Deven Current: Healing Through the Art of Tattooing

Transcript

Deven Current: A friend of mine passed away. It was his dream to always become a tattoo artist. So as a way of keeping his legacy alive and memorializing him, I committed to learning how to tattoo. I invested in and bought my own machines, and was tattooing out of my house as a hobby, and I was able to talk about my friend Chucky repeatedly every time somebody would ask why I was into tattooing.

Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, hello, welcome to Native Lights, where indigenous voices shine. I'm your host, Leah Lemm.

Cole Premo: And I'm your other host Cole Premo. Miigwech for joining us today. Native Lights is more than a podcast and radio show. It's a place for native folks to tell their stories. Each and every week, we have captivating conversations with great guests from a whole lot of different backgrounds. We're talking musicians, artists, community leaders, tattoo artists, doctors, health care advocates, language warriors, you name it. They have a wonderful mixture of passions, and we talk to them about their gifts and how they share their gifts with the community, and it centers around the big point of purpose in our lives and amplifying Native voices. Leah, what's going on? How you doing?

Leah Lemm: I'm doing well. Thank you. How are you?

Cole Premo: I'm doing great. You know, there's no shortage of news recently, just keeping busy.

Leah Lemm: "What?" she says in surprise.

Cole Premo: Things coming left and right at you, and you just have to roll with the punches.

Leah Lemm: Know what I did?

Cole Premo: What? What's up?

Leah Lemm: Well, my family and I collected sap and made some maple syrup

Cole Premo: Nice. That's right, you guys actually have some trees on your property that work for that.

Leah Lemm: Out of the hundreds of trees we have on our property, we have like, five maples.

Cole Premo: Oh, wow.

Leah Lemm: And they're right next to the river, but I probably made about a cup of syrup. It's a lot of effort for a cup.

Cole Premo: Yeah, I saw that. It's like, what two gallons makes only, like half a cup, or, I don't know it's just, yeah.

Leah Lemm: It's a pretty good ratio, but it's delicious.

Cole Premo: You'll enjoy that, I guess.

Leah Lemm: Yes, Marvin made some pancakes, and we used the syrup, not all of the syrup, but sure, it motivated him to cook. So that was nice too.

Cole Premo: Nice. Very nice. All right, so who we got today? Leah, what's going on?

Leah Lemm: Well, today, I'm really excited for our guest, Deven Current. Deven is Anishinaabe from the White Earth nation, and is an advocate for sobriety and virtue. He's a tattoo artist who owns LuckyDuck Ink and Art in Atwater, Minnesota, and that's in Kandiyohi County. Deven and his wife Sabrina are celebrating six years of sobriety, and he takes his art to tattoo festivals, including the Minneapolis Tattoo Festival and this recent one here, the Mni Sota Akitho Festival that was just in St Paul. And he has 11 kids with his wife, Sabrina, between them, so really excited to talk to him. And here he is. Boozhoo, Deven.

Deven Current: Hi.

Cole Premo: Boozhoo, Deven, could you start out by introducing yourself, letting us know where you're joining us from all that good stuff.

Deven Current: Yeah. Boozhoo, my name is Deven Current. I am a tattoo artist out of Atwater, Minnesota. I own a shop named LuckyDuck Ink and Art, which is family-owned and run by my wife and I and with plans to pass it on to my oldest son, Daniel, who is my apprentice at this time. And proud member of the Chippewa tribe out of White Earth, Minnesota.

Cole Premo: Awesome, awesome. How are you doing? How's the family doing?

Deven Current: My wife and I have been pretty busy. We've been trying to do a lot more conventions and tattoo shows, festivals lately. This last weekend was number 10 this year, since January. So go, go, go, plus running the business. And we have 11 kids between the two of us. So it's never, never any dull moments.

Cole Premo: I bet. I bet. Well, since you brought it up, talk about these conventions.

Deven Current: So I've been tattooing for about coming up on five years, I believe, as a fully licensed artist, and I really enjoyed the conventions that I've been able to attend locally, I still feel like I have a lot to learn as far as tattooing goes, art, the industry, and we, both my wife and I, really enjoy networking with tattooers and tattoo clients and the community that has really, really grown in the last five years since I've been a part of it. We go to conventions to network meet other shop owners. I always try to watch people that I've looked up to since I started, like I am inspired by their art, or, you know, the way they run their business. Some of them are really good at, like, selling merch and branding themselves and stuff like that. So I try to pull a little bit of that as much as I can, while also making money and tattooing and competing for certain awards.

Cole Premo: What kind of awards we talking about?

Deven Current: A lot of the conventions that I've been to, there's categories that are broken down into tattoo styles, or like color versus black and gray. And then there's bigger awards. There's tattoo of the day given out each day, most of the time, and then there's Best in Show. So as I started coming to conventions and being a part of that, I was more aimed at like the categories. I would find somebody that wanted like a piece that would fit in a specific category, and I'd get that done and try to convince them to come show it off. That usually is like a first, second, third situation, and it's mostly just bragging rights. Take cool pictures with, you know, whatever trophy or plaque that they're handing out. Some conventions that are more like specialized such as the one I just went to in St Paul, which was Indigenous, the Akitho Festival, it was Indigenous artists and performers and vendors. Those are cool. I have a tattoo of the day trophy, I guess that I won for the first night. And it's actually handmade, hand painted hand drum that Willard Malebear and his crew at Iktomi gifted me as a reward for winning that I have literally, like a wall full of awards here in the shop and medals and trophies and stuff. It's pretty cool, nice.

Leah Lemm: I was gonna ask if you put them on your walls.

Deven Current: Yeah. So this is one of the walls.

Leah Lemm: Oh, nice. So, we can see medals and plaques.

Deven Current: Like I take pride in that, but I also my main goal is to, like, learn and network with people.

Leah Lemm: What's one of your favorite awards?

Deven Current: The one that I just mentioned is definitely very special to me, having Native American background, and then being as close as I am with Willard, and it told me and Deanna and all them, it meant a lot to me, and it was one of the bigger awards. It's the best black and gray tattoo done by any artist that day.

Leah Lemm: Oh, cool, yeah. So, it is a hand drum with painted on it in white Tattoo of the Day. Very nice. What I found so lovely about the festival was its foundations in culture and having a sober environment.

Deven Current: That's a huge motivating factor for myself when I'm looking at all of these different opportunities to tattoo at these conventions and stuff, is they made it known on the flyer, and they made it known to everybody, like, this is an alcohol free event, and Willard is very active in that community, in the metro, in the Cities, and so he's invited us, my wife and I, because we're both in sobriety, my wife just achieved six years, and Creator willing, I'll be there next month--but he invited us to come share our story at open mic night at his art show. So that's exciting.

Cole Premo: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Deven Current Anishinaabe from the White Earth Nation, and advocate for sobriety and virtue. He's a tattoo artist who owns LuckyDuck Ink and Art in Atwater in Kandiyohi County.

Leah Lemm: Well, why don't you tell us a bit about your background. How did you get to here? How did you get to being a tattoo artist in sobriety.

Deven Current: I was born in North Minneapolis, grew up there for a little while, and eventually found myself in foster care, I didn't really know about or identify with my Native American side early on in life, my mom is Hispanic and German, and my father is Chippewa Indian, so my dad wasn't really involved, and I didn't learn about my Native Indigenous side until later on in life, but went through some hardships growing up, being in foster care, being adopted by white relatives, and it wasn't like they were suppressing it from me. But it wasn't something they're knowledgeable about. So I learned about the Native culture, actually, through a cousin of mine I didn't know growing up. He hand painted cow skulls and rattles and all those kind of stuff. When I found it, it just spoke to me. It filled my spirit. Growing up, I was a troubled kid. I dealt with addiction from the time I was 13. Addiction went hand in hand with legal troubles and running with the wrong crowd, and I kind of sought out a lot of negativity. It's like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. I felt a lot, and I would act out, and it continued into adulthood. I ended up incarcerated. Shortly after I was 18, I did a prison sentence and I got out, I was very motivated. I met my wife, Sabrina. She was a very positive influence on me. But when I got out and I was off paper, it was off to the races. I've identified now that I'm like in my 30s, 34 years old, like looking back, I used a lot of the trauma that I went through as a crutch or an excuse as to why I could always go back to drugs or criminal behavior, and I just don't want that in my life anymore. And I started the transition back then, but I was still 20 years old. I ended up getting back into selling drugs and doing all that negative stuff, and it led me to another prison sentence. This time for five years. I went into to prison thinking like I was alone. My wife and I had separated. It's hard to maintain a relationship with a sick person still incarcerated. I had a lot of like control issues and abandonment issues, honestly, and I ended up going to Stillwater prison, which there's a lot of tattooing that goes on in there. A friend of mine passed away. It was his dream to always become a tattoo artist. So as a way of keeping his legacy alive and memorializing him, I committed to learning how to tattoo. I started in there. When I got out, I invested in and bought my own machines, and was tattooing out of my house as a hobby. And I was able to talk about my friend Chucky repeatedly every time somebody would ask why I was into tattooing now. I definitely achieved that, that goal of keeping his legacy alive. So I talk about him to this day when people ask me and I'm talking about him now. So that got me into tattooing. I was able to network and meet with a guy who owned a tattoo shop in this area, and he gave me an opportunity. And I just never looked back. My wife supported me. She said, You know, if that's your...it was like a 45 minute move between where we lived and where this tattoo shop was. And said, If this is your passion and your dream, and I support it. Let's go, let's go do it.

Cole Premo: Nice. What was it like opening up the shop? How did that process go?

Deven Current: Oh, opening up a shop is--in Minnesota, at least--there's a lot of hoops to jump through. There's a lot of requirements, which I appreciate being an artist and knowing how things can go, as far as being sanitary. In Minnesota, you have to meet certain requirements, be licensed as a an artist, a master artist they call it, for over a year. And then you have to have your space inspected. There's plumbing requirements, and there was a lot of like, red tape, but I did it all myself, because I was into construction my whole life before I got into tattooing, so I was able to mitigate some of the cost by doing a lot of it myself. I'm also very like detail oriented, undiagnosed. But we have two kids that are on the spectrum, non verbal, autistic and non verbal, and we work a lot with like resources for them. So there's a lot of red flags and things that I see in myself now that I'm educated about autism in general. So I would have the checklist of like, Okay, what does the shop need? And then I would just godown the list very systematically. But it's been rewarding, because I've been able to do a lot of this construction with my wife and kids and like, there's a mural, a graffiti mural behind me that me and my 19 year old son Daniel did together and teaching them little construction things. And now that it's open, it's like a relief. That's great.

Leah Lemm: Well, tell me about the name LuckyDuck.

Deven Current: Kind of a common catchphrase, you know, or idea. But Chucky, my friend who I mentioned earlier, who had passed away, when we were running around doing all of these not so savory things in a like drug community, he was a not to be messed with kind of guy, and he was pretty serious most of the time. And people knew like when he came around, he wasn't to be messed with. And so I would bring him with me in certain situations, and his presence would get the job done, whether I needed money or that somebody owed me or whatever. And I found out people that grew up with him had a name for him that wasn't Chucky, and it was actually Ducky. Someone along the line had mispronounced his name, and so when they were kids growing up on Upper Sioux Reservation, they gave him the nickname Ducky, and he did not like it, but I would call him it because we were close enough and he he'd be like, just don't let other people call me that. Like, I don't want them to hear that. And my son Charles, who I named after my older brother--and he was the one that introduced me to Chucky. He was friends with them. They're both named Charles, but Ducky went by Chucky. Well, I named my my son Charles after my older brother, because he passed away about seven years ago now. And my son Charles, when he was born, he had like pursed lips, like he'd have,like, little ducky lips. It was cute. And so he became my Ducky Boy. At like a month old, that was his nickname. And so it's kind of a nod to him, a nod to my older brother and a nod to my best friend who passed away. So it's a pretty special name.

Cole Premo: So you had to have been an artist before becoming a tattoo artist, like painting, or did he just become a tattoo artist?

Deven Current: It was just something that I could do. It was like a hidden talent that I was just naturally pretty good at, whether it was portraits or whatever people wanted me to draw, I could do it. But it wasn't something I was super invested in or wanted to get better at. It was just like, hey, can you draw Abraham Lincoln on this napkin? And it was something I was decently skilled at. When you're incarcerated, it's like you kind of have to fend for yourself. You kind of have to figure out a way to get commissary or get hygiene products or whatever. And I was drawing for people that were tattooing, and I would draw these tattoo stencils. And after learning that Chucky passed away, I just kind of took the leap and got my own machine in there, and you know, it's all makeshift stuff in there, which is super ingenious, how they do this process in there. But I never took art seriously, really. I went to college for digital design and animation after high school, and I just never did anything with it, but it wasn't my passion. I wouldn't say. I didn't really have a direction in life, and I just fell into construction with my criminal record, thinking that was going to be my future. It's kind of like a gift that that ducky left me.

Cole Premo: So let's dive into your tattoo, or what's your style, or what do you tend to lean into?

Deven Current: My favorite tattoos are kind of self explanatory, memorial tattoos. Doesn't matter if it's on somebody's finger, a simple letter, or if it's a intricate portrait done on somebody's upper arm, or whatever, their entire back, if it's a memorial piece, I just feel blessed to be able to let my gift of art help somebody heal a little bit. You know, as far as the styles I like doing, I really love black and gray. It's pretty widely popular. It's much more common, especially in this area, versus like a color piece, so it pays the bills, but it's also, I feel like it looks a lot better healing now. That being said, there's definitely tattoo artists in in this area that are amazing at color, and I look up to and I just don't understand how they can get things to look that great.

Cole Premo: Have you done any glow in the dark tattoos, I just gotta ask.

Deven Current: I have not. I've had plenty of clients ask for it. It kind of went away as a trend or a fad for a while, I think because there was, like, some cancer causing agents found in that UV ink. But they must have remastered the ink or refigured out the formula, because now it's becoming a little bit more popular again. So I haven't bought any UV ink myself yet, but I have people that are like they're tattooing themselves with it at home, like I bought this bottle. Can you help me touch this up? So I'm hesitant to do it, but they look really cool. I haven't done any yet.

Cole Premo: Gotcha, it's just something I'm curious about, not for myself. How about, talk about some of the tattoos you have and why you got them.

Deven Current: A lot of the tattoos that I have that are visible, especially my arms, were all done in Stillwater. I'm looking at my right arm, and it's pretty well covered in Native American stuff. I have a totem pole, some eagles, a drum, you know, a pipe, war shield, stuff like that. I have a lot of cultural tattoos, and then I think on my left arm, I kind of just had a bunch of stuff that I wanted included, and so I did it. I have, like, all the Minnesota sports teams. My legs are pretty well covered. I love tattoos. I just, I'm really bad at getting them, because I cry like a baby, like most men, women are way tougher than guys. My adopted son, Jaden, has done some on me. I think I have a tattoo from almost every apprentice I've ever had. It's kind of like one of their assignments. They have to tattoo a rose on me. They can pick the style, but they have to tattoo a rose on me. I would love to get a huge piece done by Willard. Deanna is great. Coleman Stevens. All them at Iktomi are amazing artists.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Deven Current, Anishinaabe from the White Earth Nation. An advocate for sobriety and virtue. He's a tattoo artist who owns LuckyDuck Ink and Art in Atwater, Minnesota, in Kandiyohi County.

Cole Premo: Well, I see here from your bio that athletics are also important to you. Can you tell us a bit about that? I see some MMA on the list.

Deven Current: Yeah, I fought MMA for probably six years, amateur level. MMA, there's always...I was fighting quite a bit in with my background. That's probably not a huge surprise, but it was never like sanctioned. I dabbled in like, Golden Gloves boxing as a teenager, but I didn't have the, I didn't have the commitment to anything in my life at that time, to follow through and see where it could take me. And it was always one of those things. You're sitting out with the guys your friends, and you're like, Oh, I could do that. You're watching a UFC fight or watching a boxing match on TV. You're like, Oh, I could do that. I could do that better than that person, and they're paid professionals, but I really felt that way. I really felt like I could learn how to fight and be really good at it in, like, a sanctioned environment. And I started going to MMA, like local MMA cage matches in like Watertown, South Dakota, when I was fresh out of prison, probably 19-20 years old, and I committed to wanting to be on the roster and fight for that promotion. And then I ended up locked up again, and I didn't start MMA until I was probably 27. Self trained. I was in a buddy's basement. He's, like, got like, a UFC tattoo on his arm, and he records all the UFC fights. And, like, he was a super fan, super knowledgeable about mixed martial arts and the fighters, and he would just, like, watch me. Like, no, that looked really good that and encouraged me. And so I took the leap at like, 27 probably, and I fought, and I did well on, like, the regional level. I fought twice and won twice, and I started getting bigger opportunities to fight for, like, title belts. And I ended up tearing my my left ACL playing semi pro football at the same time, and I had to take a couple years off. When I got back into it, it just wasn't quite the same. And like, I'm touching 30 at that time, it's a young man's sport. I'm a 30 year old father of 53 kids, and I'm fighting 19 year old college wrestlers. So it was competitive, and it was fun. And it was definitely something that I enjoyed experiencing to travel to different states and be under these bright lights and but my last fight, I was actually rematching a guy I almost beat in a five round split decision for a title, and he took it serious after we, you know, had a split decision, and he was like, he wanted to quiet all the naysayers, and he definitely did that. We came out in the first round, and he choked me unconscious. And my wife was kind of like, yeah, I don't like how that felt. You should probably hang it up, old man. So it's a great sport. It's fun. I mean, you're in there, it's you and one other person. They close that cage door, and one of you wins and one of you doesn't. I have a handful of fighters out here that I trained with every now and then, out of like the Wilmer, Minnesota area that are actually doing really well. Joey Hart, we used to spar. Angel Pacheco. Angel actually was on the Dana White Contender Series last year out in Las Vegas, and he lost his fight on the contender series, but he fought so well and so hard that they know I gave him a two fight contract in the UFC that was super excited to see one of the guys that I've traded rounds with make it. Every one of my opponents I'm super close with, like we've become friends, even if they choke me out, it's fine. It's in the past, but I watch and I continue to, like, support them. And one of my clients actually came to me, and he was like, Oh, I hear you're an MMA fighter. And I was like, yeah, it's kind of kind of moving away from that a little bit. I want to protect the hands, and I'm not as young as I used to be. Well, he is making a big splash on the scene now. His name is Kenneth Swanson. He is just an up and coming star. The tattoo shop sponsors him, try to help him lessen the cost and be able to train like he deserves, because he's really got it, that kid does.

Cole Premo: Nice. So your involvement is continuing, but just in a different, in a different way.

Deven Current: Yeah, yep.

Cole Premo: You may have touched on this before, but could you just talk more about sobriety, how you keep it going, like, why it's important to you? I know both you and your wife are working on that.

Deven Current: So, yeah, my sobriety, to me, is is everything. It's first and foremost. It's paired with my cultural beliefs and my faith in the Creator. I feel like my Creator has put me here for a bigger purpose. This doesn't involve drugs and alcohol, using them. I struggled from the age of 13 until even today, like there's still triggers and things that come up as far as addiction. But my first exposure to hard drugs was 13, like where I used them for the first time. I kind of grew up in the lifestyle. My parents struggled with it, and I seen a lot. Was around a lot growing up sobriety, to me, it didn't come easy. I've been to over 18 different treatment centers or through their programs, and some I successfully completed, and some I was kicked out of. Some I lied through my teeth to just tell them what they needed to hear, and some I really invested in, and I still got out and relapsed. I have a great support system. I guess, as far as like advice, people ask me advice about tattooing even newer tattooers, and I'm like, I don't know. I'm still learning, still figuring this out. I guess, don't be afraid to have meaningful friends and real friends versus, you know, five of them versus 100 fake friends. You know, it's an ongoing fight every single day. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but they didn't know if it was caused by the drugs or if it was always there, and the drugs just made it worse. And they couldn't tell me if it was going to get better the longer I was sober. So mental health and addiction is definitely coexisting in my life, and it's something I have to work on every single day. When you've always had that crutch. It's hard when you've always had a quick escape from, you know life's problems, you kind of mourn that. There's like a grieving process that you go through when you get sober, because you can't lean on that anymore. And you have to look at life on life's terms. As cliche as that may sound, but people don't realize it's like losing a loved one. It's like losing your best friend. Every single day you have to kind of make that same decision, and you have to accept that powerlessness over that substance and that lifestyle. And it's tough, but it's doable. It's definitely achievable.

Leah Lemm: Oh, Devin that's so great.

Cole Premo: Very thoughtful. Yeah, clearly, he's on a journey, and I'm glad he found his passion, even though, you know, a lot of us were struggling, we're trying to find our path, but I'm glad he found his path. His tattoos look amazing. Check him out.

Leah Lemm: Yeah.

Cole Premo: So thank you to Devin Current of the White Earth Nation, advocate for sobriety and virtue. He's a tattoo artist who owns LuckyDuck Ink and Art in Atwater in Kandiyohi County. I'm Cole Premo.

Leah Lemm: And I'm Leah Lem. Miigwetch for listening. Gigawaabamin.

Cole Premo: Gigawaabamin.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to native lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.