The Akha raise their villages high in the mountains as bastions of refuge for those who follow in the way of their ancestors. Hunting, growing and gathering rice, establishing homes and villages, receiving guests-indeed, nearly all aspects of living and dyig-are conducted in a manner and attended with observances conforming to their unwritten tradition. This common inheritance, enshrined in the memory and speech of each individual, lives on in the community, whose welfare and harmony is the enduring concern of all : living leaders and followers and their ancestors, whom they recall by name. In the village, they commune, nourishing and being nourished.

Name And Language

     Akha call themselves Akha. The Shan name for the group is Kow, the Lao Kha Kaw, and the Thai I Kaw, where Kha is Lao for “slave,” and I is a Thai term of contempt.
      The Akha language is classified in the southern division of the Lolo (Yi) branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. Literacy in the language is limited to the Christian community. Some Akha also speak Shan or Northern Thai and Lahu

Migration

     The probable homeland of the Akha is east of the Sip Song Pan Na in the mountains along the Black and the Red Rivers in southeastern Yunnan, where today live people the Chinese call Hani, among whomare included Akha. Over the centuries, this people has spread into Vietnam , Laos , and Burma , migration likely being accelerated by the chaotic conditions during the 19 th century. Beginning around 1900 Akha have entered Thailand from Burma .
      Akha settlement has remained concentrated north of the Kok River in Chiang Rai Province , and it is only recently that villages have been founded in more southerly areas of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. The population in Thailand today is about 25,000.

Attire

     The crowning glory of the Akha woman is her helmet-like headdress, encrusted with silver and festooned with strings of beads and brightly dyed feathers and fur.
      Her calves are encased in puttees, and slung low on her hips is a short skirt, reaching nearly to the knees, which is plain is front and pleated in the back. Girding the waist is a sash, whose ends hang down the front of the skirt. A wrap, fastened at the side and suspended by a single strap over one shoulder, covers the torso from above thebreasts to the navel. Over this is worn a long-sleeved, hip-length jacket.
      The jacket, puttees, and sash are decorated with appliqu? and embroidery in bright colors as well as with beads, seeds, shells, and silver.
      A girl wears the skirt, the jacket, and a cal. As she grows up, she changes to adult attire by stages on the occasion of important ceremonies, taking first the chest wrap, next adding more beads and other ornaments to her cap, then wearing the sash, and finally assuming the woman's headdress.
      Traditional wear for men includes loose trousers, a flat turban wound like a broad-brimmed hat, and a jacket, which may be decorated on the lower edges, the back, and the front with embroidery and appliqu?.
      Akha clothing is made from hand-woven, homespun cotton cloth dyed with indigo. On their way to and from the fields and at other times their hands are free, girls and women spin using a hand spindle, a traditional symbol of the distaff side of the tribe, which they set spinning by rolling on the thigh and then fling out and away to draw the thread.