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Helene Hagan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Helene Coll 1939 (age 83–84) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Bordeaux |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Known for | Amazigh activist |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Anthropology |
Helene E. Hagan, born Helene Coll (born in 1939 in Rabat, Morocco), is an American anthropologist and Amazigh activist. [1]
Hagan immigrated to the United States in 1960. She is the mother of three children. After obtaining a License-es-Lettres from the Faculté des Sciences et des Lettres, University of Bordeaux in France in 1969, she obtained a master's degree in French Literature from Stanford University in 1971. She pursued her doctoral studies in anthropology at Stanford University, California. She is of Berber and Catalan ancestries. Her paternal family name Coll is from the Pyrenees Mountain village of Prats-de-Mollo.
Hagan directed a photo project with elders on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, with a grant from the South Dakota Committee on the Humanities, for the benefit of the Archives of the Oglala Lakota Community College from 1983 to 1985, with subsequent showing of the photo exhibit she created in National parks and at the Rotunda, Washington, D.C. She subsequently taught at John F. Kennedy University in California for a number of years, while helping Lakota artists by opening an art gallery "Lakota Contemporary Designs" in Marin county (1985-1990). She was instrumental in the creation of a series of 11 community television programs under the title "Circles" on American Indians in Marin and Sonoma Counties, followed by another series of 15 half-hour episodes on the Amazigh culture of Morocco, which she personally videographed "Tamazgha, Berber land of Morocco." Finally, she initiated and produced six half-hour episodes (The Russell Means Show, 1999-2003), with long-time friend American Indian activist and actor Russell Means as host, taped in Santa Monica for community television.
Hagan has authored numerous articles published in a variety of newspapers and journals. Among these are her well-known article on "Plastic Medicine People" originally published in the Sonoma Press Democrat , and "Apuleius, Amazigh Philosopher" published in The Amazigh Voice, a scholarly journal which also recently published an article of hers titled "The Argan Tree." (2005) She is the author of five books The Shining Ones: An Etymological Essay on the Amazigh Roots of Archaic Egyptian Civilization (2000), Tuareg Jewelry: Traditional Patterns and Symbols (2006), Tazz'unt, Ecology, Ritual and Social Order in the Tessawt Valley of the High Atlas of Morocco" (2011), "Fifty Years in America, A Book of Essays,(2013) and "Russell C. Means The European Ancestry of a Militant Indian" (2017). This last book was followed by a second 2018 edition, titled "Russell Means The European Ancestry of a Militant Indian", which elaborates the historical context of French and Indian intermarriages in early America, during the fur trading era and the bison hunting in the Plains. It also includes a chapter on the public access television series, "The Russell Means Show," which Hagan produced and Means hosted. The first book pioneered the hypothesis of a link between an archaic Egyptian culture, the proto-Berber culture of North Africa, and the Tuareg-Berber cultures of the Sahara desert, focusing on rock art research, archaeology, and comparative linguistics. The second book traces the origins and development of Tuareg (Amazigh) art from rock art to modern jewelry design and production. The third is an anthropological study of a small community of Berber people in the mountains of Morocco, and the fourth an anthology of essays written over several decades on American Indian and Amazigh issues.
Hagan was twice elected and served on the board of directors of the Amazigh Cultural Association in America (A.C.A.A.), between 2002 and 2006. She inherited a large collection of personal papers and unpublished manuscripts of Paul Radin, which she inventoried and deposited in the Special Archives of Marquette University, with the support of a Wenner-Gren Anthropological Grant. She serves as lifetime associate curator for that collection. In 2007, she was one of the professors selected for the First Berber Institute in America, created under an NEH grant at Oregon State University in Corvallis. She introduced participant professors of various universities to the various art forms of North African Amazigh people, including pottery, weaving, jewelry, painting, and cinematography, through a series of seminars. In 2008, she founded the annual Los Angeles Amazigh film Festival, which has presented a variety of films from North Africa.
Hagan is the executive director of the Tazzla Institute for Cultural Diversity, which she founded in 1993. Through the work of the Tazzla Institute, a 501c(3) non-profit organization, she has been able to promote and defend Amazigh culture, rights and identity at the United Nations through a variety of channels, such as "Creating Peace through the Arts and Media," a UNESCO Culture of Peace program, and P.I.P.E (Partnership of Indigenous Peoples for the Environment. The Tazzla Institute is the supporting nonprofit organization for the Los Angeles Amazigh Film Festival, the first film festival in the United States to focus on film content dedicated to the Amazigh world of Berbers and Tuaregs of the vast North African territory called "Tamazgha", which extends from the Oasis of Siwa in Egypt, through Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Canary Islands, and the Sahara desert to the north of Niger, Mali, and Burkina-Faso.
In 1993, Hagan created the Tazzla Institute for Cultural Diversity (originally the Institute for Archetypal Ethnology) and Amazigh Video Productions, a project of the Institute in Community Service television. Through this project and the Marin 31 channel, she created three series: 11 half-hour programs titled "We're Still Here" on American Indians in Marin County; a second 12-episode series on Amazigh (Berber) culture of Morocco; a third series of 4 one-hour programs on the ecology of the San Francisco Bay, a series for the training of students of the Environmental Forum of Marin. In Los Angeles, and for Adelphia communications in Santa Monica and Eagle Rock, Hagan produced a series hosted by the well-known American Indian Movement leader, author, and actor Russell Means, and several programs in a series titled "Amazigh News" (1998–2006) featuring human rights reports on Morocco, Algeria and on the Tuareg people of Niger and Mali. Also included in that series was a special half-hour program called "Heart of the Sahara" on the Berber-Tuareg artisans of Mali.
The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages are primarily spoken and not typically written. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most pervasive.
Tifinagh is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger and northern Burkina Faso for writing the Tuareg Berber language. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by Berber Academy to adopt Tuareg Tifinagh for use with Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa.
Berbers or the Berber peoples, also called by their contemporary self-name Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Arab migrations to the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family. They are indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis.
The Tuareg people are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Traditionally nomadic pastoralists, small groups of Tuareg are also found in northern Nigeria.
The Tuareg languages constitute a group of closely related Berber languages and dialects. They are spoken by the Tuareg Berbers in large parts of Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, with a few speakers, the Kinnin, in Chad.
The Sahara is a desert spanning North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
Tamazgha is a fictitious entity and toponym in Berber languages denoting the lands traditionally inhabited by Berbers coined in the 1970s by the Berber Academy in Paris. The region claims the geographical area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Niger River, a large swathe of territory spanning Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Egypt, the Western Sahara, the Canary Islands, Burkina Faso and Senegal.
Russell Charles Means was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, musician and writer. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.
Berberism is a Berber political-cultural movement of ethnic nationalism, started mainly in Kabylia (Algeria) and in Morocco later spreading to the rest of the Berber communities in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The Berberist movement in Algeria and Morocco is in opposition to cultural Arabization, the pan-Arabist political ideology and Islamism.
Tin Hinan was a 4th-century Tuareg queen. What may be her monumental tomb is located in the Sahara, at Abalessa in the Hoggar region of Algeria.
This is a list of topics related to Morocco. You can also visit Moroccan portal.
The Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture is an academic institute of the Moroccan government in charge with the promotion of the Berber languages and culture, and of the development of Standard Moroccan Amazigh and its instruction in Morocco's public schools.
The Berber Latin alphabet is the version of the Latin alphabet used to write the Berber languages. It was adopted in the 19th century, using varieties of letters.
The indigenous population of the Maghreb region of North Africa encompass a diverse grouping of several heterogenous ethnic groups who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Arab migration to the Maghreb. They are collectively known as Berbers or Amazigh in English. The native plural form Imazighen is sometimes also used in English. While "Berber" is more widely known among English-speakers, its usage is a subject of debate, due to its historical background as an exonym and present equivalence with the Arabic word for "barbarian." When speaking English, indigenous North Africans typically refer to themselves as "Amazigh."
Greater Mauritania is a term for the Mauritanian irredentist claim that generally includes the Western Sahara and other Sahrawi-populated areas of the western Sahara Desert. The term was initially used by Mauritania's first President, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, as he began claiming the territory then known as Spanish Sahara even before Mauritanian independence in 1960.
Berber orthography is the writing system(s) used to transcribe the Berber languages.
Standard Moroccan Amazigh, also known as Standard Moroccan Tamazight or Standard Moroccan Berber, is a standardized language developed by the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in Morocco by combining features of Tashelhit, Central Atlas Tamazight, and Tarifit, the three major Amazigh languages in Morocco. It has been an official language of Morocco since 2011.
The history of women in Morocco includes their lives from before, during, and after the arrival of Islam in the northwestern African country of Morocco.
An Amazigh fibula is a traditional fibula or brooch with practical and symbolic importance in Amazigh cultural heritage. As a common item of the jewellery of the Berber cultures, its use was widespread among North African tribes. Its exact form could be different from one tribe to another, but essentially, it consists of a triangle beneath a ring or semicircle and a pin to hold unsewn garments together.
Jewelleryof the Berber cultures is a historical style of traditional jewellery that was worn by women mainly in rural areas of the Maghreb region in North Africa and inhabited by indigenous Berber people. Following long social and cultural traditions, Berber or other silversmiths in Morocco, Algeria and neighbouring countries created intricate jewellery with distinct regional variations. In many towns and cities, there were Jewish silversmiths, who produced both jewellery in specific Berber styles as well as in other styles, adapting to changing techniques and artistic innovations.
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