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Welcome to the Akha Crafts Center This website can be used to purchase high-quality home items, purses, handbags, vests, personal accessories, cards, and other items hand-stitched by Akha hilltribe people who live in mountain villages in northern Thailand. Final product assembly is done by the Akha Crafts Center staff in Chiang Rai. Click here to learn how to buy these items by using the Akha Crafts Center on-line pictorial catalog -- OR -- click on a link below to see and possibly buy Akha Crafts Center items in a particular category: Home
Items__Akha
Toys__Applique
Vests May God bless you
for your Akha Crafts Center purchases
that help Akha hilltribe people in northern Thailand! |
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Learning about the Akha Culture |
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Akha History and Culture
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Click here to learn more about the Akha hilltribe people Click here to see information about Chiang Rai ABC-IM Missionaries Ruth and Chuck Fox (Last
updated 29-April-2008) |
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The Akha hilltribe people have immigrated from Burma and China over the
last 100 years to the country of Thailand. They also reside in Laos
and some in Vietnam. They have come seeking freedom from the conditions
in Burma and China. Perhaps originally from Tibet, they are a gentle
people who live off the land. They have survived by hunting, gathering,
and "slash and burn" agriculture. Today, an
Akha traveling to Bangkok some 500 miles from Chiang Rai to work for six
months is not unusual. If an Akha person can get a Thai citizenship card,
it is considered to be a great achievement within the Akha village community.
The
language of the Akha hilltribe people is of the "Lolo" branch
of the Tibeto-Burman family. It has five tonal variations, where sentences
are made of nouns, verbs, and particles interweaved with each other. The
main Akha dialect spoken in Thailand is the "Jeu G'o" dialect.
Today, most Akhas are speaking Thai, where all Akha kids in Thailand must
now go to school at least to the sixth grade. Learning Thai is of great
priority for Akha people if they are going to survive in the Thai culture.
The emphasis among the Akha is to learn Thai well and try to find work
in nearby villages so that they can support their parents.