#reconnecting amazigh

[raging-guanche]

sometimes i feel bad cause of my indigenous/north African features, then i remember that crackers "transition" to my features and want to be me so much they made a whole label and flag for it.

[ocd--culture--is]

reconnecting with your culture while having moral/racial ocd culture is feeling like youre a faker/pretendian and that every "actual (culture)" would despise you

[grecoromanyaoi]

Hello Refael! I have a question for you that is a bit stupid - you recently posted a photo of yourself where tattoos are visible (they're super cool by the way! I really like the violin bow), and I wanted to ask how it works in jewish tradition? I'm also jewish -though not super religious, from my estranged dad's side and trying to reconnect- and I've been avoiding getting a tattoo mostly for religious reasons since I've been told all kinds of stories about it being forbidden. I really admire your knoweldge and opinions, apologies if this question is offensive or ignorant. Shabbat shalom (almost)

hi, its no bother at all!! tattoos are forbidden in judaism, its mentioned in the torah (vayikra/leviticus 19)

personally i feel that my personal relationship w judaism allows me to do all sorts of things forbidden in the torah/jewish canon (gay sex for example, crossdressing...) i observed kosher for years but stopped recently (bc i felt it was more a religious ocd thing than deep religious connection), etc. including tattoos. i actually like to show my connection to my judaism n my family thru my tattoos (i have a tattoo of my great grandmothers necklace, for example, n a tattoo of jerusalem by razzouk tattoo, the palestinian family who has been tattooing for 700 years). n i also remind myself that there r jewish communities, religious jewish communities, that have traditionally tattooed themselves (namely ethiopian and amazigh jews), and are not less jewish in any way.

good luck to u on ur journey!!!

[grendel-menz]

kind of a silly ask i guess but, after seeing you talk about them just now i looked up traditional ilocano and visayan tattoos as i didnt really have a visual idea of what they look like. im of a different indigenous group (amazigh from north africa) and its kind of awesome looking at designs of tattoos and seeing how some things are similar across our cultures while also being clearly different - some parts of designs/patterns look nearly identical to some amazigh patterns i know which blows me away, while others have very distinct shapes and ways of organizing elements, not to mention the different applications and placements of the designs on the body. i dont really have any sort of point, i just am excited to see this art and to feel a sense of kinship with other indigenous groups, to see cultures halfway across the world create forms of art that reflects unique identities and yet seem like they could speak to each other. i guess for this moment i feel the world has become a little bigger but, too, a little tighter-knit. i hope this message isnt inappropriate, thank you for bringing my interest to this subject

It’s not silly at all!!

I think the knowledge, wisdom, and connection of our (collective) ancestors cannot be understated tbh!!

I was literally just thinking the other day about how, despite the differences between many communities’ traditional markings there are still so many similarities in some meanings and placements. I don’t want to share too much, but it’s very very beautiful to think about.

I have lots and lots of researching and reconnecting to do - and lots I won’t say outside of community because of vultures :( - but everyday I feel as though we have and always will know of each other, and I find a lot of love in that.

This might be too much or overly sappy or vague but!! I love this ask fr.

[antiradqueer]

some rq said i was "transnative" for being a reconnecting amazigh like bruh my culture was STOLEN from me nd my people were colonized and disconnected from our amazigh culture by force, im not apropiating someone's elses culture like YOU (trace ppl) are, im reclaiming what is and always has been ours.

im indigenous since birth, not "transitioning".

im so fucking anon thats actually disgusting someone would say that

[fatehbaz]

Occupying an interstitial position between different continents [...], [t]his position as a space-between-spaces makes the Maghrib a hub [...]. [I]nvestigate the location of the Maghrib beyond the dominant binary of Arab vs. Francophone, the much-critiqued idea of the Sahara as a barrier, or the assumption of the Maghrib as an insular space. [...] [T]he Maghrib was a revolutionary concept [...]. [T]he idea of the Maghrib was rooted in anticolonial thought, one which the machinations of colonial power and exigencies of postcolonial state building and border disagreements have stalled ever since. [...]

Tamazgha -- as indigenous Amazigh activists have chosen to call North Africa since the 1990s -- was populated by Amazigh populations of Christian and Jewish faiths. [...] These dynamics, however, neither eliminated Amazigh language and culture nor drove out the sizable Jewish populations that shared this Judeo-Islamic space. Rather, it was nineteenth- and twentieth-century European colonialism [...]. Governments have either entirely silenced Amazigh language and culture, as was the case in Libya and Tunisia, or actively repressed them, as was the case in Algeria and Morocco.

Nevertheless, a vibrant Amazigh Cultural Movement (ACM) has struggled to re-Amazighize the Maghrib by inventing traditions and refiguring toponymies.

---

Tamazgha, which this ACM defines as extending from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, has replaced both “North Africa” and “the Maghrib” in activist nomenclature.

Activists have thus reinscribed this consciousness of “al-dath al-amazighiyya” (the Amazigh self/subjectivity) in public spaces as well as in the markers of Maghribi geographies.

Gone are the days when Amazigh people could be simply erased from the cartography of their native lands. Tamazight has acquired a constitutional status in Morocco and an official one in Algeria. Its speakers are working to have it recognized in Libya and Tunisia. [...]

The ubiquity of the Tifinagh alphabet (the Tamazight script) and the proliferation of Tamazight literary and audiovisual production has created a new cultural reality. Across short stories, novels, film, and music, Amazigh creators are reinventing the Maghrib and reconciling it with its indigenous past. [...]

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The rise of taskla Tamazight (Amazigh literature) and cultural production is the single most transformative literary development in the last thirty years of the Tamazghan intellectual movement. [...] Amazigh cultural producers are not just rehabilitating their mother tongue. They also rehabilitate an erased geography, a sense of indigeneity, and the relation-ship between space and people.

Shamal Iiriqiyya (North Africa in Arabic), Afrique du Nord (North Africa in French), or the Maghrib, are geographical and political appellations superimposed on the region [...]. Alternatively, Tamazgha is a politically conscious name that is from the same root as Tamazight.

Tamazgha means the land of the indigenous Imazighen, which reconfigures space, revisits history, and questions accepted toponymies. [...]

---

The plurality of the Maghrib and its multilingualism will undoubtably acquire a different meaning when we read them from the perspective of indigenous authors in Amazigh languages. Immersion in the discourses of the ACM reveals [...] foundational ideas like le Maghrib pluriel (the plural Maghrib) [...]. These organizations seeded and then advocated the idea of “al-wahda fi al-tannawwu‘” (unity in diversity). [...]

Whether it is Algerian Kabyle musician Idir, the Moroccan band Izenzaren (Sun Rays), or Malian Tuareg band Tinariwin (Deserts), Amazigh melodies and poetry travel, cross boundaries, and reconnect Imazighen across the globe.

This “traveling Tamazgha” complicates the Maghrib’s location and invites a constant mapping and remapping of the space and its aesthetics.

---

Text by: Brahim El Guabli. ”Where is the Maghreb? Theorizing a Liminal Space.” Arab Studies Journal Vol. XXIX, No. 2. Fall 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[eldritchmusing]

Okay, to dive right into it, there are some characters who I am excluding because, for the most part, I'm not sure what cultural things I would be able to talk about, so just letting everyone know: I will not be talking about the Agreste family, the Fathom family, the Bourgeois family, the Lavillant family, and the Raincomprix family.

Like I have problems with how the characters are written, don't get me wrong, but none of them have particular cultural things that I want to talk about. I feel like the Bourgeois and Agreste families will just have their own posts because Jesus Christ.

Originally, I was going to go into a breakdown of each character and why their ethnicities don't actually impact their characters in the subtlest ways, but I can actually easier summarize it.

What impact does having any of the characters being certain nationalties have on the plot that aren't just racial sterotypes?

For most, it literally has no effect at all (Alix being Amazigh, Kim being Vietnamese, Nathaniel being Jewish and Nino being Moroccan).

Some it barely has an effect (Alya being Martiniquian and Marinette being Chinese).

For Kagami in particular, her whole story boils down to the "oppressive Asian parent who is hyper controlling of her life", which is a racist stereotype about Asian people. It would've been fine if it was written by an Asian person, but it was written by a white man, so yikes.

And then there are other characters where, in my opinion, they should be POC because otherwise it's just flat out uncomfortable. Yes, I am talking about Mylène. She was only given her hair to show that she was a nature activist, and that's it.

Also this is a personal opinion, but I think Jalil's whole thing would've been less eugh if the family was Egyptian, because it could be that Jalil wants to reconnect with his Egyptian roots, something that he can do via studying their ancient history, but his father discourages it since it doesn't matter because they're in France now.

Before I close this off, I wanted to mention something that isn't racist I don't think but feels like a strange microagression: Lila. Like, I don't know how to word it, but having the only Italian character being a conniving, master manipulator at the age 13 feels like a strange microagression, don't know how else to word it.

Though I'll get into Lila and Chloe's writing later.

Anyway, that's it for now. See you later!

[seasealwaters]

The hard thing for me about being an Arabised Moroccan wishing to reconnect with her culture is the whole struggle between Arab and North African identity.

Although many Moroccans try really hard to deny it, Amazighs are a fundamental and much greater part of Morocco than Arabs ever were and will ever be. They are such a huge part of NA and people's history and identity that you can't possibly ignore it (even though many have tried). And I really want to connect with this part of my heritage, but... at the same time, I feel like I don't have any right to. Arabs have hurt Amazighs and continue to do so. Their language is mocked. Their traditions and contributions to Moroccan history and identity are downplayed when not erased. The most common words used to refer to them are slurs (to the point that many do not even know that they are slurs).

Even though I probably do have Amazigh ancestry (Arabs conquered NA, they didn't entirely repopulate the whole area), my family have always denied it and categorized themselves as Arabs. Aside from some music and dishes, I have always lived within an Arab identity/upbriging/culture, and I love it! But at the same time, it makes me sad that I have bypassed a whole side of my people's history. A side that many among us have actively tried to suppress, which therefore makes me feel like I don't have any right to try reclaiming it, let alone reconcile it with my Arab identity.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Yaniv Pohoryles

Can one be Spanish, Moroccan and Jewish at the same time while living under French influence? The story of the Jews of northern Morocco, mainly from the Tangier region, is one of the most complex and intriguing stories of the Jewish community in the region.

According to Dr. Aviad Moreno, a faculty member at the Ben-Gurion Institute at Ben-Gurion University, the National Authority for Ladino Culture, and representative of the Royal Spanish Academy in Israel, the majority of Tangier and North Moroccan Jews are descendants of the expelled Jews from Spain who settled in the region after the expulsion and established Sephardic Jewish communities.

“The Jews in Northern Morocco preserved and developed the Judeo-Spanish language they brought from Spain even centuries after being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, blending it with local Arabic and Amazigh linguistic elements," says Moreno.

"In this aspect, they differed from other Jewish communities in Morocco that did not maintain the Spanish language, even if they originated from Spain.

The region itself underwent various transformations, and when Spain occupied the area, its representatives encountered these Jews who spoke the language they identified as their own. There have been attempts to assimilate them and use them as agents of modernization, fueled by great curiosity towards the language they preserved and a desire to reconnect them with their Sephardic Spanish heritage."

[raging-guanche]

"the revolution must be pacific" my people blew up a british marine's arm for fucking up with us

[salam-kitty]

🖇️ call me zainab. twenty-seven. intj. in the process of reverting to Islam ☪️. i’m mixed race (white, arab, kurdish, desi, rromani and amazigh). ♡

🕊️ this is my sideblog where i’ll rb stuff about Islam and my culture as i’m trying to reconnect.

🕊️ i like anime, music, horror, gardening, animals, history, and reading. ♡

[carolinayourspiritmaster]

Got some fresh henna supplies in the mail this morning, so you can guess what I'll be doing in the next days 😊.  The Amazigh, my people, used henna for beauty, good luck, and protection, and so do I - for me, this is a profoundly sacred art, and always a time of joy and reconnection with my heritage.

The pics above are from past work, mostly from 2017 - it really has been a while!

[sandipancel]

MY HERITAGE TATTOOS RECONNECTED ME WITH MY ALGERIAN ROOTS

[raging-guanche]

It is not the same moving to another country as a child and growing up with another culture so you identify more with that one than with the "original one" than losing your REAL culture due to colonization and have to grown up without any culture

[raging-guanche]

(Temp) Pinned

My name is Nauzet! Im indigenous reconnecting amazigh/guanche.

Im a canarian independentist, neurodivergent, art student and queer history enjoyer, i also love metal and goth music and body mods.

im a young bear/cub, not a minor, but dont be weird.

im happily taken by my wonderful boyfriend Dailos (@kandiwinged).

admin of @ocd--culture--is and @nomoremrnicefat .

i wont tag queer.

dfi: zionist, nazi, radqueer, mspec lesbian/gay, pro/comshipper, consider canary islands spanish/denies the existence of the indigenous amazigh population of the canary islands (hi i exist lol), fatphobe, demonize any disorder.