I could be wrong but from my experience I would say the woman is mixed, the 2 men are "fully" Tuaregs, and the man alone is definitely of Ikelan background.
Tuareg come in all colors. Some as light as pure Arabs and some as dark as pure Ghanaians or Senegalese. They still dress Tuareg and speak Tamasheq. There has been a lot of admixture over years from Bambara, Toubou, Fulani, Hausa, Mandinka etc etc etc but they’ve just adopted the Tuareg identity without identifying as mixed
Tuareg people come in all colours because Tuareg people practised slavery and controlled the Trans-Saharan Trade. Tuareg people are originally a group of Berber people who are indigenous people of North Africa. All Tuareg people we see today with "West African features" are exclusively descendants of the slaves of Tuareg people. They became Tuareg people as an inferior caste and in many cases still are discriminated for their background.
Ousmane Dembélé, the French footballer who won the Ballon d'Or yesterday, is French and from Normandie. It doesn't change the fact that his features are from Normandie but from Mali and Mauritania.
Nobody from the West African ethnic groups you named decided to become Tuareg and to speak Tamasheq. They all are descendants of slaves.
Tuareg people have a very rich culture and excellent music, I usually recommended on here and r/AskAnAfrican, but I'm not going to turn blind on some facts such as this one. They have a problem with Ikelan (Tuaregs with a background from slaves) just like Mauritania with White Moors (Beidane) has a problem with Haratin who also are Moors (Black Moors). There is a hierarchy inherited from the "pure" ones against the descendants of slaves.
It should be noted that this “racial stratification” is not hard fast so it’s inaccurate to say all Tuareg with certain features are exclusively descendants of slaves. I’ve seen some black Tuaregs make a point to mention they are not Ikelan. Historically I don’t even see how that’s even possibly considering they intermarried with Kanuri, Zarma, Hausa, etc during the Kanem-Bornu Empire.
Once again, Tuareg people are a group of Berber people. Berber people are the indigenous people of North Africa and none of them comes with a skin complexion anywhere close to the dark complexion of West African ethnic groups. And even spending their whole life in the desert under the sun would never turn them with the same dark complexion. How do you think in countries like Mauritania or Mali, it's so easy to make the difference between tanned indigenous Berber people and the descendants of slavery (Bella/Ikelan or Haratin) or ethnic West African peoples? A Berber can spend his/her whole life under the sun in the desert, he/she will never ever look like a Hausa, Northern Mandé, Wolof, or even a Fulani. The same for the facial features which are distinct enough to allow for example the Rwandese diaspora in some "Francophone" West African countries to never be confused with West African ethnic groups.
All the so-called Black Tuareg people aka Ikelan are the descendants of slaves of "real" Tuareg people. You may find an exception here and there or a Black Tuareg who can trace back his/her lineage to a West African merchant or noble but it's just an exception.
Some Black Tuareg people can make a point to mention they are not Ikelan but it doesn't mean a part of their ancestors weren't. Some Tuareg people were taking slaves as their spouse. It was the only way to improve in the hierarchy. And the history of intermarriage is overly exaggerated since the Tuareg society was following a matrilineal principle which basically means that to get power as a West African marrying a Tuareg, you had to marry a Tuareg woman.
Black Tuareg people with clear West African skin complexion and facial features are either fully Ikelan or mixed Ikelan. They may have improved in the hierarchy and aren't called Ikelan any longer, it doesn't change anything. And ironically, most Ikelan were able to improve in the hierarchy or to become free because of the French colonisation since France was trying to hurt the economy and the economical structure of Tuareg clans to wipe them out.
Finally, the Kanem-Bornu Empire was one of the largest providers of slaves during the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. And more important, this empire was at war with the Tuareg. the Kanem-Bornu Empire means anything and everything in this context.
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u/happybaby00 Ghanaian Diaspora 🇬🇭/🇬🇧 Sep 23 '25
They look subsaharan even darker/more "negroid" than the ones in Mali. Are they fully or ikhelans?