Helene Hagan

Helene E. Hagan is an American anthropologist.

Biography

Helene Hagan (nee Coll) was born in Rabat,Morocco in 1939, and is of Catalan and Berber ( kabyle) ancestries. Her paternal family "Coll" is from the Pyrenees Mountain village of Prats Des Mollo and she is a direct ancestor of the last know French Templar Knight named Berenger de Coll. Helene Hagan is the Executive Director of the Tazzla Institute for Cultural Diversity, which she founded in 1993, and the author of two books,"The Shining Ones: An Etymological Essay on the Amazigh Roots of Archaic Egyptian Civilization," and "Tuareg Jewelry: Traditional Patterns and Symbols". The first book pioneered the hypothesis of a link between an archaic Egyptian culture, the proto-Berber culture of North Africa, and the Tuareg 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 Tazzla Institute www.tazzla.org is the supporting nonprofit organization for the Los Angeles Amazigh Film Festival, www.laaff.org 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, the Sahara desert to the north of Niger and Mali, and Burkina-Faso.

Helene 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, Université de Bordeaux, France,(1969) she obtained a Master's Degree in French Literature from Stanford University in 1971. In 1981, she entered the Stanford University Ph.d program in anthropology, specializing in Mind and Ritual, Berber studies, and American Indian studies.

After directing 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 taught at John F. Kennedy University in California for a number of years.

In 1993, she 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, one of 11 half-hour programs titled "We're Still Here" on American Indians in Marin County; a second on Amazigh (Berber) culture of Morocco (12 programs); a third series of 4 one hour programs was 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, Helene 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 Tuareg artisans of Mali.

Helene E. Hagan 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 a Wenner-Gren Anthropological grant. She serves as life time Associate Curator for that collection.

Helene Hagan has authored numerous articles published in a variety of newspapers and journals. Among those 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)

Through the work of the Tazzla Institute, a 501c(3) non-profit organization, Helene E. Hagan 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.)

Helene E. Hagan was twice elected and served on the Board of Directors of A.C.A.A., Amazigh Cultural Association in America, between 2002 and 2006.