punishment or to identify an enslaved, oppressed, or otherwise controlled person.
Ethnic groups in the PhilippinesThe Philippines is inhabited by more than 182 ethnolinguistic groups, many of which are classified as "Indigenous Peoples" under the country's Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997. Traditionally-Muslim peoples from the southernmost island group of Mindanao are usually categorized together as Moro peoples, whether they are classified as Indigenous peoples or not. About 142 are classified as non-Muslim Indigenous People groups, and about 19 ethnolinguistic groups are classified as neither indigenous nor moro.
ScarificationScarification involves scratching, etching, burning/branding, or superficially cutting designs, pictures, or words into the skin as a permanent body modification or body art. The body modification can take roughly 6–12 months to heal. In the process of body scarification, scars are purposely formed by cutting or branding the skin by various methods (sometimes using further sequential aggravating wound-healing methods at timed intervals, like irritation). Scarification is sometimes called cicatrization (from the French equivalent).
Sailor tattoosSailor tattoos are traditions of tattooing among sailors, including images with symbolic meanings. These practices date back to at least the 16th century among European sailors, and since colonial times among American sailors. People participating in these traditions have included military service members in national navies, seafarers in whaling and fishing fleets, and civilian mariners on merchant ships and research vessels. Sailor tattoos have served as protective talismans in sailors' superstitions, records of important experiences, markers of identity, and means of self-expression.
Irezumi(also spelled 入墨 or sometimes 刺青) is the Japanese word for tattoo, and is used in English to refer to a distinctive style of Japanese tattooing, though it is also used as a blanket term to describe a number of tattoo styles originating in Japan, including tattooing traditions from both the Ainu people and the Ryukyuan Kingdom. All forms of irezumi are applied by hand, using wooden handles and metal needles attached via silk thread.
Criminal tattooCriminal tattoos are a type of tattoos associated with criminals to show gang membership and record the wearer's personal history—such as their skills, specialties, accomplishments, incarceration, world view and/or means of personal expression. Tattoos have been empirically associated with deviance, personality disorders, and criminality. Certain tattoo designs have developed recognized coded meanings. The code systems can be quite complex, and because of the nature of what they encode, the designs of criminal tattoos are not widely recognized as such to outsiders.
Body modificationBody modification (or body alteration) is the deliberate altering of the human anatomy or human physical appearance. In its broadest definition it includes skin tattooing, socially acceptable decoration (e.g., common ear piercing in many societies), and religious rites of passage (e.g., circumcision in a number of cultures), as well as the modern primitive movement.