The Akha Way

Insight Myanmar · Apr 16, 2026 · 1h 59m

Episode #520: “Ancestors are not dead. They’re not the living dead. Rather, they should be best thought of as ‘the always living.’” Dr Micah Morton, a cultural anthropologist and professor at Northern Illinois University, describes Akha life across the Upper Mekong borderlands as a struggle to keep that relationship intact while everything around it shifts—states hardening borders, religions competing for allegiance, and markets remaking livelihoods.

Morton traces an origin narrative tied to Jadae Mirkhanq, a remembered homeland city-state whose meanings have changed as Akha have become…