Freedom by design: reclaiming Amazigh symbology

Carved into stone or woven into a rug, Amazigh symbology carries the weight of freedom by design—a quiet testament to resilience, a poetic resistance against a world that has tried, time and again, to erase them.

Often mislabelled as “Berber”—a term heavy with the weight of colonisation and othering—the Amazigh, or Imazighen in the plural, are the indigenous people of North Africa. Long before the arrival of Arabs, they called these lands home, spanning from Morocco to Tunisia, with smaller communities extending as far as Egypt, Mali, and Mauritania.

The term “Amazigh” means “free people,” reflecting both their nomadic roots and their enduring fight for autonomy. For centuries, however, their identity has been silenced. Their language was outlawed, their names banned, and their symbols stripped of meaning, reduced to mere ornaments. Rugs, ceramics, and jewellery—often bought by tourists—carry motifs and coded messages from the Tifinagh alphabet, while ornate jewellery serves as adornment and a talisman for protection. Once banned across much of North Africa despite its origins in the first millennium BCE, Tamazight—the region’s indigenous languages—are gradually reclaiming their place as a powerful symbol of decolonial endurance.

The Amazigh flag, with its horizontal stripes reflecting the vast terrains of Imazighen lands—blue for the sea, green for the mountains, and yellow for the desert—is anchored by the striking red “ⵣ” (yaz), the middle letter of the word Amazigh in Tifinagh. This red symbol is more than just a letter; it speaks to their struggles and serves as a reminder of their enduring spirit in the face of colonial forces. Once a symbol that could lead to imprisonment, today, the flag is proudly waved at football matches, hung from car windows, and draped over shoulders at events across North Africa—a subtle but impactful manifestation of a culture asserting its place.

According to linguist Mena B. Lafkioui, Morocco is home to most Tamazight speakers, with 70% living within its borders and 25% in Algeria. However, centuries of Arabisation have alienated countless North Africans from their Amazigh roots, weakening cultural ties and leaving many unaware of and hesitant to embrace their heritage. For generations, the stigma surrounding Amazigh identity carried the risk of being labelled primitive or backward. As a result, the true number of Arabised Amazighs remains nearly impossible to trace, as openly claiming indigeneity was, in itself, a deeply ingrained taboo.

Ultimately, Imazighen are not defined by a single race or ethnicity; their indigeneity is grounded in a shared language and visual culture. Their fight for autonomy transcends borders, driven by a quest for visibility and recognition, woven into the larger fabric of nationalism within their respective countries. It is a movement rooted in the hope for greater linguistic rights and cultural recognition.

After centuries of Othering, shaming, and the suppression of their symbols and language, the Amazigh cause has grown into a global movement, extending beyond local struggles.

The ancient and modern history of the Imazighen is one of survival through waves of colonisation. Romans, Arabs, French, and Spanish forces all left lasting scars—erasing Indigenous place names, silencing languages, and dismantling communities’ autonomy. Their very existence today stands as a testament to their strength. As Amazigh Professor Brahim El Guabli explains, these successive colonisations have left their impact on “the people who lost their Amazigh ancestral tongue and started identifying as Arabs,” creating a form of cultural amnesia that still lingers today.

As a largely oral culture, and despite there being over 40 million Tamazight speakers—likely more, though difficult to track due to political sensitivities—the language and its symbology often slip through the cracks, reduced to folkloric art or the focus of colonial anthropological study. Many, if not most, Tamazight speakers do not speak Darija or Arabic, further deepening the divide. Without written histories to bind them, the stories of Amazigh culture are like a landscape slowly fading from a map—its lines blurred, its contours distorted, and others left to redraw the borders of a people’s history to suit their needs. 

The language, along with Amazigh names, remained largely outlawed until 2011 when Morocco formally recognized and celebrated Tamazight as a national language. Algeria followed in 2016, officially affirming Tamazight’s status as an official language.

During colonial rule, the French worked tirelessly to try and reclassify Amazighs as “native Europeans,” using the so-called “Berber Myth” to fabricate divisions between Arabs and Amazighs across North Africa. Colonists claimed that Amazighs were culturally closer to Europeans, citing their supposed “liberal lifestyles,” even going so far as to invent ties to Christianity in a bid to divide and conquer. This narrative painted the Amazigh as allies to Western powers, a constructed story intended to fracture unity. In response, postcolonial movements pushed for Arab nationalism, while African historians largely excluded Amazighs from discussions around African identity—a counter-narrative that only deepened the marginalization of Amazigh voices and erased their history in favour of a singular, homogenized identity.

In the mid-20th century, Amazigh-inspired art became a powerful tool for reclaiming culture and asserting identity. Renowned Moroccan artists like Ahmed Cherkaoui and Mohammed Melehi—whose work was showcased at the TATE last year—drew on Amazigh motifs from ceramics, textiles, and tattoos to assert an indigenous identity and challenge European dominance. Meanwhile, in Algeria, artists Denis Martinez and Choukri Mesli founded Aouchem (‘tattoo’), a movement that revived indigenous North African symbols as a bold, decolonial response to Western art’s supremacy. Their manifesto proclaimed, “The sign is louder than the bomb,” highlighting how these symbols carried a weighty significance far beyond gallery walls.

Amazigh symbology has long been appropriated and distorted, its sacrality reduced to mere superficiality in the hands of outsiders. Tattooing, which is deeply entwined with the lives of Amazigh women, also became a site of colonial exploitation. According to author and art historian Cynthia Becker, French military doctor Jean Herber abused his position to access the nude bodies of Imazighen women under the guise of medical authority, relentlessly documenting their tattoos with obsessive attention, all while disregarding the personal and cultural stories they carried. He demanded and took their ceramics, jewellery, and artefacts, turning sacred traditions into exotic objects for colonial archives. Tattoos that once symbolized protection, fertility, and identity were reduced to curiosities, their significance and histories erased, leaving the women objectified and their heritage misunderstood.

For women, these tattoos carried proud stories of womanhood, lineage, and survival. Designs on faces, wrists, torsos, necks, ankles, and hands marked vital milestones and tribal affiliations, with symbols like triangles, crosses, and zigzags serving as protection against the evil eye. Tattoos placed near the mouth were believed to guard against spirits entering the body, while others marked a transition into adulthood. Colonial scholars lifted these motifs out of context. They claimed that triangle designs symbolized a pubic triangle and that a circle motif represented the sun, somehow twisting it into evidence of an ancient “Berber sun-worshipping cult.”

With tattooed Amazigh women labelled by colonists as ‘primitive’ or ‘backward,’ and by Islamists as not real Muslims, countless women—when entering urban spaces—feel immense shame, and pressure to hide or even attempt to erase their tattoos, often using makeshift chemicals to burn them off of the skin. These markings, which were symbols of dignity and agency for millennia, continue to be stigmatized and reduced to mere photographic fodder for tourists.

Despite centuries of suppression, Amazigh identity is experiencing a resurgence, which Moroccan scholar Brahim El Guabli describes as “the modern Amazigh consciousness.” Online platforms like Bayt Zahul are playing a role in reclaiming Amazigh heritage, pushing for a deeper understanding of its spiritual and symbolic dimensions. Young Amazigh-inspired tattoo artists in Morocco and Tunisia (Aswad in Casablanca, Mouja Ink in Tamraght, and Manel Almadouni in Tunis) are reinterpreting traditional Amazigh designs, bringing ancient practices back into the spotlight and fostering a renewed sense of dignity in their countries’ indigenous communities.

Salma Chouqair, founder of Bayt Zahul, believes Amazigh culture can never truly be lost. “We need to reconnect with our heritage outside of colonial biases,” she says. “Our symbology and mosaic will endure, but it’s up to us to preserve them for future generations.” Brahim El Guabli describes the younger Amazigh generation as “the orphaned children of independence,” carrying both pain and determination. 

As laws shift and visibility increases, this new generation is piecing together their identity, embracing a compassionate but steadfast sense of pride. In Morocco, the Royal Institute of the Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) is devoted to safeguarding the promotion of Amazigh culture and languages, meanwhile, the Centre de Recherche Berbère remains the only and oldest university teaching Amazigh linguistics and literature in Europe, and Amazigh World News has risen as the first English-language news platform dedicated to Amazigh-related stories, helmed in Boston, Massachusetts. 

But there’s a texture and multiplicity that is so rarely awarded to Indigenous populations that in the millennia spent justifying, explaining, educating, and exemplifying one’s existence, we forgo the grace to simply exist. A sacred curiosity drives future generations, but this tenderness of thought has been acquired from deep ancestral grief. Just as the mountains serve as a reflection of resilience and a more literal layer of protection against colonial powers, Amazigh symbols are silently weighted by the fatiguing labour to persist as both Muslim and Amazigh, Indigenous and national, resilient and tender. This pluralism is what freedom looks like.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here