In 2018, UNESCO added the traditional Samoan pe'a and malu tattooing practices — along with those of the neighbouring Tokelau islands — to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, formally recognising these living body art traditions as expressions of cultural identity worthy of international protection. The inscription acknowledged the pe'a's role as a comprehensive marker of Samoan identity, genealogy, and community values transmitted through an unbroken chain of master tattooists (tufuga ta tatau) across centuries. This international recognition marked a significant moment in the global acknowledgement of body modification as serious cultural heritage.

UNESCO's recognition of Samoan tattooing as intangible cultural heritage amplified existing debates in Pacific literature and poetry about cultural sovereignty, authenticity, and the rights of indigenous body art traditions against appropriation. The recognition gave formal international authority to arguments Pacific poets had been making for decades about the literary and cultural seriousness of body inscription as a form of ancestral text. The inscription galvanised a new wave of Pacific poetry celebrating the tufuga ta tatau — the master tattooist — as a figure analogous to the oral poet, transmitting essential cultural knowledge through the medium of the marked body.