If the Akha can speak then why can’t they be heard?
The use and impact of the media by the Akha, a tribal minority in South East Asia.
JESSICA GOYDER
10308 Words
Acknowledgements
Firstly, thank you to the Akha, especially Ayoe, Piche and Yotsawin Bon for their emails. The biggest thanks to Manu Luksch at Ambient TV; whose work and research material constitutes such a huge part of this study. Thank you also to Richard Barbrook, my tutor. At the same time the conference was being held, I was travelling through Northern Laos and Thailand with Joanne Laxton and her father Kevin in search of the village where Joanne’s semi adopted son Anouson had grown up. It was then that I first became aware of how little control groups such as the Akha had in a process of either adaptation or assimilation. This study is dedicated therefore, to Joanne.
"Un Ma, the first spirit, gave an alphabet to all people. He presented the Akha tribe with a water buffalo’s hide on which letters were written. This hide was difficult to keep. If it got moist it swelled easily. If it was stored in the house, rats ate it. So the Akha people ate the lettered hide, saying that it was better for them to keep their knowledge inside. This is why the Akha tribe does not have any letters, but its people do have a splendid memory."
How the Akha’s lost their alphabet, Takato Kanomi, People of Myth, Japan, 1990
Contents
Chapter 1: Who are the Akha and why are they so marginalized?
Chapter 2: Changing beliefs. Why synthesis is more effective that resistance:
As the Akha people have to survive before their ‘culture’ can, what is so in need of preservation and how is ‘Customary Law’ being adapted to contemporary experience?
Chapter 3: Western Myths: Western responses to the work of Ambient TV and the introduction of technology to the developing world, how the attitudes of Orientalism continue.
Chapter 4: Articulating a response: Through what medium can the Akha best be heard? The role of community radio versus the reality of an online future.