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You may not know Jerrid Lee Miller’s name, but if you’ve visited the True Tribal: Contemporary Expressions of Ancestral Tattoo Practices at the Museum of Vancouver… or seen any promotion for the exhibition, you’ve seen Jerrid.
Jerrid is a Cherokee Nation citizen, US Army veteran and the current Language Archivist for the Cherokee Nation Language Department. He’s also featured in True Tribal and its marketing. We reached out to Jerrid to learn more about his tattoos and how he came to be part of the exhibition.
How did you know Nathalie Standingcloud was the right tattoo artist for you?
Nathalie has an amazing local reputation as an artist working in traditional Southeastern iconography, so her reputation proceeds herself. I was looking for just the right artist and BAMMM. I lost count how many body markings she has done for me since.
Do you feel your tattoos connect you to your ancestors? Your history? Your culture? If so, how?
All of my markings tell a story because they are a form of military and hunting shorthand or pictography that was used throughout the Eastern Woodlands historically. As a veteran, it tells my story and in a way, my healing.
In Cherokee, we say ᎤᏙᏪᎸ ᎠᏰᎸ (udowelv ayelv) or ᏚᏙᏪᎸ ᎠᏰᎸ (dudowelv ayelv), “for it is marked on the body,” which describes permanent body markings. By being marked, the connection for me is that continuity of military service and tradition that is still held in high regard by my people going back to Kitu’hwa (our mother town). Body markings can be read and written to tell lived experiences.
I think that as you are getting those markings, what you say, what you do, and how you take care of them goes into the body like an ongoing prayer. Basically, you are identifying yourself by those markings and it becomes a spiritual reflection of how you are as a Cherokee and as a person. You forever become marked by that. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what I know.
How you do you feel about being on advertisements to promote True Tribal?
It was very humbling for me. I live in the middle of nowhere in the back of the woods on bluff top and am an archivist by profession. So it was a cool thing to give my usdi (kids) posters of their unassuming dad.
I hope people visiting the exhibition and seeing the posters enjoy the beauty of skin art expressions and break preconceived notions and stereotypes of our Indigenous communities. We are not static. We still very much exist in the here and now, rooted in the past but moving forward on our terms, in our way, into the future as distinct Indigenous peoples.
Visit True Tribal: Contemporary Expressions of Ancestral Tattoo Practices before it closes on September 2nd.
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