In the years following his resignation from Starfleet, he not only joined the Maquis to fight the Cardassians but he also finally began placing great faith in his spiritual background by taking pride in the stories and accomplishments of his people. It was then that he took the mark, the tattoo, on his forehead in order to honor the memory of his father and to signify his Native American heritage. To honor his father's memory and to continue the fight in his name, Chakotay resigned from Starfleet and joined the Maquis.
When the news reached Chakotay, he was unsure about how to reconcile their differences and heal their old wounds. ( VOY: " Tattoo")Ĭhakotay and his father were not on good terms when Kolopak was killed while defending his colony against Cardassians. His father disapproved of his son's decision but was unable to convince him otherwise. However, by the time Chakotay was fifteen years old, he had already set his sights on Starfleet and greatly surprised his father when he told him that he was going to leave the tribe to attend Starfleet Academy. He did so because he strongly believed that ignorance is one's greatest enemy. While initially somewhat disappointed in his son's lack of interest in the culture and traditions of their tribe, Kolopak remained patient with Chakotay and, due to his son's curiosity, allowed him to read about other societies as he was growing up. One of Chakotay's childhood heroes was astronaut John Kelly. He remained resistant, instead choosing to embrace technological advancement, believing that he was the master of his own life. But Chakotay did not want to listen as he did not place much value in spirituality. Kolopak tried to teach Chakotay that without Spirits to guide him, he would lose his way. ( VOY: " Tattoo")Ĭhakotay also refused to hunt deer with his father. When his father would take him on expeditions to discover his roots and connection to the "sky spirits", Chakotay remained a reluctant participant, even ridiculing the sky spirits once by suggesting they had "taken a wrong turn" somewhere. He did not want to be part of that and instead wanted to be like all the other tribes that had embraced the 24th century. Chakotay dismissed his tribe that he believed lived in the past of fantasy and myth. In 2344 he took Chakotay on a quest through the Central American rainforest, looking for their fellow descendants of the ancient Rubber Tree People that had never left the forest.Īs a young man, Chakotay was rather resistant to his family's way of life and in a technologically advanced world often felt out of place among the members of his tribe who asserted a strong connection to their ancestral lands and spirits and lived a simple life. From an early age, his father tried to impart his values on Chakotay in many ways, such as taking him on hikes to nearby forested worlds of their ancestors. ( VOY: " Basics, Part I")īeing of Native American descent, Chakotay's tribe – mainly because of the intrusion of more technological societies – left Earth to find their own home on another planet near the Cardassian border. One of Chakotay's early ancestors was Ce Acatl, a man who was fathered by a white conqueror when they first took over Chakotay's tribe's native lands on Earth. The Spirit Walk novels Old Wounds and Enemy of My Enemy introduce his sister Sekaya ( β). ( VOY: " Author, Author", " Message in a Bottle") During an incident in 2373 that took Voyager to Earth in 1996, Chakotay considered "looking up" a few of his ancestors, noting that he knew of one ancestor at that time who worked as a school teacher in Arizona.
( VOY: " Tattoo", " Endgame")Ĭhakotay also had a sister and a cousin who lived in Ohio.
Here, he was raised by his father, Kolopak, who considered him a "contrary" from the beginning because he had come out of his mother "upside down", as his father once remarked.
Chakotay was born in 2329 on a Federation colony near the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone that his native tribe had moved to several generations earlier.