The Akha are an ethnic group who live in small villages at higher elevations in the mountains of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Yunnan Province in China.

The historically documented existence of relations with the Shan prince of Kengtung indicates that Akha were in eastern Burma as early as the 1860s.

[7][8] Akha live in villages in the mountains of southwest China, eastern Myanmar, western Laos, northwestern Vietnam, and northern Thailand.

A decline in village size in Thailand since the 1930s has been noted and attributed to the deteriorating ecological and economic situation in the mountains.

There is an oft cited lack of political or state infrastructure to address Akha, or any other indigenous issues in Thailand.

Speakers of Tai languages in Myanmar and Thailand refer to them as "gaw" or "ekaw" (ikaw/ikho), terms which the Akha view as derogatory.

The vast majority of Akha speakers can understand the jeu g’oe ("jer way") dialect spoken in southern China, Thailand, and Myanmar.

[7] Some basic and systematic variations in regional dialects of Akha are discussed by Paul Lewis in his Akha-English-Thai Dictionary.

[12] Entrances to all Akha villages are fitted with a wooden gate adorned with elaborate carvings on both sides depicting imagery of men and women.

It marks the division between the inside of the village, the domain of man and domesticated animals, and the outside, the realm of spirits and wildlife.

Most Akha plant dry-land rice, which depends solely on rainfall for moisture, but in some villages irrigation has been built to water paddy fields.

This type of agriculture has contributed to the Akha's semi-nomadic status as villages move to clear new farmland with each successive burn cycle.

The Akha have adapted to new types of subsistence farming, but the quality of their land has suffered as they are no longer allowed to expand onto new plots.

[11] In addition to their agricultural work, the Akha raise livestock including pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, cattle, and water buffalo to supplement their diets and to use for their secondary products.

Many Akha rituals and festivals serve to seek "blessings" (guivlahav) from ancestors, which are according to the Encyclopedia of World Cultures, "...fertility and health in people, rice, and domesticated animals.

The four-day Akha Swing Festival comes in late-August each year and falls on the 120th day after the village has planted its rice.

The swing festival is particularly important for Akha women, who will display the clothing they spent all year making and who will show, through ornamentation, that they are becoming older and of marriageable age.

[14][19] Certain types of death, like that caused by a tiger, are considered particularly bad; the bodies must be treated and buried in specific ways.

A few years later she will begin to don the jejaw, the beaded sash that hangs down the front of her skirt and keeps it from flying up in the breeze.

According to an article about the variations in Akha headdress, "High Fashion, Hill Style", the "Ulo Akha headdress consists of a bamboo cone, covered in beads, silver studs and seeds, edged in coins (silver rupees for the rich, baht for the poor) topped by several dangling chicken feather tassels and maybe a woolen pom-pom.

Besides raising cattle, pigs and chickens, and growing crops such as rice, corn, a variety of vegetables, chilies and herbs, part of their ingredients comes from the forest, either gathered or hunted.

Itinerant traders, either lowlanders or hill-dwelling Yunnan Chinese, come to buy livestock or cash crops, or to sell blankets and other goods.

[7] Being an ethnic minority with little easily accessible legal recourse, Akha everywhere have long been subject to rights abuses.

On their new lands, the Akha can rarely produce enough food to sustain themselves and are often forced to leave and seek employment outside the villages, thus disrupting their traditional culture and economy.

Under these laws and resolutions millions of hectares of land have been declared as reserved and conservation forests, or protected areas.

According to international human rights lawyer Jonathan Levy, "The Akha are identified with the opium growers who until recently dominated that portion of the "Golden Triangle" in Thailand.

While traditional opium cultivation has been suppressed, processed heroine and latest scourge, methamphetamine, is freely available from Burma.

[24] Measures have been undertaken by state and human rights organizations including the UNESCO Asia Pacific Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok, and NCA in Lao PDR, to provide hill tribes, including the Akha, with "comprehensive community-based, non-formal education" on HIV and drug abuse prevention.

In addition, detoxification clinics have been opened in the region, with particularly positive consequences for women who tend to have lower rates of addiction, but often bear the brunt of compensating for their missing partners financially and emotionally.

According to one author, where the village squares were once "filled with the sounds of courtship songs", radios are now more likely to play pop hits.