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A collection of graduate research by Indigenous social work scholars Stitching Our Stories Together showcases emerging scholars who, by centering their own nations, communities, and individual realities, demonstrate how Indigenous knowledges can challenge settler ideas and myths around pan-Indigeneity. This collection is bookended with reflections from the scholars' thesis supervisors, who describe their philosophy of mentoring and supporting students through an Indigenous lens, and how their pedagogies embrace the significance of relationality in Indigenous worldviews. Stitching Our Stories Together points toward a future where Indigenous ways of knowing and being take their rightful place in spaces of higher learning and social work practice—a necessary intervention in a discipline that has historically been complicit in colonialist harm.

This study examines the thematic and terminological agenda of the Amazigh, or Berber, heritage with the aim of deciphering the rhetoric in the Spanish press and the recognition given to this culture. Specifically, 454 articles from eight newspapers collected between January 2018 and June 2019 were quantitatively and qualitatively analysed. The results show the preponderance of the term ‘Berber’ over ‘Amazigh’ or ‘Imazighen’, as well as the relevance of historical or international political topics when these terms are mentioned. Broadly speaking, it is concluded that perspectives on the Amazigh gravitate between invisibility, superficiality, exoticism, and conceptual dependence on the Arab-Islamic. 

Based on the analysis of the first year of the Hirak, the Algerian protest movement started on February 2019, the article focuses on its visual performance and on the narrative emerging from it. Banners, posters and photos highlight the Hirak's specific attempt to give a new meaning to the discourse about the Algerian people and its unity. Particular attention is given to the visual performance of Algerian diversity exemplified by the deployment of the Amazigh flag during the protests. The flag became more than a cultural symbol and represented an instance of freedom and a manifestation of the people's will to escape traditional hetero-definitions of belongings and identities.

Amazigh literature has undergone a veritable historic shift from oral to written form, following the constitutional and institutional recognition of this indigenous language in Morocco and Algeria. We intend to seize this historic moment by focusing on a titrological analysis which, in our view, would be able to highlight the pragmatic side of a stammering literature that would like to proclaim its rebirth and speak to the world. The titular discourse of these novels, still in an experimental phase, informs us about the semiospheres that nourish and irrigate this writing that defossilizes a buried memory, repressed and threatened by the inexorable desymbolization process that traditional cultures are undergoing. This body of work could never be reduced to a simple scription of a narrative folklore that provides it with its cultural semantics; it is driven by the desire to integrate the international literary heritage by dialoguing with it and drawing inspiration from it.

This article is dedicated to the study of the question of generic contiguities within Berber (Kabyle) literature. It is devoted more particularly to the study of the boundaries between novels (ungal) and short stories (tullist). I show that the identities of literary genres do not depend only on a norm coming from elsewhere (from the West in particular) but that they are also shaped by the context from within which they evolve and by the function assigned to these genres.

Until the nineteenth century, Kabyle literature was primarily oral, passed down through word of mouth and limited to various genres such as poetry, proverbs, riddles, tales, myths, and legends. The nineteenth century marked the beginning of the transition to writing in the Kabyle language through the transcription of oral literature. However, the true departure from orality occurred in the twentieth century with the emergence of an intellectual movement within the Kabyle community that started to write in Kabyle to develop it as a written language. These writers introduced new universal literary genres such as novels, short stories, and theater. The transition to writing in a language long confined to orality was not without its challenges. Writers often drew upon the rich oral expressions of the Kabyle language to overcome the difficulties of expressing new ideas, which became a hallmark of the writing of that era. Mohia Abdellah (1950-2004), faced the particular challenge of promoting his language by translating and adapting universal theater texts. Nevertheless, his translations and adaptations found great success by leveraging the Kabyle language’s rich lexicon, especially its proverbs, which contributed to elevating the status of the Kabyle language as a written medium. This article examines some of these Kabyle proverbs reinvested by the dramatist Mohia Abdellah in his play titled “Menttif akka wala seddaw uẓekka” (literally, “better this than being in the grave”), an adaptation of the Russian playwright Nicolai Erdman’s work “The Suicide.” Through an intertextual approach, the article highlights the significance of proverbial expressions in Kabyle writing due to their exceptional ability to convey complex ideas from another world. To achieve this, the article initially defines the traditional functions of Kabyle proverbs and subsequently compares them with their counterparts in the source text to better appreciate Mohia’s efforts in translating and adapting foreign texts.

This article highlights, through a poetic approach, the onomastics of the character in a genre called tullist in the Amazigh language. The article works through the first ten collections of texts designated by the terms Tullizt / Tullist that mark the beginnings of this genre (1998–2008). An in-depth analysis then reveals the different naming processes that Kabyle writers use in assigning names to their characters. The article concludes by offering a brief sociological discussion on the semantics of the assigned names.

The celebrated Kabyle singer Slimane Azem is known as a poet of exile due to his expatriation in France. His mastery of the mother tongue is inherited from both the Kabyle oral tradition and great poets such as Si Moh Oumhand. His repertoire tackles a variety of themes such as freedom, exile, culture and identity, in songs that celebrate peace and tolerance. His poems “Syadi L3uqal,” “Si Moh Yenna-d” and “A Yul-iw Utub” are calls for self salvation through reliance on both God and origins. Others such as “A Taqbaylit a Tigejdit” and “Ssut n Tsekrin” reconsider the status of women in Kabyle society, and “AWid Ijebden Leqlam” vindicates the Kabyle identity. Though Azem is an engaged poet, his texts are devoid of provocative language, and this is what distinguishes him from many other Kabyle singers. This article aims to study Azem’s transcendence of violent language in songs that convey revolt against entrenched social, cultural and political issues. In particular, it analyzes his work in reference to Paul Baltes’s psychological implicit theory of wisdom, distills seven properties of wisdom. His principles are prominent in Azem’s songs which venerate ancestral values of respect, peace and equality on all levels.

This article examines the literary and spiritual initiatives undertaken by Henri Bosco and his collaborators, notably Captain Léopold Justinard, in interwar colonial Morocco. Focusing on the Revue Aguedal, inaugurated by Bosco in Rabat in 1935, I highlight the revue’s primary role as a cultural conduit between French and indigenous Amazigh and Arab intellectuals. Bosco’s concept of a “poetic church,” championed by contributors such as René Guénon and Ahmed Sefriou, sought to document, safeguard, and translate Amazigh and North African literature. Although the Aguedal literary project experienced interruptions during World War II, it accentuated indigenous perspectives through sections like “Propos du Chleuh,” overseen by Justinard. I also underscore Bosco’s simultaneous advocacy for French culture, challenging stereotypical colonial narratives while amplifying Amazigh voices within them. Despite financial challenges leading to the revue’s demise after the war, the literary circle fostered enduring literary relationships and left an indelible mark on the nexus of colonial scholarship, literature, and spirituality.

Traditional oral poetry in Takbaylit, Tachelhit, Central Moroccan Tamazight, and Tarafit dialects has been the subject of numerous studies ranging from ethnographic to linguistic. Rather than duplicate what is already widely available, the following brings together comments on a number of representative poems from across the Maghreb to give the reader an idea of the variety of types, styles, and themes of Tamazight poetic tradition. The selections, which are translated into English here for the first time, range from the moving devotional poem in Tachelhit “Like the Beads of a Rosary” to the beautiful love poem in Takbaylit “To Whom Should I Complain.” Among the poets whose works are included are Mririda n’Ait Attik (Tachelhit), Al Hadj Ammar ou al Hadj (Takbaylit), and Taougrat Oult Aissa (Central Moroccan Tamazigt).