The Akha are one of the smallest, poorest and least developed hill tribe groups in Southeast Asia, but they are also among the best known to tourists. Akha women are famous for their beautiful, elaborate and distinctive traditional costumes.
The Akha are known as the Hani in China. In China, the Hani have traditionally been a highland tribe dominated by the lowla
nd Dais.
The Akha people are an indigenous tribe living in small villages at higher elevations in the mountains of Thailand, Burma, Laos, and the Yunnan province in China.
There are now more than 80,000 people living in Thailand’s provinces, consisting of one of the largest of the hill tribes.
Many of the villages of Akha people are accessible by trekking tours for tourists. But because of the tourists, and the Western modes of capitalism attempts to continue the traditional aspect of living are becoming increasingly difficult.
However, they still practice some of their traditions. Their society lacks a strict system of social class and is con
sidered egalitarian. The Akha believe that all things on earth have souls They offer sacrifices to mountains, rivers, dragons, and heaven, and, as often as every week, to their ancestors. Animals have spirits that are honored in hunting rites.
The Akha revere a female creator god named Ao ma, or “Heavenly Spirit” who created the sky and the earth and then gave the Akha their social code but rarely honor her with formal rituals.
The Rice Mother is more often the object of formal worship. They also worship “holy hills” as guardian spirits. Akha people believe in ancestors’ spirits that guide humans and they believe that spirits dominate every resource.
Every upper spirit is helped by intermediate spirits to which only shamans and very religious people can make contact. Lower spirits are accessible to all people. Spirits manage the attitudes and behaviors of the Akha; they are like inspectors of all daily life.
According to the “Akhazan” code, every offense must be punished to calm down the angry spirit and the punishment must ben
efit the whole village. Akha people have some similarities with some North American Indians.
The Cree tribe in Canada, for example, believes that trees have spirit. After splitting wood, a person is not allowed to throw the split wood into a pile as that would be disrespecting the spirit of the wood.
The Akha tribe also believes that everything, from the sky, forest and land, has a spirit.”Source: Alberto C. de la Paz, curator of the Hilltribe Museum and Education Center at Chiang Rai. The Akha believe in a period, which is similar to the Christian idea of the Garden of Eden.
To the Akha, that was a period when humans and spirits lived in harmony. Of course, someone always throws a monkey wrench into such idyllic conditions resulting in the separation of humans and spirits. It was therefore, agreed that spirits would live in the forests and humans in villages.
The demarcation between the spirit world and the human world would thus be the village gates that are elected annually by the village shaman. Everything beyond the village gate is considered as part of the domain of the spirits. If one were to venture forth into the forest, they would be at the mercy of the spirits.
Up until 20 years ago, a more extreme case of spiritual interference with human matters occurs when a mother gives birth to twins.
The Akha believed that only animals like dogs and pigs give birth to more than one offspring and therefore considered twins as beasts and not human and must be immediately killed.
Traditionally, when this happened the children were burned, the parents were run out of town and their house and
all their possessions were set on fire.
If the parents were wealthy they could buy their way back into the village by hosting nine’days of feasting and sacrificial rites. Even then everyone in the village would ignore them for a year and they would be permanently excluded from religious rites.
