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The Akha People: A Window to a Disappearing Culture

The Akha village of Saen Khan Kham.

CHIANGRAI TIMES – Spread across the northern reaches of Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Thailand, and into southern China, in a region that has long been isolated and neglected, the hills are largely the preserve of a scattering of animist tribal people who have moved south from China over the past two centuries.

They included the Hmong, Mien, Lenten, Lahu and Akha, who generally survive by slash-and-burn clearing of the forest on the steep and inaccessible slopes, growing most of what they need and bartering with the lowlanders for anything else.

Thanks to its recent accessibility, the north of Laos is one of the best locations to experience some of these cultures that still have only occasional contact with foreigners.

Under threat from land concessions given to the Chinese who can cross the border with ease, as well as government drives to integrate them into more urbanized settings, it would be no surprise if these strongly independent, self-sufficient communities soon started to disappear in all but name.

Faces of the Akha children.

One of the main locations from which to visit the hill-tribes is Muang Namtha, close to the border with China. However, even further north, the town of Muang Long, close to the Burmese border, is close to largely unvisited hill communities. Despite being a district capital, Muang Long only numbers about 3,500 residents.

Arriving in the middle of the wet (low) season in June, I saw no other foreigners other than Chinese who had crossed the border to do business.

But what Muang Long does have is one of the best English-speaking hill-tribe guides you could ever stumble upon, by the name of Tui.

A former English teacher, a speaker of the Akha language and a pioneer in tours to remote hill-tribe villages in Muang Long District, Tui is now head of the local government tourism office — and he is still a guide.

We arranged to head off into the hills to the north of Muang Long on small motorbikes for a few days to visit the mainly Akha hill-tribes that live in the upland areas. It was the start of one of the most fascinating and interesting experience of my time in Laos.

The Akha people are speakers of a Tibeto-Burman language who migrated south in waves from China’s Yunnan province, first in the mid-19th century, then again following the communist victory in 1949, and finally during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Most of them also speak Lao, but having a guide who can converse in Akha puts them at ease.

Most Akha villages number only 50 to 60 households, which mean the population of most villages is 300 to 350 people. The Akha are animists and believe in spirits that need to be appeased by various rituals.

All Akha villages have two “spirit gates” made of bamboo and hung with woven bamboo “stars” that block bad spirits from entering the village. All the villagers must pass through the gates on leaving or entering the village.
Faces of the Akha children.
At the highest point of the village the Akha construct a “swing” on four wooden legs, used annually to thank the spirits for the harvest at the end of the rainy season in September.

Each year the twine rope is replaced and the ritual repeated. In the interim all the villagers are strictly forbidden to touch the swing. The spiritual life of a village is the domain of a shaman, in Akha villages very often a woman, as women as considered to be closer to the spirits than men. Often several villages will share one shaman.

As we traveled further away from roads we increasingly came across bare-breasted Akha women. While they cover themselves when descending from their villages to market in the towns, in their own villages and surrounding forests and fields it is the norm for married Akha women to go about their daily business bare-breasted. It is a sign of their status as married women and mothers; the younger unmarried women and girls remain fully clothed.

Akha women are well known for their distinctive headgear, which they wear while not sleeping — at home, while cooking, in the fields and also on trips to market in the towns.

The headgear is covered with silver baubles and coins dating from the French colonial period. The headdresses worn by the Akha women are the most spectacular and elaborate items of Akha dress and used to define their age or marital status within the community.

In mid-adolescence, young Akha girls will start wearing the headdress as a sign of their coming of age. Each headdress is decorated by its owner and each is unique.

One disturbing tradition that my guide explained is the Akha’s superstitions about twins. The Akha consider the birth of twins to be abnormal and extremely ominous. Shocking though it may seem to us, only a couple of decades ago twins would be immediately killed to cleanse the village.

Nowadays, if twins are born then mother and newborn babies are banished to the forest in order to protect the village from bad spirits, although they continue to be supported by the father, who still lives in the village. Word is sent out to the nearest town that an Akha woman has given birth to twins. Apparently, nowadays twin babies will be eagerly adopted by an infertile couple from the town, allowing the mother to return to the village and resume her former life.

Houses

Houses in a traditional Akha village are built on wooden stilts, with woven bamboo walls and roofs thatched with grass. Bamboo fences surround the perimeter of each family’s cluster of houses.

Pigs and chickens live under the houses, together with dogs and cats. Surprisingly, this mixture of domestic fauna seems to live harmoniously, each knowing its own place in the scheme of things. Footwear is discarded at the bottom of the wooden steps.

Upstairs, there’s an outside roofed terrace area used during the day. The interior is one large room, with an open cooking section and a raised sleeping area along one side of the room. This sleeping area in turn comprises two separate sections: one for men and one for women. Husbands and wives do not sleep together.

The exception to this rule is a “special house”, which is separate from the main house and much smaller in size. In effect, the special house is a separate sleeping area reserved for the chosen son who will inherit the main house in due course. It is used by the son and his wife purely for sleeping, as all other communal family activities take place in the main house.

The home is the domain of the women, who seem to also do most of the work in the fields, plus collect firewood from the forest and bring water from the stream.

As the afternoon started to draw in we head along an almost impassable track of mud on our bikes on our way to our third village of the day, Saen Khan Kham Village, where we would spend the night.

Once there, we were invited into the house of the former village head. A sturdy man in his 60s, his son had since taken over as head, although undoubtedly the older man still played an important role in decisions. In his youth, he had been responsible for moving the village to a new location at some distance from the “old” village.

I was curious to learn the reasons behind the move, and was told that the old village had been inhabited by the tribal community together with some more recent Akha families that had joined them from the town.

After several sudden unexplained deaths among the community, they had decided that the presence of the newcomers was bringing bad luck, and had decided to move, while the newcomers had agreed to stay on where they were.

Food
Dinner in the Akha home, where top of the menu was usually dog meat, served with sticky rice and cassava leaves.
Despite having dogs as pets, the Akha also consider dog meat to be the best there is! When I joined the village head on the matted floor for dinner, top of the menu was dog meat, served with sticky rice and cassava leaves.

Dinner in the Akha home, where top of the menu was usually dog meat, served with sticky rice and cassava leaves.

Having eaten dog before in the North Sulawesi town of Manado, it wasn’t too much of a shock and I was able to make my host happy by sharing his delicacy. Albeit a bit chewy, it was nonetheless very tasty. We were also treated to countless small glasses of lau lao, the local homemade brew made from sticky rice.

Once the oil lamps are turned off at around 9 p.m. it was time for bed. I was surprised that our sleep wasn’t troubled by mosquitoes — I didn’t notice a single one. I was told by the village head in the morning that the location had been deliberately chosen on a slope to avoid stagnate water, plus the lingering smoke from the cooking area filling the main room helped to deter the insects.

The womenfolk had their breakfast before we awoke and left for work in the fields before we had eaten. A copious breakfast was nonetheless served, including noodles with eggs, more sticky rice, and the pièce de resistance: crispy fried small frogs with chilli, eaten whole. Delicious. The wet season brings with it hordes of frogs in the rice fields that can be easily collected when ploughing takes place, as the frightened creatures try to jump clear of the plough.

The next day, after taking in another couple of villages along the hilltop track, we descended back down the valley.

Finally, we came across the all-weather gravel road that took us to the small border town of Xieng Kok on the mighty Mekong, with Burma on the opposite bank. This is the end of the road heading west and only local Laotians are permitted to cross the Mekong over to Burma.

As we returned to Muang Long, I reflected on the experience of momentarily sharing the lives of Akha people who were not used to a falang (foreigner) in their midst. The village head had said that it had been two years since they had received such a visit.

In the years to come, the pressures of tourism (albeit so-called eco-tourism), together with Lao government’s development efforts, will change the Akha’s way of life.

I felt lucky to have witnessed such a culture living in a way that has little changed for centuries. Sadly, I doubt such a lifestyle will exist if I were to return two decades from now. -By Peter Milne

— Photos by Peter Milne

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP