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Akha Chronicles Missionaries Missions were a very destructive influence on the lives of
the Akha and were bent on destroying the small remaining hopes which they
had, their last identity. The missions were so arrogant they could not see the WHITE
nature of their work, and this made disuading them by normal means
impossible. KMT British and
opium wars the
missionaries KMT Tactics of Village Splitting and
Take Over Black Friday In An I and a friend fought our way up mud track roads after a
four hour trip to reach one of We had a
gift of writing books and pencils for the last traditional families in the
village. Two weeks
before the headman told me that the Chinese Baptists had come and convinced three quarters
of the village to become Christian.
From personally checking with the families
they had told me that it was required that they abandon all of their
traditions in the process.
Finished. So when I climbed the ladder to the headman’s porch
and sat down I was greatly concerned as he
sadly poured me tea. I and my friend
drank while he related the events of the last two weeks. There had been five or six families that stuck with
him. There was one village elder
living up the hill
that was helping to hold it all together.
The headman had not invited the missionaries and did
not approve of their demands. But then
some time in the last week they had convinced
the elder to join their forces below and abandon the headman. So he moved down to those
huts. The other families soon followed along.
What could he do, with the last elder gone from
the tradition there was no one left to teach the old ways to the
families. He was more than
just a little sad, saddest that I had ever seen him. Though the huts had not moved he was now a
headman without a village and the new puppet pastor the new functional headman. He knew that the missionaries always
promised to give lots to the people if they converted. Meanwhile the villagers were still asking
for medicine that the missionaries apparently weren’t including in the
deal. I went down into the other huts and was immediately struck
by all the changes being imposed on
the people. Numerous women were no
longer wearing their headresses as they had been
so proudly doing all the years that I had supplied medicine to this
village. I asked them why
and they said they couldn’t any more.
Some of the older women still hung on. But the
pressure was now definitely there to abandon them. There would be no traditional practices,
songs, or dances at all now, possibly something would be allowed at
Christmas. The woman
who practices the traditional knowledge and medicine for the village was stopped. She was told that it was evil and that she
could no longer treat people’s illnesses. In the name
of their religious beliefs, and quite in contradition with the spirit of
those beliefs, the
missionaries are eradicating Akha culture in village after village. The Akha, with probably 98%
written illiteracy, their books the elders, have no way or perspective by
which to judge
this method that comes with all the promises of prosperity. Prosperity that seldom materializes. From a standpoint of
incredible rapid economic change and severe poverty they are
being robbed of their rich heritage.
Children are taught that their parents are living under the
power of darkness and bondage, teaching disrespect to parents in direct
contradiction of the missionaries’ own religious texts. Such practices could not be gotten away with without much
criticism in the west, but people who enjoy
the freedoms of their individual traditions and beliefs in the west do not
believe in offering
those same freedoms to others if they can exploit them for the agendas of their
mission agencies. We believe
this has everything to do with endangered language. If you ban the culture, what exactly is
the language then good for? A
religious ban imposed on culture is just as powerful as a governmental ban on
culture if not more so. We find these repeated actions to eradicate Akha culture
from among the Akha people as going against standards set forth in the UN
Draft of Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples. Anyone who
would like an entire copy of the UN Draft on Indigenous Rights please send me
an email. There is a
whole lot going wrong here. Why I am opposed to the
Missionaries: A betrayal of what is good A betrayal of a people Creating divisions Refusing to accept the culture of
the Akha Arrogance, hypochrisy The Akha Akha Days Part One The Missionary Cold War A complex
and careful war. How missions work and effect the
lives and independence of the Akha and their freedom to their own religion
and culture. How the villages are broken and converted. The involvement and structure of the mission system in
north Thailand is very important to understand, but of greatest importance is
to understand that the Akha as a people have a right to their own tradition
and culture under international law, and this right is certainly not being
protected. It is one thing to say that
the Church has a question of character and morality in this matter, but
ultimately the failure to protect the Akha and their culture must fall in
part both on the Thai government and International organizations and the
Missions. The missions, since they are
the perpetrators, are the chief defendant in the matter. The history of missions is long, through the centuries,
from crusades to the new world, a political order that always claimed it
wasn’t. Always converting and
eliminating tribal cultures and often tribal peoples, subjegating smaller
groups into the larger ones, assisting colonialization and assimilization. A
growth industry on the back of others, following close to the exploitation of
resources and lands that the indigenous live on. This parallel situation is very hard for
missionaries to admit to. They are
woefully ignorant of anything but the polished, carefully selected version of
their conquest history. It is quite
amazing that anyone denies this political role and goal of missions does not
exist, but quite a few still do make this denial. In They are here for a reason.
I am not sure what all those reasons are, but it certainly appears to
be based on inherant needs of the individuals in these organizations and not
much on the needs of the people whom they work with, in this case the Akha. The need of the missionary individual is to stay out of
hell, and they feel that in order to ensure this, they must also keep a few
other people out of hell by converting them to the same fear paradym. This is
the driving force of the missionaries, you won’t meet one that wants to
talk the Bible or the details and justifications of all this. At best, rather than logic and blow by blow
discussion you will encounter rhetoric and quotations. Obviously these people are very insecure,
very unsure of themselves, and really are quite
afraid to think for themselves. Many
of them have their lives, years and years, buried in such ventures and if it
were inspected now, the validity, well, might be more than they could handle,
that they had wasted much time and years.
Or had just been wrong. I don’t mind that people believe different than I do
but I wonder why they can’t even argue their own belief system? For
instance, say if I said I agreed that it is good to keep people out of
hell. I might add that I believe that
for the sake of argument because I also believe that it is good to try and
prevent bad things from happening to people, much in the same way the Thai
highway department is installing guard rails in the mountains along the side
of steep roads. So then I would ask
the missions, that if saving people from harm is the point, then why is not
the money focused to do the most good, water, medical care, human rights, etc
rather than build big church buildings? But they are not so interested in such things. Many Christians make careful distinctions
before giving away money. One is that
they are around to save souls only, the costly church buildings are for this
reason, and they aren’t allowed to spend for saving from other things. Ok, saved from snake bites but not
malaria. Odd support system they do
have indeed. This explains their casual disregard of the living and
human rights conditions of the Akha.
It is just much easier to build a church and claim success. When you need more to do, and when you need
to show how compassionate missionaries are in helping others where the
Buddhists won’t then you can cross the line and borrow one or two human
needs also, to show how much you care for these poor folk. But, the real goal is evangelization, and
the rest is borrowed for additional kudos. For this same reason, having supplied a village with a
church, the missionaries feel no guilt at going home and living and eating
well in Chiangrai, Chiangmai or elsewhere, because they have done their
job. This is a very careful good news, or “gospel” as they are so fond of
calling it. This is the purpose of
their work, to spread the “good news” the gospel. However, the good part of the news is very
limited. When this is pointed out, the
missions must refer to their mission packet for working with the Akha. In this mission packet, built, embelished
upon, and added to as the years go buy, are the standard protective answers
that they have for being basically racist bigots that they are. “Oh, the Akha are bound in the spirit
of bondage, that is why they must suffer and die till they come out of it and
think like us.” And so goes the
thinking and the neighborhood. The missionaries can not cope with the fact of how good
they all live, compared to the Akha they claim to help. In only one or two situations are
missionaries living in the villages and this is for the sole purpose of
putting a complete end to the culture and converting them all to be good
american style mindless evangelicals. Goals of the missions and why we have a problem The chief
effect of the missions is to deny the Akha their right to be who they are,
keep their own culture and traditions.
The missionaries wish to impose a different one, one of the west, on these people.
This is made easier by the poverty, another reason that the missions
do not fight the poverty in the villages.
To fight the poverty would make them less able to succeed in forcing
their religion on the Akha. The missionaries lie and go to great length to deny that
this is what they are doing, taking away the Akha right to freedom to their
own religion and culture. These people
are criminal by every measure of international law guaranteeing the Akha the
right to be who they are, religiously and culturally. Further the missionaries seldom speak the
language and have little clue to the culture of the Akha. It isn’t like their
own so it is wrong. That is
all. I would like to point out the fact that the missions are
not here in any limited kind of way.
They are not here to convert a maximum of ten villages. They feel compelled due to their belief
system, no matter how filled with contradictions it is, that they must
convert the entire earth to their way of thinking. They must have proof that they are succeeding
and this need for proof brings many errors and ills with it also. But it must be constantly pointed out, that this is their
belief system that they number one not only feel they must do and impose,
they also in a self fulfilling way, feel that it must be their right to
convert all to believe like them, or they are not having religious
freedom. They say nothing about the
right of the other people whom they wish to convert to be left alone, to
practice their own culture. Further, there is no unified theory of what their own
religion is, so every individual and group comes with a diferent definition,
within the greater pool. The greater
effort accepts this based on the idea that at least everyone will be
converted to some form of social Christianity. I say social Christianity because if you ask these people
what it means to be a Christian, they will say that in reality many people
are not “true Christians”, are only church goers. But they try to at least convert villagers to
this first status, in order to increase the second, but would deny they are
related. So we convert an Akha village
to be Christian, but are they all Christians, don’t know, ok. So one of my cases against these people is that they are
converting the villages to an acceptable form of evangelical american style
religious culture first of all and that this does not have anything to do
with what their own Bible even claims to be about, mass social movements not
really being the focus of the Bible. So how does this spell out for the Akha? Since there are no limits to what the missions want, we can
assume that their goals at conversion want it all. For the Akha, this means they want all Akha
villages converted, their culture put an end
to. It really doesn’t matter if
there is later on inner strife with two and three churches sprouting up. They have been converted first off and the
details can be sorted out later. That
the Akha were not allowed to be who they wished to be is not of a matter. So the goal is to convert all the Akha, to take over by
force of outside pressure, all Akha villages in None of the missions involved will discuss the specific
problems involved in this, though they do admit problems exist. In many cases, due to many efforts on my
part to expose this missionary campaign, they are going to length to mask
their true efforts by pretending to care for the culture of the Akha. They are liars. Over the past 80 years the missions have destroyed much of
Akha culture, displaced the youth, abandoned the youth would be better to
say, converting them out of being Akha into being nothing with no place at all unless it is
the church, which hardly matches the knowlegde and past they came from. If you go to Akha.org you will see many photos and
additional commentary on this process that they have brought about in the
mountains. Current situation But I would now like to go on to mention the current
situation with the Akha and what the missions are doing to them. Currently the mission, numbering in the
scores, are working to break the last of the traditional Akha villages
and strenthen their grip on the existing villages. This is a political colonization. Surely the Most of the missions are from the We have numerous villages now that are being split or under
pressure to split. The missions
involved are known, who they are, how they are working, who they are paying
to do the dirty work. Requests to the UN for assistance in the matter go
unheeded. The traditional elders are pushed aside and given no
choice. Though it is illegal for people who don’t follow the Akha way
to live in the village, these new converts that have been converted in the
villags, insist on staying and building a church and defying the leadership
of the village. In the past they used
to seperate to another village, fine enough, they no longer do, insisting
that it is easier just to break the whole village. Christians say that they are suppose to
obey those in authority. Missionaries
deny this. They have a way of breaking every rule that they themselves say
they believe in. Once pushed aside, not only are the elders reduced, when there
are enough converts in the village who have taken control, then they will be
pushed to claim the village as a Christian village, against the wishes of the
elders, and then they forbid all Akha religion in the village, taking the
village over and then forbidding the village the same religious freedom they
insisted upon. This is a war, a cold war of religious and political
terrorism being waged against the Akha in the mountains. No bullets, just lots of force. Many people comment that the Akha must agree to this or it
wouldn’t happen. This is not at
all the case. Well paid Akha are sent
to force a conversion, step by step on the new village. The intruder does not work, does not farm
and is not from that village. They are
paid insurgents, paid trouble makers.
They find the weakest point in the village, some family with a problem
with the existing leadership, and then the power battle is on. Divide and conquer. The trouble making churches and missions are photographed
and listed on the web site Akha.org. (This being the biggest ploy of the protestant dominated
US). So the excesses of the Catholic
structure could be made to look like they had been done away with, while
still retaining in full the nasty habits of the lesser character of humanity
when combined with the power excesses of religion. Where as the Catholic church was centralized and powerful,
the protestant church is decentralized and less powerful. If it was a
reformation movement, it was only briefly so.
The final result of the movement was many little units of the church
which have basically no oversight or accountability, and definitely will not
answer questions, the most notable part of any religious authority or
government. The failure to answer questions
they don’t like which would expose corruption, human rights abuses and
the very lack of freedom of religion, as in freedom from their religion.) Missionaries Always
unable to answer the questions Korean Presbyterian Rose Martinez Runs the Children's
Happy Home and a few other places Missions I would have to have a strategy of what I was going to do
there. I hate to unite with the
religious element because I think that despite the fact that they have some
of the better things in consideration, that in reality they are not so
willing to be intellectually honest about all that is going on. They are taking some of the old fashioned
techniques, already abandoned in much of the west for the negative side
effects they brought with them. Try explaining
this. Forget it. No one questions God. They are building the I think of how much I could have gotten done here if I had
had some brotherhood, some cooperation from the religious organizations down
in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai area. But
they all seem to be part of a club and I would have to send out all the signs
of buying into all the dogma that they are a part of if I was going to get
money from them and from my experiences with the likes of Christian Happy
Home and Rose Martinez that would still not be too much of a likely hood
because they are all trying to enlarge their Dynasties and aren’t
interested in helping someone up here with new and different ideas get
anything done in an area that they quite apparently would like to annex but
just haven’t had the time or energy to do so to this point. That is all sad when one thinks of the loss. For four years I have asked for their help
and got none. Meanwhile the kids could
have seen a different life. Next door
the Oh well, the personal questions, choices and decisions go
on. Barry Tell more about this one. He comes here with his silent wife. Preaches hard, then
digs the young chicks and ditches the old broom and takes home a real babe. Missioanary family Gaw Jaw Loi Chiang lewis/cia People say this is why Lewis
got kicked out of Bill young His father was Gordon Young,
the one who had the infamous comments about the Akha. He worked for the army, cia,
who knows. Nimit says he visited him
at his hut in a others
said he had more than one lahu wife,
is he married? you mean how many? Gordon youngs comments about akha
from Mika Toyota That they
were the dirtiest people and one guy screwed all the virgins brian barney/dea Brian Barney
got calls from the DEA They played
basketball together on Sundays Meese brothers Their father The meese brothers, some say
they are pentacostal, others say they believe in removing spirits, lewis said
they taught his villages that if they weren’t baptised with the holy
spirit they weren’t saved yet.
He didn’t like them. The father, he was said to be
well liked by the different tribes and met them at Chads guest house in
Maesai sometimes when he came there. The Paul Lewis Sterilizations The full
story and Akha Reply Missioinaries Came here
and worked a lot with the Akha, I don’t think they understand them and
that may be academic in the long run. protestant many
protestant groups, like rats eating at a carcass catholic low ebb but
steady, always a balance to the protestant Past, present, Yote and adjay dapa
people, don’t know what village they are from, would be good to know
and how long ago lewis began working with them. Nimit would know. Phillip said nimit was jealous that yos got
the job instead of him, something like that. Course there is an odd
connection on nimit. People said lewis
stayed with nimit for a long time to try and get him to dry out, but failed
and nimit says lewis told nimits wife that it was useless and to take a hike
and she did and that she became a prostitute in Pensa’s Mission Does the
government like pensa’s mission?
He may be tolerated because they still help agenda of
assimilation. Is it a form of
accountablility? Akha women who pensa knew who couldn’t bear children.
Why? What is the goal of missionaries? To get
complete control of the Akha for themselves, their way of thinking and their
religfious organizations. Compares to
the ethiopians at Hertzof Yasef and the “TOM” training school. Adjay married an American with baby
now Adjay has a
save the girls center. Missionaries,
just answer the question, what about akha culture. still
paying for sterilizations. Abaw Leeh
Gaw at Loh Mah Cheh, house burned by Christians. Gaw Jaw Akha
forestery Dispute? Christians cut sacred trees. Missions List: animism
replaced with seven devils akha
hostels, dapa etc betrayal of
a people bridging to
jesus christ control the
driving missioinary agenda american
baptist american
family planning international This was
Paul Lewis gig does the
government like pensa’ mission Does the
government like pensa's mission? He
may be tolerated because they still help agenda of assimilation. Is it a form of accountablility? Akha women
who pensa knew who couldn't bear children. Why? lost
collections of knowledge, missionaries lost
information and good will from villagers korean presbyterian
connection korean
presbyterians missioinaries missionaries, compare to hertzof yasef and tom training school. a pool ofconverts, forced end of ethiopian
jew missionaries
: just answer the question, what about akha culture missionaries
as an instrument of foreign policy missionaries
pick up pieces missionary
as counter balance Missions: Meese family Just say NO
to missionaries mmm
missionary military marketplace morse
brother Morse family refudiating
missioinary practice religious
policy and ethic for churches retirement
centers, the missioinary bonus OMF omf and
lewis SIL the amounts
of money available to omf, lewis brian and dapa, yote,l adjay, leo and adjew the baptist
church/hospital maesai the baptists the black
hand The
Missionaries The missionaries
blew the pillars out from under the building.
The thais were only busiy defacing it. the
missionary failure the
missionary legacy The soft
cushy missionaries jobs and their one year visas: We know what
they say they do but we don’t really know Thy
neighbors land mark, the akha and
missionaries Without a
gate by Nightengale, luka knew,
husband now dead, wife alive, reads like Sunday school wycliffe and
lewis young family deprovera,
lewis used? If one
contributes to fragmentation and disunity are they also contributing to
genetic decline? Pensa he may be
tolerated because he helps agenda of assimilation Akha council
passed over for view of OT manuscript, Sahu Misison Tactics Martha Explanations: I hope my explanation below is not too long. I was so
broke today I almost forgot to do my visa and had to borrow the $8 to do it, but was
one of the happiest days of my life
in this neck of the woods, having just signed off sending out all the email. Well, some of my friends call me a heretic because I say a
frog has a stomach but they have
never looked in the frog. What I mean is that I say what the missions are doing here
is very wrong. Many who understand
don't need much explaining,
and others don't want to know but brand me a heretic. Now if they would look in the
frog they would see, yes, it
has a stomach. In other words if the would look at what is done to the
villages by the missions they would
see that it sure isn't "thy neighbor as yourself". Now some of the first events were that some of the Akha
were converted. This was many years ago, in the early 1920's for the
Catholics and then or later for the
Baptists. But in Now I would assume that in those days with the rarity of
white people and their relative
wealth and education it would not be hard
to get an entire village to convert after one of the headmen converted or after an
Akha who had converted came and
sold them the line. We must include here that the Jesus story itself, is a good
story, it is not a story that does
harm to people, and this is
the very unfortunate baiting that so hurts people. These orgs and people appeal to
what hope people find in the
teachings of Jesus, and then use it to betray them. However, the conversion of complete villages is not very
common. Particularly when one
investigates. What one finds out is
that the village is rolled over, not converted. Certain players or dissenters in the village find a point
of contention and promising
what the other can not or will not
divides the village against the other elders often in a situation of
anger. For instance the
dissenter, more often than not,
was in a violation and went for conversion rather than cough up a fine or
reprimand. I have not found one village that fully converted. And I know one of the oldest villages in one of the
oldest converted Akha Pastors, and his village is a bloody mess, his son I know, and
his son is a very gentle
person, but very on the spot and very in the rent of things as well. We have had many
words, kind words, but he is not
happy with me for my rules. So time after time I have found that a combination of
money, promises of money and power,
promises of leverage, promises of
moral debt reduction, reactionism against existing leadership, are the elements of
conversion, and let us not leave
out heavy handed visiting preaching, heavy handed visiting white missionaries
passing out crackers, and flaunting
money, building a church, doing the one time rocket ignition of some village
improvement (which never then carries on)
and the outright confrontational verbal humiliation of elders by an outsider
backing the dissenter. In no case that I know of has an elder opted to convert and
pull the village. It is always a
very less powerful dissenter
and often the key troublemaker in the village who himself is at odds with the elders
and in some cases in danger of
village eviction. I have repeatedly pointed out this dishonest tactic to the
missionaries and pastors, and they can
not explain to me, that if they
are so honest and innocent, why it is always being employed on their shift. So maybe I have come up with this. Each community, as in globalization, is a
nodule that can be
hooked on a major bypass
road to rush full volume consumption to it. Each community is also a nodule for religion. The religious and the consumerism have ties,
the first promising the latter of
course, but they need not necessarily for sake of argument. The church is itself a
business and each community
a market. This was in my opinion the alternative that Jesus offered
people, the end of and freedom
from religion. The church has gone
to extreme lengths over the centuries to prevent this distinction. Currently, as I say, I know of no wholy converted
villages. Just the same the missions
advise that this is the best goal, the
ONLY way. Funny they say that when it
never appears to be the case. I have watched as villages were converted and it didn't
once happen without outside interference, push and payoff. Which in a way is good, because it
also says a comeback could happen. But in the case of American Indians, the proof is that the
damage and fragmentation of the
community was so severe, that the
community dies. Thus also in the book you sent me in Bay Area Tribes and
the Missions there. I think there lacks good books on the mission methodology,
and what is wrong with it. It would read like the And since the village, each village is an economic market
to the mission, the profit goes to the
pastor or regional pastor to
whom the plunder has been promised, and there is no way that he is going to stand for
a non conversion situation. So he forces it, doesn't matter, it is a
market, a religious market, and the religion
or any aspect of it has
nothing to do with the situation, he is going to corner the market. I have seen this determination in the young pastors and old
alike. They see what THEY are
going to get out of it and that is
all that matters. Matthew Martha: Unless the
villages were scattered really closely together I would say that 40 huts is
the average, 20 is less common. And lets say 20 to 40 huts with 200 to 400 people is VERY
standard here. A 20 hut
village may have some spiritual elders but not all. However in the tribal system this
is not a problem because they often "borrow" or visit to other villages,
both the regular villagers and the elders who are always on call. However, if
someone comes and converts, moves or modifies half the village, that is enough
to destroy and gut it. We see that
here. A split village is soon very
week, elders say, "what could we do, we did
not convert but the whole village was converted around us. The dynamic is always
very evil and I am so surprised that not more protest this as an extreme contradiction to anything right. The crusades
and inquisition mentality is the same today with the church. What was
done there did not change at all. And in his
book Milliken mentioned how the natives that were already controlled were used
as the front guard to gain the rest. This would
apply to food system as well. If
forestry or mission move or split the village
the food system can fall apart, since it is joint cooperative. If people can not
borrow the joint labor to work in their field at peak times, and then pay back with a
few days in the other fields, no harvest will get done before food spoils. This is
crucial. This makes
missionaries terrorists which is what they are. Genocidal
terrorists. Here the
daughters go to town and the sons sell speed pills when that happens, always the
worst relocated and split villages have the worst prostitution and drug situtions. I have even seen this when the location is
only meters away, but the situations
combined were different. One village
surviving, the other had a tiny view and
stayed alive. Here the
missions also standardly showed a fake vote by immediately moving as many people as
possible to the mission. This
happened in Keng Tung, where there are thousands of impoverished Akha around the
mission, no farm land and thus no food security. The mission is shameless about
this. And that
village has the highest rate of prostitution of girls to Hope that
helps, Matthew Dawn Project There was the Dawn Project out past Maechan on the way to
Fang, north side of the road. I went there
once with a journalist. Of all things, the place had been donated by Khun Sa,
the “great” drug lord who brought death to so many. His picture was on the wall like a trophy,
a very large painting, the man in uniform, heil. And everywhere signs about Jesus and the
Bible and crosses painted on everything.
A hard core kind of religious place. They
coordinated with the baptist church in Maesai and then I heard lots of things
about their Haen Taek base being involved in using the Akha for an
underground into china. The base in Haen Taek was Khun Sa’s old place
there too. He donated it. There were
at least two trucks they had running around.
One was a jacked up and beat up two door four wheel drive that they
used for running mostly the Haen Taek Road.
A skinny Chinese guy ran that, must have been about forty. He would flash his lights at me and I kept
track best I could of the areas where he was working, but it wasn't hard to
guess since they had split so many villages.
Actually I wondered about all this Chinese activity until a
friend from There was also a mission down in Huai Krai,
more than one, but from one came a fellow that I interviewed in Joesehthai
village. He said he taught the Akha
that the devil came in and out of the gate and so they had to do away with
it. Got that much on video. Well, Joesethai tried to split Maechan Luang
village with Sala Boh Tah and others and they failed, and got kicked out,
didn't like me much for that but I had warned them many times not to screw
the village up. They thought it their
right and had told the headman that if it hadn't been for him they would have
overthrown the village two years before.
I heard that about thirty missionaries came up, met with the Army and
the village headman and were really put out when they saw a bunch of anti
missionary t shirts in the village and they got the boot. Religion One Belief of Another Some people believe that whatever the plight of today is
payment for the past life. This might
leave one quite disinterested in the plight of others perhaps as much as
prosperity theology. One could view it that they almost had a duty to help pay
the person with suffering so that the past would get the justice that it
deserved. Catholics and Akha Books According to Father Apha there was very little that the
catholic church had in Akha writing . After 80 year
there was just about nothing in print.
What an unfortunate situation. A Couple Missions Who could tell why they came. Some people thought they were trying to
keep themselves out of hell and this was a rite of passage. Maybe the church sent them as a good thing
to do and they still didn't know. They
lived well. One tried to wonder about
this contrast but it was soon easy to figure out, most of the mission type
thought that sin was the cause of poverty of the own person's doing and soon
as they "saved" them they would find wealth and happiness. Not so different from Amway. Talking to these people was like talking to a wall. Face to face or email, didn't matter. They could skwirm all they liked, but never
answer the question. Course I came loaded
for bear, so maybe it was like asking a man at his execution if he was having
fun yet? I had a couple oppositions to these people. First off I just bloody didn't like them, they were so in denial, so dishonest, if you asked
me. I would ask them how they could be
living such good lives, so much donor's money for
fancy buildings and hardly any time in the field. They had trouble with that one. I seldom passed them on the road. Course they had a few bullet headed chinese
guys out in the field that looked like they pounded the road a little for
Jesus, but that was discouraging too because they were so racist they could
have formed up their own KKK. Yeah, if
you weren't evangelical or chinese, just didn't cut it. And Akha, I suppose to them that was the
bottom of the pile. I talked to these creeps in the field. One guy, he said there right on video, that
they tell the Akha the devil comes in and out of their gate. Gee.
They banned all the dancing, any thing traditional, was worshipping
the devil they said. Was ok to worship
money, the chinese did lots of that, but not the devil. The Akha had it all wrong. I wondered if they had a permit to be
running around in the name of Jesus abusing people of their traditions and
culture. No wonder But couldn't blame it all on them, the got their cue and
financial back up from the Chinese christians living in the west, and those
people got it from the hard core baptists in the US and those people read
Calvin's notes when he was busy burning people at the stake for the dear name
of Jesus, so little wonder the Chinese were screwed up. If you went to the Dawn Project. God, wanna see a cult, well the dawn
project is a drug rehab project. And who do they have on the wall? Khun Sa,
that's who, he's their godfather because he gave them the land to set up the
center to rehabilitate from the evils of God.
Painted signs of the cross everywhere, bible verses on everything. That would be like sending Jack the Ripper out to look for
your missing daughter? Course this little piece of detail, once again, was lost on
the Chinese Christians. No wonder the central Government in The Koreans, well when they weren't being good
presbyterians, they were busy pimping girls in Maesai. Yeah, they always hung
out at the big condo next to the klong, or down brothel alley, course they
learned that probably from the chinese church built in brothel alley. Yeah, great view from the pastors fourth floor study. Naw, didn't mean that. The pastor seemed naive, like he really
believed that Chinese were just better. Nice guy, just never heard of other
races than Chinese. But sit through one of the services in the church and you
know why you didn't learn chinese, probably preaching about beer and
cigarettes and stuff like that. Always
funny how they took the brunt for sin. But there were some nice people in that church, and I
didn't have anything personal against the pastor, just wondered why they
could never figure out that a little modifying might help. Heck, I remember the time the white haired fellow came from
Chinese Christianity seemed so much like facism to me. I stopped by the Huai Krai mission, asked the guys there to
quit harrassing Mae Chan Luang village, they couldn't get it either. God sent
them. These people were so full of
themselves. Forget trying to get them
to understand what culture was. If you
didn't have a spoon small enough you got to suck the eyes out of the fishes
head. It was like blinders, that was
equivalent to believing in Jesus. How sad that it had come to this. Large maggots, spreading over the land, no
ears, no eyes, just mouths to eat it all.
I had never seen anything but this kind of denial and blindness among
church goers. Everyone afraid to be
the dissenting voice even if they have a tinge of conscience. Many missionaries told me that they knew that what the
missions were doing was wrong, but could one get them to stand up, and shout,
this has got to stop! No, I didn't
think so. Missionaries sometimes wrote to me and said I was way off,
I didn't mind, I told them to be so kind as to show me how, and please bring their bank
statements. The protestants were often the second wave. Then the pentacostals. The protestants came and split into
Catholic villages, then after they busted that up, then the pentacostals
would catch up with them. The missions didn't have to do all the work, they got Akhas
bread into a state of fanaticism, and they would set them out and show them
that if they didn't push forward they would loose all their bennies. There wasn't much of a resistance movement started among
the Akha. But if the Akha ever
collectively figure out what the missions were up to, what it all meant, how they had done this in a few places
before, how the Thais wouldn't let them do the same in their communites, well,
one day there would be hell to pay. The Black Hand Missionaries
And Their Intentional Destruction Of Akha
Traditional Culture In There are approximately 70,000 Akha Hill Tribe people
living in north Counting the Akha in Few western travelers are aware that western based
missionaries have been working for years to seperate the Akha people from
being who they are via means of “conversion” to Christianity. The Akha have a belief system that is interwoven with their
raising of food, and their consideration of the
plant and animal life that they live within in their mountain
communities. The essense of the belief
system is the goal of good crops, careful use of medicine for ailments and
raising children for the next generations.
No single component can be seperated out from the other. One can not say that the Akha have a
culture and a religion, a way of farming and a culture for it is all
intertwinded. They system is complex, carefully balanced, even orthodox
in nature if one were to consider it as simply a religion. The culture of the
Akha completely administers village life. For years, missionaries have chosen to dismiss what it is
the Akha know and consider it irrelevant to their conversion. They have
classified the culture as evil, and that it can simply be replaced by the
modes of western evangelical or catholic religion. The effects on the Akha have beed severe. First off, they did not invite the
missions, but with their coming they have had to see their own culture and
elders displaced, and their villages split. The Problem: The problem is that the missions are working hard to get
the Akha to abandon Overview what the
missions do tactics,
extraction theology, the Jesus Film, with intentional prejudice reasoning
given rewards
promised divide and
conquer neighboring
village pushes them western
money akha elite non speaker
of Akha is the driver lashwey Boohaye in
Huai Krai German Josehthai Splitting
villages Building
churches Discouraging
traditional dress and culture, lost “Social Security”, Lost
Environmental Protection
and knowledge Damage to
language Parent child
link Indigenous
knowledge Self
direction and control All the
different groups Claim to not
be centralized but all work together The stand
alone traditional village is the mark If a village
is laid to seige, how can they survive. Poverty, the
Akha picked on more than Thai Missions
need poor people to run the place. The Black Hand Missionaries and Their Intentional
Destruction of Akha Culture in In a time when Church Institutions worldwide are paying out
record monetary settlements for their mistreatment of Indigenous Peoles it is
time that the mission “colonization” of the Akha Hill Tribe
people in There is
probably no group of indigenous people that have been so invaded and had such
a host of different churches foisted on them at the expense of their culture
as the Akha people. Many people
will probably not find these activities surprising for how missions and
missionaries behave except that they think it stopped four hundred years
ago. It did not. The same horid
tactics of villainizing and seperating a people from their own historic
culture are alive and well. This persistent trait of Christianity gives real and
significant reason to question the very premise of these institutions and
what they are really about, rather than their stated concern for the souls of
human beings. The racist fundamentals
of their mind set which cause them to dispise anything that is not of their
own culture is a dead give away. If
the teachings of Jesus are relegated to a handful of guidelines for living
and concerns for other human beings, suddenly the highly organized and
regimented “church planting” is no longer needed, calling into
serious question why these people exist.
The need for people for their agenda and control seems to be the
answer. In this case it is the poor,
the Akha, who must pay for this. Not
so unusual, whereever one spots a mission, it is usually the poor that the
mission has filled its seats with, filled its kitchens and other facilities
with. One may get the initial
impression that these people are being helped, yet at the same time the
mission facilities could not exist without them as the non poor, for the most
part, are not interested. The Akha
Hill Tribe are one the most accessible groups of indigenous people of record,
open to guests and accepting dispite the inconvenience it may often present
to village life. Tourists come in
record numbers from western countries to visit the Akha in their villages.
Agencies throughout northern In village after village the missions stealthily displace
the culture of the Akha, discourage their traditional ways and dress. There
will soon not be one village in Strapped in poverty and having few to no human rights, the
Akha have little alternative perspective to gain an informed view of what the
well financed missions are doing. The Akha see their culture pushed aside in
steps that are carefully orchestrated by the missions by the deceptive means
that they use. (List them here) There
of course is not a problem with this unless one feels that an inherent right
people should have is the right to their own culture without the interference
of other dominant cultures. Somehow the
people who are forcing the change are the first to talk about how fluid
cultures are. Furthermore, since the
mission has the time and money, even if the village does not want to abandon
its culture, the mission will bring this about, because what the people want
is not important. That the village is
converted and a church is built is important. Faults and weaknesses in villages are capitalized on in
this campaign. The Akha
don’t have a plan, they just want to live, the missions certainly do
have a plan and it can be a long term plan, just to take over a few
villages, amounting to a year or more.
Whatever it takes. A number of families may be split off from a
village and then they are used to gain access into the village and are used
to get the land and build the church even if the whole village does not agree
with it. Missions
know that to gain access to many villages they must work with the children
first, but this often leads to alienation between the parents and the
children. This is the intent of the
mission, hardly an oversight or problem for them. In the end run the mission is hoping that
the village can be turned by the use of the children in this manner. When ever entering a village, cookies,
balloons, any item can be used to attract the
children from parents and then begin teaching them that their parents
don’t have a clue and what they believe and teach should be abandoned
and ignored. Note the contradiction to
all the carefull methods of teaching that will occur after they have caught
these children for a generation:
“We must obey and respect our parents. That is what God wants us
to do.” Have you ever seen such
two faced people? In the end, villages which are not connected and are
normally each autonomous, come under mission control. The missions become
bigger. Numerous expatriates in What is being lost It is only recently that western populations are admitting
to what the indigenous have and what is being lost. Possibly it is because the world and the
natural resources are being compressed down to the last particles and
suddenly in a turn of attitude, western populations are concerned about what
happens to the last environments and the last peoples in them. But with the
ongoing attitudes of western people towards resource use (and waste) there is
little likelihood that the machine will be easily stopped or altered and it
is the fate of the indigenous which hangs in the balance. It may soon be that what is occuring for
the indigenous will next happen to all of the western peoples. Indigenous Peoples such as the Akha posses an incredible
knowledge of the natural environment and human relationship to it. Plants, animals, food, insects, the cycle
of the weather over the years.
Medicines that can be gained from the forest. And important is the way in which the Akha
relate to each other and their environment and keep it all in balance in a
kind of environmental theology. The
Akha have a highly organized legal system of village administration, farming,
and spiritual balance. Missionaries
often characterize their spiritual life as “Devil Driven” but
this is hardly the case. In village after village they find reason to
discourage the dance, the singing, the dress and anything that would have any
appearance to be related to the past. Not only is this incredibly arrogant, but in reality they
are wiping out these people’s life and imune system for their own
selfish needs wrapped up in their religious belief that compells them, not
something that the Akha are asking for.
If they, the Missionaries, feel that they themselves will be condemned
if they don’t “share” the Gospel, as in a disease, that is
their problem, their psychological problem, and they should not bring their
problem to the mountain and foist it on people who are not asking for it. The Akha have considerable knowledge of balancing their
environment while still keeping considerable personal freedom. Detractors who accuse them of slash and
burn (assuming that it is always new trees which are being cut) can only base
it on the record they see with the soil in Villages
that are not forced to move, have been stable for as many as 80 or 90 years
in The collectivization and hegomony of the missions combines
with government activity to help destroy this knowledge that the Akha have of
their environment and their village independence. Numerous
Akha whom the missionaries have converted and pay well, are more than willing
to continue this process as long as the money is there. One has yet to see where they no longer
have a western money supply but continue to try and convert more villages. The missions come in many colors and each one has a
different story that they feed the Akha to try and get them to convert. Anything bad is blamed on traditional
culture. Now if the
missionaries ban the practice of the culture in the village, which encompasses
just about everything, they are sterilizing the indigenous knowledge system
completely. In the end, what do the
Akha need to use their language for when they can’t talk about 90% of
it? In all the Akha ceremonies
incredible knowledge of their past history and traditions that have carried
them over the centuries is known.
Forbidden, these are lost and are not taught to the children. What children should not have a right to their
heritage? But the missions don’t
seem to have a problem with this either. Missions are
also of the attitude that they can eliminate great portions of the culture or
any portion of it and not disturb the whole thing. But what is most odd is that they think they have the right
to do this at all. Their belief system
that promotes this is THEIR belief system and it should not be the duty of
the Akha to be experimented on or abused of their own
culture because of the missionaries’ distorted needs. Should the
Akha have to have a church in their village just because Christians believe
they must have one? The villages often
have a church, locked naturally as compared to a The Akha have an intricate system of leadership in the villages
but the missions displace this with the appointment of a pastor, whose job it
is to make sure that the culture is steadily suppressed. The pastor is rewarded nicely for carrying
out this function. Not a few have
gotten a new house out of the deal at the expense of the village. The elders and their leadership role are
denied. Peeh Mahs,
like the village historian and poet, are banned as well as Nyeeh Pahs, the
village healer. In a twist of logic,
the Christians claim that the Nyeeh Pahs are using the power of the devil to
heal people of disease. Villages which don’t agree about the presence of the
missionaries are usually split, one part moving to another location in an
extreme change for the Akha since villages are made up of great extended
families. The missionaries grab off a
few families first and then justify the increasing division of ideas and
people in the village. The elderly
know what is occuring and that division is being sewn among them and that
their old culture is being denied their children by people who have no
concern and no right. A church is often built in the village with the consent of
only a family or two and sometimes even two churches fight for location, one
at this end, then the next one having to be built bigger at the other end,
usually at great expense. This battle
for the village seems disrespectful and odd at best when the villagers
themselves might not even have the most basic things such as clean water. This process
usually specifically, not by accident, calls for the total abandonment of
Akha dress, songs, dances and any traditional ceremonies as well as the
elimination of the gates and swing if not the actual burning of them in a
symbolic cleansing of the village to meat the missionaries sense of religious
furor and melodrama. In the end, the missions are claiming that it is their
right to define the village, what they will believe, what will be left behind
and how it will all go down. This is
an incredible act of ongoing arrogance and without a government ban it is
unlikely that these people will police themselves. Increasingly
in the name of protecting the young people, girls are being taken from the
village for education with little concern for the long term survival of the
village. Instead of strengthening the
village the missionaries have taken the postition that it won’t survive
so what the hec, might as well get it over
with. The young men see the number of
women available for marriage decrease, and despair settles into the villages.
The 5th article of the Geneva Convention on Genocide prohibits the
removal of people from their group to make them the part of another group for
this very reason. As a result, the
girls, indoctrinated into another life, do not return to the village, usually do not marry Akhas, and the population of
the Akha from that is effected. The missions themselves completely deny what in fact they
do. Of course,
way up in the mountains, who would know? The very
question that they can not handle is when you ask them why they force the
Akha to abandon their culture? How could it be possible that the Akha
would just do that on their own? Why
don’t the missions push the Thai people around in the same way? Is it just
because the Akha are so poor? The missionaries claim that they are just teaching the Akha
about Jesus, when in fact they are doing a whole lot more. They are displacing a whole way of life. They
initially have a very negative view of Akha culture, and a very high esteem
of their own, so it is only natural that displacing Akha culture should be
the only thing to do. Asked why
they teach against the culture of the Akha and what gives them that right
they suddenly begin to quote the Bible instead of answering the
question. On one hand they pass
themselves off as acting only for religious reasons, but in reality the issue
is about power and money, who will get to control
the villages. They don’t care
who the Akha are, what their culture is about or what they know, nor if the
culture is lost, they care only for their growth agenda and if that comes at
the expense of the Akha so be it. Need for protection There is the need for international protection of
indigenous groups from this kind of prosyletizing. Any person,
as long as they have “felt the Lord’s calling” can go and
practice on the Akha Hill Tribe. The vast
majority of missionaries are here on their required mission pilgrimage,
required of all “good Christians”, to save pagan souls. Allthough it is not always the case, they
usually come well connected, bring a good purse with them, drive nice cars,
live in nice housing compounds, get paid well and live well and send their
children to the private schools. All
very nice in comparison to those they are here to “save”. And of late they even bring the
“cultural integration” jargon with them, though goals or tactics
have not changed much. They come with heads full of understanding of the people
they are here to “Save”.
Those people are all “living in darkness and bondage.” The
missionaries are here to bring them light.
However when you begin to start making comparisons between the kind of
things they describe as examples of darkness here and what goes on regularly
in the west the whole thing starts to break down. Usually that is the end of the discussion. Recommended Is God an
American The
Missionaries A time of
Little Choice: Randall Milliken Keng Tung Mission Alfred: The name of the priest in Keng Tung, He is not
Akha, as some priests are. He is not
even tribal, he is Chinese. He took the task to build a new mission in one of the last
northern autonomous zones against the chinese border, so
clear in its own nature and undisturbed. First he made a circuit of all the villages as has been
done in much of lower shan state, and then he proceded to build a
massive church on a hill. After that he built a small chapel room across the valley
at the location of the desired mission. He works some to set up agriculture already around the
mission area and draw the Akha to the mission. Where did you hear this before, Bay Area? Then he immediately noted to me, and this was December last
year, that now he will set up a place near to him at the mission, for all the
girls, and then one place across the valley at the church, for all the boys. You explain this to me even without infering any ill goings
on here, but just as an act of race, gender, and destruction
of these young people? It is my opinion that Indians, everywhere, must rise up
against the church because the church is doing violence against
them and just doesn't stop. They say
they are sorry, but the policy is not sorry and they go on. Indians have far more reason to be angry
today than any Palestinian ever thought of. People can say Indians should forget the past. But the same events and attitudes are still
going on that effected them in
the first place and the people against them are still implementing the same
policies. BIA can have an Indian apologize. I see that as no structural change in the
fact that the ax has already passed through
the neck and is buried in the block. The problem that we have as Boyle points out is the
bantustan mentality. Now tribal
peoples are fragmented by distance
and communications but more importantly so, by the different locations they
have on the timeline of
destruction. It is time that the internet was used to make a brief
graphic representation of the stages of destruction, and that getting past
that people unite in an iron form past all the details and collectively fight
the church off their backs with all
its denial and hidden oppression so cleverly mixed in with acts of kindness. So they build a mission on your reservation. Gee, isn't that convenient. Would you like to take a hot shower before you
die? Before you kids grow up in the
mess you did? The missions are not the only factor in many places, but on
many reservations and in the reservation succumbing
process they were and are significant.
Missions, as here in How else can you explain that the missions here in If you want to persue this issue as it is in This project is supported by people from places like Then there is his brothers
project, Yos, another Akha traitor, and he is well fed and golfed by the American
Baptists. You can contact their
mission office and ask for Keith Tennis, head of this region from There is Youth With a Mission, New Tribes Mission, and a
host of others, all hidden from the eye, unless you have done years of
research, a huge mission picture, millions of dollars in trucks, compounds,
salaries, budgets, but the villages are dying without representation and
without a penny. They have no rights
and the people are being destroyed and the missions are helping it be done. They are taking the apples as they fall from the tree, but
seem to have both hands shaking the tree just a little themselves. It is an incredible denial, an incredible violence, an incredible
injustice and tragedy and it is not going on only in NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Akha.org has just a little information. Matthew You can go
to http://www.akha.org to begin your training. First read
the literature, all the links over, very carefully. Then go to
the pictures and take a look. Ask
questions. Keep an open mind. In of dollars
spent keeping these people fat and fed, while the hill tribe they claim
to reach are DYING. But this is
not the point alone. The point is
to understand how western cultures take the teachings of Jesus, and
twist them till not recognizeable, and then use them as a justification
for building their empires on the backs of the poor, all the while
claiming to reach them for Jesus. Don't you
think this is a crime? Should be. The point is
not to condemn your effort or good intentions. The point is
to cause you to think about what has gone wrong, and even more so, why
the church, of all people, can not admit that it is biased, racist and
trashes the poor while the church itself can do no evil and gets
richer. Of the many people
that the Pope canonized last week, many were criminals
in intentionally done as an insult to the Chinese people. How can
people such as christians claim to be for the truth then in such denial. Mission
Boards are no exception. If you wish
to work with people in the way you describe, first come to understand
these issues, then become a crusader for these people's rights,
not somone who would convert them.
The pagan west is far more evil than
these people who they go to help. Matthew Rodney and Suzanne Missionaries
who want to work with the Hani Rodney’s
dreams after having met Nick and while he was staying at the Maesai Guest
House so they moved to another place, the Top North I think. lewis 4 volume set ethnology Now I have
copy of that. Church luka fellow
preacher giving out 100 baht notes, 2 wives and opium yeah, same
old Sunday school tricks, Barry and his wife. typical way an evangelical wife
should look I figured, all stuffed up Gabriel says “ Books, i’d like to help your work
as long as you don’t tell the missionaries. I get a lot of business from
them. But I don’t understand why
they come here on ;big budgets instead of coming
here to help people on faith?” What is the goal of missionaries? To get
complete control of the Akha for themselves, their way of thinking and their
religfious organizations. Compares to
the ethiopians at Hertzof Yasef and the “TOM” training school. Father in CIA Mental
Dissonance Keng Tung Mission Writing in
The priests
wrote mostly of their own experiences, not of the people. May I have a
copy of the notes? Evangelicals. Religion as business. Dr. McDaniel, who was he? Helped Paul
Lewis on sterilizations I meet paul lewis with What he said
about our meeting at dinner that night that Brian Barney told me later. It gave him a headache, will tell you that
much. An Offer That Got Turned Down We would
also like to mention that we offered SIL, the Wycliffe Bible people, that we
would coordinate with them on a Bible
distribution program, us doing all the work, if it was combined with our
effort to produce history books about Akha culture in
a broad based literacy effort. SIL REFUSED We still
wonder what they were afraid of? We wonder
why they were opposed to literacy? Or maybe,
like so many people suspect, it is about political religious control, not a love
for Jesus and Bibles. lost collections of knowledge,
missionaries If there was
good the missionaries took away more of the good than the bad it would seem secrecy of knowledge that’s
the missionary attitude Akha council passed over for view of
OT manuscript, Sahu zera said
sahu told him this Andrew is agaw’s brother cultural
chief, lives malipaco Dorothy Uhlig Her letter
to me about the Black Hand and the Akha. Copy it here. The missionaries up to the Yao, near
Gaw Jaw Akha Seventh Day
adventists, boy was she a big one, and the gal with her. Looking at
the missionaries suck stickers, her telling the Jimmys group Never met
this guy, Brian refered to him, a pentacostal Akha
apparently, pastor. ywam Rose missionaries compare to
hertzof yasef and tom training school.
a pool ofconverts, forced end of
ethiopian jew marriages gordon young and his book and what
he said about akha Mika Toyota
told me about it and I checked it out and it was true. Christian heroin reform meae salong,
chains This is what
Phillip said, I didn't see it and don't know where the place is unless it is
the Sterilization and Blood Theft Perpetrated
Against Akha People By American
Baptist Missionary Rumored widely for many years witnesses have now stepped
forward who claim that the American Baptist Missionary Paul Lewis sterilized
more than 20,000 Akha Hill Tribe women in This project was done secretly without the approval of the
Burmese Government by requiring the women to come into Government leaders in this region of Although In addition
witnesses now verify the rumor that blood was simultaneously stolen from
these women for resale. Taken during the sterilization procedure blood was
collected in amounts of 200 and 300 ml.
Attending family members or friends of the women were witness to this
as well. Women who received local anethesia only saw for themselves that the
blood was being taken. They did not
know why the blood was being taken out of their arm at the same time as the
rather unrelated surgery. The women
were only paid for the cost of the truck to come down to the clinic where
they would be sterilized just south of the border in There was no follow up care and even to this day in this
region of Of the more than 20,000 who witnesses say were sterilized
in In a past video interview Paul Lewis claimed that any pain
related to the surgery was simply phsycosomatic and that the sterilizations
were the right thing to do and “should be done”. Now the
children of many women have died and they are ubable to have more children. Many women
also experience weight gain problems that they can not control. More research is needed into the number of women sterilized
in the Paul Lewis project and the number of those who have since died. Witness accounts seem to confirm that the
number who died is extremely high as might be associated with any other kind
of surgery. This same scene was repeated in Even now the
witnesses are afraid to speak out against Paul Lewis publicly, stating that
he is a very powerful man and that they fear people who continue to get money
under the table from his Baptist related organizations will retaliate against
them. According to the Akha Traditional Culture system five
people serve as the government in one village. This multiperson leadership
system in villages was eliminated by many missionaries and replaced by single
pastors who rule the villages with an iron fist, allowing no dissent or
return to traditional ways. These
pastors also ensure that the women do not speak of the difficulties they have
experienced and the pastors continue to receive money from western missions. Paul Lewis,
now safely in retirement in Matthew
McDaniel The Paul W. Lewis Reply to
Accusations: From: “Paul W. Lewis” REPLY BY
PAUL W. LEWIS I have
received an article from the Akha News Service, Maesai, REPLY
SUMMARY 1.
ALLEGATION: Paul Lewis had more than 20,000 Akha women from FACT: I helped between 300 and 350 Akha
women from an
operation they greatly wanted and needed. They were most anxious to have the
operation because they could not take care of the children they already
had. 2.
ALLEGATION: The project was done secretly. FACT: The program to help tribal families
was carried out under the auspices
of the McCormick Hospital Family Planning Program based in Chiang Mai,
with full authorization from Thai authorities. Citizens of that is
not available there. 3.
ALLEGATION: The women did not know the long term effects on their bodies. FACT: A Thai woman doctor trained at used the
latest methods - the same as used in the effects for
those women would be much the same as women who have the same operation in
this country, with the exception that their living conditions
are much, much worse. 4.
ALLEGATION: Blood was stolen from these women for resale. FACT: This is the most obscene statement
that could possibly be made, and
totally false. Surely such activities would have been found by alert
authorities in anesthetic was
used, and there was an IV drip started well before the operation,
and continued during, and after the operation. Blood was not drawn,
except in a few of the early cases to check for malaria. We found so many of
the women from check, but
simply gave a full course of malaria medicine to each woman from arrived at
the hospital. 5.
ALLEGATION: Of the 20,000 women sterilized more than 3,000 have died. FACT: Since there were not more than 350
Akha women from who received
the operation, for over 3,000 of them to die is totally impossible,
and reveals something of the lengths the author is going to in order
to discredit the program. REPLIES TO
SPECIFIC STATEMENTS IN THE ARTICLE 1.
“Paul Lewis sterilized more than 20,000 Akha Hill Tribe women in As part of a family planning program I
helped to conduct for the Lahu, Akha and Lisu tribal groups of There was fully informed consent in
every aspect of the program - as an
anthropologist and as a follower of Jesus Christ this was a top priority
for me. The local committees which I helped organize to guide and oversee
the tribal family planning program (one Akha, one Lisu and two Lahu
committees) decided that only couples with two living children should be
accepted for sterilization, and then only if they lived near medical
facilities. For those couples who lived further away from good health care
centers, they felt we should not sterilize any couple that had less
than three living children. During the early years of the program
we provided family planning service
for Lahu, Akha and Lisu in the program
for a year or two, several tribal people from in help, since
it was not available in their country, and they were desperate.
I checked with the Chief Medical Officer in Chiang Rai Province and
he said, “We do not ask ‘Where are you from?’, but
‘Where does it
hurt?’ Of course they can come. We already serve hundreds of patients
from Rai.”
I knew this to be true, since I was often asked to translate for the people
from Over the last four years of our seven
year six month program we began to
accept couples from skilled Thai
woman doctor, who received her training in sterilization at Government
hospital in Phayao the last Friday and Saturday of each month. Her brother
was the Director of that hospital. She would give sterilizations
to the tribal women who came from from Since all of
this happened some 20 years ago I do not have all of the figures with me in
Claremont, CA, but I do know that in the total program there were fewer than
3,000 (three thousand) women who received the operation as a part of our
program. As I recall the number was 2,978.
There were approximately 64 men who had vasectomies as part of our
program. [Note: All of the statistical material I produced has been turned
over to the Akha people in Of the 2,978 sterilizations, about
half of them were done in Chiang Mai.
The operations done there were for tribal couples living in later in a
Lahu village in villages
(Akha, Lisu and Lahu) and closer to the presume that
Dr. Arunee Fongsri performed roughly 1,500 sterilizations in mini-laparotamies. Of those 1,500 cases a little less than half of the patients
were from about 40% of
these would be Akha (that is, about 300 women), 45% were Lahu, and
the other 15% were Lisu, Kachin, Tai Loi, Shan, etc. Just to make sure I
do not understate the total, let me estimate that up to 350 Akha women
from Logistically speaking it would have
been impossible for us to perform
the number of operations claimed by the Akha Heritage Foundation. Dr. Arunee
Fongsri would perform the operation on about 35-40 women the last
Friday and Saturday of each month, ten months out of the year. Even if all of
the women she operated on for a four year period were Akha women from of
approximately 1,600 over that time - much less than the 20,000 claimed.
But they were not the only ones coming. They represented about 40% of the
ones who came, although I do recall one trip when the Akha women from the
operation. That large a percent of Akha women from happen
very often, however. 2.
“This project was done secretly without the approval of the Burmese Government
by requiring the women to come into Thailand for the procedure …
Government leaders in this region of Burma now know about the project and say
that it was illegal in that it did not have Burmese government approval or
proper documentation that the rights of the women were not being
violated.” When people along the border of We followed up many of the women who
had the operation, and found very good results from the operation itself. The
sterilization they received (whether by the $10,000 laparascope or by the
simpler but just as effective mini-laparotomy) is the VERY SAME that American
women receive! There was one Lahu woman from In the hills of eastern know. I
have driven many tribal women (Lahu, giving
birth to a hospital so that their lives could be saved. The long term
effect of not having the operation was often death! Also, we found that almost all of the
women coming from malaria.
At first we only gave malaria medicine to those who were having an active
case. As time went by we changed and gave EACH OF THEM a full course of
malaria medicine the moment they arrived in Phayao, since most of them
had it in their system. They were most grateful for this. One Lahu woman
who had the operation came back about a year later bringing her sister
for the operation, and said that she had not had a malarial attack
since we gave her the medicine when she had come for her surgery. I should mention here that I was
deeply concerned about the long term
effect of all family planning methods. That is one of the reasons I worked to
receive a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of in Chiang
Mai in all of these matters. The world-renowned family planning expert, Dr.
Edwin McDaniel, was advisor to the project, and it was their program
that lent the excellent services of Dr. Arunee Fongsri to us. At the time,
she had performed over 50,000 sterilizations in was very
highly thought of by the whole medical establishment. She was frequently
asked to give papers in family planning conferences in to perform
this operation. It is true that sometimes there was
some scarring following the operation
- which can happen in this country as well. Also, it is true that the
diets of the tribal women in and that
there are various other things that can cause serious diseases among them,
but usually these matters are not related to the sterilization. 4. “In
addition witnesses now verify the rumor that blood was simultaneously stolen from these women for resale.” This is total fabrication! When women
were first coming from While we were in going
around to steal blood to sell etc. There was never proof of this, but lots
of fear. We never took blood to sell - or even thought of doing so. We did
give blood transfusions to a few women who were very weak. I remember a
Lahu woman from last
miscarriage. She was given blood before and after the sterilization, as were a
few others. We also provided powdered milk for those still nursing
babies and needing extra nourishment. Believe me, we did everything
we possibly could to help those families get the very best service
possible. Twenty years later for a group that calls itself “Akha Heritage
Foundation” to put a totally blatant lie like this on the internet
is staggering to say the least! 5.
“… to this day in this region of Right! And that is why we paid their
travel and even for their food for
the journey. That is also why we knocked ourselves out to help them past
this hurdle in their lives, because there was no way a couple could
continue to feed and care for their children when they were having ten children
or so before the woman was 35 years of age - and we had many such cases!
6. “Of
the more than 20,000 who witnesses say were sterilized in To make the statement that over 3,000
women died from the outpatient operation
when there were fewer than 350 Akha women from who
received that operation stretches the imagination! In 1996 when I was attending a
conference related to the Hani and Akha in Chiang Mai, many of
them dying. I checked around with some Akha leaders from and (including
one Akha in-law of the Westerner who made the accusation), and told me it
was not true. The wife of one of the men told how as a little girl she had
been with her mother when she went to the Phayao hospital to receive this
operation, and how grateful her mother and father were to me for
helping out in this way. Then they asked me where I had heard about women
being in serious pain. When I told them who said it they laughed and said,
“It sounds like something he would say!” 7.
“… Paul Lewis claimed that any pain related to the surgery was
simply psychosomatic…” Tribal women in Many such
pains can be psychosomatic, but many of them are the result of intestinal
worms, cancer, poor diet, working much harder than they should,
adhesions from various causes, etc. etc. As far as we could tell, within five
years after the end of the program, there was not one fatality
that could be considered a result of the operation. This may be a better
record than in some Western countries. 8. The
author calls me a “very powerful man”, and claims I was giving
“money under the table from his Baptist-related organizations”. Money sent
to the field for work went through the Lahu and Akha themselves.
I did not receive it. Actually, none of the money for the family
planning program came from Baptist sources, and funds for education
and development often come from countries.
I must acknowledge the generous funding of the group called Family
Planning International Assistance for supporting the Hill Tribes Family
Planning Program of For over 40 years I gave my life and
talent to help these people in every way
possible, but I always worked WITH them, and sought to turn over all
aspects of the work to them as quickly as possible. In regard to the family
planning program, I turned all of that over to the Thai Government
at the end of our seven and a half years of service. 9. The
author speaks of the pastors in Christian Akha villages upsetting the
traditional cultural system. (Actually, I do not know where the part about
the “five men” comes from.) If and when an Akha pastor does that,
I am not happy. I firmly believe in the division of church and state, and in allowing the Akha to determine the type of
culture in which they wish to live. Often, of course, the pastor is the only
person in the village who has had at least a basic education and can speak
Burmese or Thai, so when officials and others come to the village they may
talk with him more than the headman - which is unfortunate. Anyone who knows
what I did in both Burma and Thailand will know that I pushed for an
education for ALL tribal people, young and old, male and female. I can
honestly say that I have not personally been in any Christian Akha village in
either There are a number of Akha people
living in and near Mae Sai who could have given the author my address,
telephone number and e-mail address. It would have been the ethical thing to
do for the author to have at least contacted me before spreading these
accusations around the world on the web. Perhaps I could have saved him some
embarrassment, if nothing else. CREDENTIALS
OF PAUL W. LEWIS I was born in After
studying Lahu first and then Akha, I reduced the Akha language to writing in
1950, and began to produce literature. Dr. Frank Laubach, the world-renowned
literacy expert, came through wife and I
took an Akha young man and two Lahu men with us to work with Dr. Laubach
in producing Akha and Lahu primers especially designed for adults.
Using a pattern Dr. Laubach taught us we also produced readers for new
literates for both tribes. I was asked by the Human
Relations Area File in write up my
findings concerning the Akha people of left fascinating
culture. I produced four volumes entitled “Ethnographic Notes on the
Akha of that I
sought to include the Akha words for all of their ceremonies and other
cultural activities. I wished to help others know and understand these
great people. We went to serve the Lahu in years there
I taught anthropology one year at the Mai (I had
an MA in anthropology at that time from the University of in Elaine and I
authored called, “Peoples of the Golden Triangle”. It was published in
English, German, French and Thai, and the latter translation is currently
being used in teaching anthropology in Universities in I received a Ph.D. in Medical
Anthropology at the University of wanted to do
NOTHING to harm the wonderful people I had totally fallen in love with
- the Lahu and Akha people of is entitled:
“Introducing Family Planning to the Akha People of dissertation
to an being
developed by some Akha leaders in I have produced two Akha
dictionaries, the first published by terms
included) was published in Agricultural
Project for Akha (DAPA), a development organization which I helped to
start, and which was made possible by financial help from Diakonia of Besides
various books and magazines I helped to produce in as the Akha
New Testament and an Akha hymnal, I produced the following Akha books
in Poems and
Songs (313 pages); Akha Riddles and Proverbs (113 pages); Akha Stories (330
pages); Akha Health Book (131 pages). I must acknowledge the wonderful
backing I have had from various groups -
first and foremost being the International Ministries of American
Baptists. They made it possible for my wife and me to share God’s
infinite love with the people in our basic
goal. I was far from being a “perfect” missionary, but I appreciate
so much the compassionate and creative backing the American Baptists
gave to us and our work. Then I must also thank the Lahu and Akha people
of both wonderful
things. My address
is: Dr. Paul W.
Lewis 560 My phone
number is: (909) 625-3350. My e-mail
address uses my initials (pwlewis) with @juno.com. There is
also a fax number for the That number
is: (909) 399-5508 (my name must be included in the beginning of the fax,
since many people use this number). Paul W.
Lewis March 18,
1999 12 May 99, Akha Response This is the
Akha Response: You may
delete if of no interest to you. It is rather
lengthy and difficult to read in some places but is the original handwritten
response. This is the Akha
response to the issues of how their language has been manipulated and how
they were increasingly marginalized by the “pioneering” of
sterilizations among the Akha which has continued on through to this day. This
response is written by a number of Akha who fear for their safety should they
make their names public. Threats have
already been made by people involved with the protestant missions. April 4, 1999 Maesai, A reply to
comments of Paul W. Lewis that the Akha have not been exploited by the
protestant missions, that blood was not taken, and that sterilizations did
not happen in large numbers, were not done carelessly, and did not cause a
lot of women to die: One Elder
states: “Paul
Lewis says that our statement that blood was taken from women being
sterilized is “obscene”. Obscene as
compared to all the women who died? Just what is
he talking about? “Of
seven ladies that had sterilization in our village, two passed away shortly
after the sterilization. Although the Akha do not currently have the funds to
research the exact number who died away it is indeed quite high. Why? They went to receive sterilization
because they were poor. After being sterilized since they could not become
rich automatically they had to go and work as usual. So they had to suffer pain from their
operation. Since their poverty demanding them not to stop their job, they had
to face with new disease of feeling pain all the time. Later, they had to pass away with new
disease. That’s why, the help
given by others turned out to be a trap for most of the Akha ladies who were
being sterilized. Those who survived, still many are suffering from various kind of diseases and social abnormalities. Some became opium addicts,
still some became very thin and suffering from bleeding. Who did all
these things? To me it seems to be
like a systematic way of killing our hill tribe, to annihilate us. Why I dare say like that? As they are experts in these fields, they
know ahead for sure that those who underwent operation some or somehow would
not be able to do hard labor in the rest of her life. Knowing it properly, they persuaded hill tribes women to undertake such operation by offering bonus
to individual person to lower down the population of hill tribes people for sure. They killed
the best of our people. Since our
people knew about it very little, they accepted it like a fish which sees the
bait but not the hook. Now I feel
very bad for my suffering people. To whom shall I blame? To my poor people or to those so called
experts who jumped in with lots of money as if they were our generous
benefactors? Whatever it
be, from my personal experiences and eye witnessing, this project did not do
any good for our people. Why such a
great and well known man like Dr. Paul Lewis, intentionally and willingly
tried to carry out such expensive project particularly just for our hill
tribes people? Since they are well
educated and being able to foresee what will be the result of their project,
why they did such to our tribe? It is
still remaining as a mystery for our people especially for those young people
who love their people very much. Regarding
the Baptist missionaries, they seemed that they did not show any interest for
our culture. Why? They did not
encourage to name the new born children in the
traditional name. They just eager to
build big churches in every village.
Even if there is just one christian family in a village where there
are over 100 households, they try very hard to build a big church for that
family. Such thing
happen in Akha villages. There
may be only one christian family, but the villagers did not allow him to
build a church but he did not listen so he built a small church, later the
villagers pulled it down. Why? Because they are afraid that there will be
division among the villagers, later the villagers will become two groups that
they will start to speak bad to one another.
So at last there will be division in the village. As examples we may find up to two or three
churches in just one small village, how one will belong to Baptist mission,
another to Another
Akha: “I was
not Baptist but lived among many Baptist villages. I could get the best news
that there were going on with the Regarding
the sterilizations, he said that women not only from Tachilek district at the
border, but also from Mong Phyak, Mong Yog, Mong Hkat, Mong Yan, Mong Pin as
well as Keng Tung were sterilized.
Almost all of them came from Baptist villages. Why? Because those who came to bring these women
down also mostly came from pastor’s society. Time they trusted to their Chief Pastor
very much that it seemed they did not think very much that it would be right
or wrong. Only later when they came to
realize that
sterilization was not good at all for hill tribe women for many
suffered and died of this. Since women
came from many many villages for more than ten years at least, the number
would be very great and those who passed away most probably would be more
than three thousand already. Still
other remain who are still suffering. Basing on what many came across from all
these we dare say that much perhaps even more than that. I do not
understand why Dr. Paul Lewis spent lots of money to carry out this
project? Apart from giving money to
each patient he also gave all the traveling expenses to them and 3,000 baht
to the agent, which at that time was a lot of money, for bringing the women in. That is why in those days his project
became a good income for those agents who managed to bring down the patients
to the surgery. Most of these agents
came from pastor’s societies. To
be able to get that 3,000 baht as a bonus, many tried to fulfill this project
enthusiastically, so that became a sort of economy for them. Because of such situation it seemed that
many women received only good stories of what would follow suit after
sterilization. No body told them the
bad side effects that would come out from that project. But fact is fact. Most of those ladies who
underwent sterilization met with various types of disasters. To whom shall we blame for al these
things? It is plain truth in our
villages. Whoever denies it will be
just cheating the world. I am still
wondering why such a great man initiated such a bad thing to our hill tribe? I am very
eager to know the answer. Some claimed
that certain amount of blood was drawn away from their bodies varying to one
another. The patients themselves also
never knew why the drawing of blood was done upon them. This was more than what would be made to
come out for a blood test. How true it
is would be left over with the persons who were paid to do the sterilizations
and have access to all the records. For the time
being, so many patients could not work anymore, many became very thin and
suffering from various form of disease. Many others still becoming socially
abnormal that they felt shy for being like that. But how to solve it? There is no answer. At the
beginning when christianity was arising among the Akha people, they burnt
down our gates, and ancestor offering boxes.
Slowly we were named with christian names that traditional names and
naming system were disappearing away slowly.
By now when a new child is born, he or she will be named in christian
way either by the mistress of the pastor or by the pastor himself,
eliminating our ancient naming system by which we count our generations
back. Now the children can not do
that, because the naming system was interfered with and destroyed by these
christian mission people. By looking
at this to be Akha means needs to know our genealogical line. If they are pushing away such good custom
of Akha, no doubt they don’t care if they push away the culture of Akha
people also. Thus at first they threw
away our culture, later divisions came among the people although they are
same christians. In that way, there sprouting up one church after another in
the same village. Now not only
division among the villages but also division among the
families are arising. How to solve it?
What a miserable situation is going on among our people in Regarding
the education given by missionaries, that was very
good indeed. Many young people came to
know how to uplift the living standards of our people. At the beginning it seemed to be very
good. As the years gone by, boarding
departments also show interest only for girls. Why?
Especially in We do not
know why the so called missionaries are trying to throw away our culture so
eagerly? Isn’t there any good
thing in our culture? If there is not
even a single good point, why then are they making business by selling Akha
head dresses and other things also?
Making lots and lots of money by writing about our people, culture,
custom and history? After all, to be
able to write such things from where do they get all these informations? Indeed, all these informations are given by
my people and they are still poor as usual.
What about those authors? They
become rich and well known to the world for writing and knowing about us. For example,
Dr. Paul Lewis when he came to So our poor
people did not make any trouble for him, instead helping him to be more
learned man and more wealthy man.
People like to call him a “great man of God”. But why did he dropped
down such a bad seed called sterilization which has been carrying on by other
people? My people were so good to him
that he gave us back the worst thing!? Can we tell or name him that he is
still a christian? Now he is retiring
with lots of wealth while we are remaining still very poor? Regarding
the religion, at the beginning it seemed to be very good. Converting one village after another. Later
it turned out to be division among the people. Why?
Some became Catholics, some protestants, some still holding their
ancestor offering while others became Buddhists. All these even though they are Akhas and
sons of the same Sooh Meeh Oh, they could not face to one another. Why? First they took away our culture which has
been handed down upon over 1500 years already by naming it that it was bad to
carry. Now we want to raise a
question, how good the christianity is then.
If that is good enough, why there are so many groups, teaching about
Jesus and yet fighting to one another?
First they divided our people, now they are dividing our villages and
lately they are dividing our families by building many churches just in one
village. On Regarding
the Akha scripts, before Paul Lewis was born, Catholic Akha script was
already there, printed by Msgr. Bonetta from Toungoo Press. And the present Catholic script is the
third improvement and already taken into shape before 1950 and done by Fr. Protuluppi. The earliest Akha prayer book was printed
somewhere around 1917 already. By
starting a new one, Baptist mission started with their own script to make a
difference between Catholic and Baptist. They would not agree to work
together. Due to this which one we
shall choose? Just to take an escape
from all of this we worked with the people at the Akha Heritage Foundation to
make a script which solved the problems inherent in both the others, and that
took no religious side. With this we
can record all our Akha Zauh accurately and it can be typed, read and learned
quickly. For sure we would be most
criticized by the missionaries first, but we don’t care, we just care
that all our Zauh should be recorded for the children before we pass away. The
missionaries quickly seized upon the killing of twins at birth in Akha
culture as a means to vilify the whole culture and turn many Akha against
anything and everything Akha. Divide
us. Conquer us? On every culture, which
we can ever find in the world, since they are formed long time ago, some of
them will not be up to the mark of modern society,
some may seem to be with error. In Old
Testament time they are human sacrificing even. Cannibalism is still going on in some part
of In that way,
our culture also some seems to be very cruel.
For such case, instead of understanding upon our culture, missionaries
would like to mock at us, with that they blamed that our culture was indeed
very bad in that we killed new born twins.
In those days, they presumed that only animals would give birth to
more than one. If two or three babies
are born from the same womb at the same moment, the presumed that they would
bring bad luck to the society. So they
killed them. In those days people were waging war in our land all the time
and migrating from one place to another all the time also. If the mother had to care two or three at
the same time, it would be very hard for the family. They might have their own reasons for all
of this. Today I
would like to ask to those concerned about it properly since killing is wrong
indeed, why then abortion is going on and on all the time especially in US
where all the missionaries come from?
Is that not against the violation of human right? Even in your churches? Why such thing is going on and on all the
time? To us we castrate only animals,
to make them become fat quickly especially for rearing pigs. In abroad they are sterilizing ladies, this
also what a strange thing for us here.
Due to those authors who tried to exaggerate our culture so much in a
mockery way that readers presumed we Akha people might really be primitive
people. Because of that, when they
converted an Akha village into Christianity they burnt down our gates,
ancestor shrines, swing etc. Apart
from that , they also stopped us from doing traditional
burial, naming to new born children in traditional way of names, no more
recitations, no dancing allowed. In
fact all these things made the Akha people to persevere their culture and
language over one thousand five hundred years already. If these can keep the Akha people for such
a long tie as a group of people, we don’t think that all these would be
very bad. That’s why we want to
ask you, whether it is not it is worth to keep them instead of condemning
them and throwing them all away? For example,
gate of the village means fence of the village like the fence of our
compound. Is that wrong to have a
fence of the village? To the Akhas,
swing ceremony represents to God’s creation of human,
they say that the Akha has descended from God through the swing. Is it wrong
to commemorate that? Is it wrong to
name an Akha new born child after the name of their respective lineage? That’s why missionaries should
reconsider it over again and should change their way of teachings. If all these
cultures are bad as they named, can we say that sterilization is justified? Now
sterilization is still going on from the seeds that Paul Lewis dropped
down. All these can be seen in the
stream of life here. From our
close observation we came to know that when the missionaries arrived these
missionaries selected some ones so that later these people would be able to
take their place. In this way they formed a lot of Akha elite thus taking
them away, from the ordinary people.
They made them into a group to be extra ordinary Akhas, thus giving
them best education, best facilities of the world. That is why there small group could buy the
latest cars one after the other. They
became very powerful that they could pin point anybody whom they want and
start ordering what they like. Why
they did like that? Only those
concerned would know the purpose of doing that? Now these young leaders replacing old
missionaries. They think that they
belong to upper class and they don’t want to admit that they also came
from the same people. From where
all these divisive ideas came from?
From the foreign missionaries?
If that is true, why did they do that?
We have no proper leader, no country, no land to be able to claim as
ours, no wealth, no education, number also very limited. To such a poor people, why did they do
that? It seems that they are having to
faces. Under the title of help they
suppress us. To the world they gained
their reputation as benefactors of disappearing tribes. They built their reputations on us for many
years. While many Akhas served to assist this reputation for many years,
assistance came back only to a few. The way they
behaved upon us seemed as if we did not know about God before they arrived
here. Why do missionaries think they
are the only ones who can perceive God?
If there is no good teachings among the
Akhas, we are sure that we can not have survived until this day. Please Post
this information as widely as possible. Akha News
Service Maesai, Jesus Film Exchange: Please
Forward This: Please
Complain To The Jesus Film Project Directors (Emails Listed) Regarding
This Intentional Exploitation Of The Akha People of Jesus Film
In Akha Language: Racism at its best! The Jesus
Film Project mailto:jfp@ccci.org The
Discussion With The Jesus Film Project A Request
That Traditional Akha Culture Be Respected In The Film Translation
Into Akha At the time
as shown below in the email transmissions I requested to the Jesus Film project
that the same errors that were in the New Testament translation
in Akha language not be repeated in the film. In the New
Testament translation to Akha the word used are that Akha Elders
Crucified Jesus. We all know
this not to be the case. The people
from the Jesus Film project never answered the concerns in these emails
but evaded the subject, and then for months did not reply until we
placed our questions on the internet. But at that
time they informed us that the film was finished and the use of the
words had occurred, "oh well." On seeing
the video itself, the reference to the Akha Elders as the people who
killed Jesus is not done once but repeatedly. I can only
say, knowing the Christian Akha who backed this film, well paid by
groups like American Baptist, that the slur against Akha traditional
leadership is INTENTIONAL! They deserve
the condemnation they get, having lived fine lives off the betrayal
of their own people for financial gain. Jesus Film Email Exchange: 1. Akha Jesus
Film Date: Wed,
04 Nov 1998 17:35:06 +0700 From: mailto:dcady@ccci.org Dear Doug
Cady: I contacted
Mr. Dearing with the message below and he said that I should contact
you. I work with
the Akha Hill Tribe in concerned regarding
accuracies in translation for a Jesus Film for the Akha
project. Do you know
anything of this project, or who might and how I can get a copy of
the script being proposed? In the only
available translation of the New Testament which was done many years
ago there are serious errors in the translation that twist in very
harmful predjudices against the culture of these people. For example,
a name for a certain kind of elder within the Akha community is
used in the translation of "High Priest" and since it was used in the
context of the crucifixion of Jesus it would cause the automatic
assumption that the Akha Elder was being blamed for this. Since a
similar position does not exist in either foreign or Jewish governments
it is not an accurate translation. Yet
this serious error in the NT
has existed for years with no attempt on the part of white missioinaries to correct it. As far as I
know, there were no Akha in Thankyou for
your reply. Matthew McDaniel Maesai, 2. 10 Nov 98,
Jesus Film Akha Jesus
Film Tue, 10 Nov
1998 21:17:24 +0700 Matthew
McDaniel <akha@loxinfo.co.th> Mike Ball
mailto:mball@ccci.org> Mike Ball: Numerous
Akha people are aware that there are serious flaws in the
translation of the Akha New
Testament which casts desparagement upon Akha traditional culture
without justification. These
particular errors of a serious nature come in Bible texts relating to the
crucifixion of Jesus. If these
errors are passed on to the film, the film will place itself in a rather
negative category. All they
would like to see is a printed copy of the script, and the choice of
words that it uses. They would
like to give their input into the correctness of the translation
as used in the script for this film. A copy of
the script can be emailed to me, I will print it out and give it to the
Akhas who have requested it. (this
request was never honored on the part of the Campus Crusade Jesus Film
Project) There is a
long tradition here of the missions walking on the rights of the Akha to
impose their highly financed churches in Akha villages and to forbid
them to practice their culture. I can supply
a huge number of photos and video testimony to substantiate this
matter. These problems
are well documented at this time. The
World Council of Churches
section on indigenous matters is also informed of this issue. I should be
very clear that no one says they are against the project but only voice
the opinion that inaccurate tranlation will add to the propoganda
that is being used by protestant
denominations to damage the culture of these people. This is a
matter that could be solved readily but it is also a matter that could
do serious damage if the film is used for propaganda purposes against
the traditional culture of this tribe. It should be
said that in the past there have been repeated attempts to get the
missionaries to see that they can assist the Akha without banning
their culture, forbiding them to practice what the missionaries for the
most part do not understand. But this
effort has failed. The churches go up,
usually in the center of the
village as the attatched photo shows, the people are told to stop practicing
their culture, all traces of
it are removed or burned and so the matter goes on. The people
in the village where this photo was taken were catholic for 15 years,
very small quiet parish, then this monstrosity
was pushed into the middle of this otherwise bamboo village. It could have been located outside the village
as to not be disruptive, in any
direction say 100
meters. But that is not how these
people do it, why be bashful when you are going to push it all aside
anyway? I hope that
I have made clear the concerns regarding this matter. There are a whole
lot of people listening on how this matter is going to go, not
just here in I have
spoken to both Rodney and A-Je regarding the activities of the missions
regarding the culture but I don’t think we are communicating as to how
serious a human rights issue this is. While
general conditions for the Akha continue to deteriorate because they have
not the same human rights guarantees as you or I the missions continue to
take as much
advantage of this situation as possible.
Many have even said that the woes
which the Akha are
experiencing as people who have no civil rights, are the hand of God becuase they
have chosen to
live in darkness and bondage. In village after village the Akha tell me
that they were forbidden
to practice their traditional culture.
This is not a right that the
missionaries have and it will
continue to be publicized that they
are doing this to a greater and greater international audience. It is not my
intention to be adversarial, just to state plainly how serious
this matter is. There is a
continued refusal of missionaries to give room and regard to Akha
traditional culture. There is a continued behavior to feel they
have the right to forbid the culture if these people want to learn
about Jesus. Matthew
McDaniel 3. Mike Ball
wrote: Dear Mr.
McDaniel, I’m an Asia Coordinator for
JESUS film Recording projects.
I’m following up
this question with A-Je and Rodney Guenther, who spent
two weeks last month recording
"Akha". A-Je has a computerized
uncorrected script, I believe. The
recording is still in
process, here. I will let you know what I find. God bless you ! Mike 4. Subject: Re: Akha
Jesus Film Date: Sun,
15 Nov 1998 08:57:49 +0700 Matthew
McDaniel <akha@loxinfo.co.th> Mike Ball
<mailto:mball@ccci.org> Mr. Ball: I hate to
take issue but you are not answering my question. I have asked
you if it is possible to see a copy of the Akha Script because
various Akha wish to view it. This is a project
that will be released to large numbers of Akha, the public in
fact. If there is
no concern, then, all though it may be a nuisance and bother to you,
there should be really nothing to hide in sharing the script. It can be
conveyed electronically. However, if
the Jesus Film for the Akha is actually a partisan work, then you
possibly have reason to protect the fact that it is in reality a partisan
work. If I were
translating the New Testament for the Akha and an atheist asked to see
a copy, although I might very dislike what their intention "might"
be I would realize that once I had chosen to enter the public sphere, I
expose my work to the attention of any and all and follow through
accordingly. However, my
original statement to you was that the New Testament had serious
flaws in it. This in combination with a partisan religious agenda has
done and continues to do serious damage to the Akha as a people,
not something that I think Jesus Christ intended. If a simple
request to view a script, not for the purpose of interfering with your
project, but just for the purpose of getting the opportunity to express
concern over certain content if it should exist and try to open up a
discussion regarding it in an appeal to fairness and justice. If this is
an affront to the way the project is being run then it raises more
serious issues which we were not intent on finding. As I have
told you before, the behavior of the western financed missions regarding
the traditions of the Akha is not acceptable because for one thing it
is illegal. I have
explained the reasons. I should
also say that I did not get the impression from speaking with Rodney that
he either understood or had any concerns for the culture of the Akha
from comments he made. It appears that
the conveyance of his particular
spin on his particular agenda is more important than the issues that
people have been raising for years about the way in which particularly American based missions have treated the Akha. It may be
very possible that not all the Akha disagree with the Missions and what
they are doing, particularly those that are paid well to help, if you
know what I mean. But it
should also be noted that many Akha who are Christians are adamantly
against the missions as well. I do not
know if there is anything in the script that people should be concerned
with. I would hope
not. However the
lack of openess and transparency on the part of the missions here does
not do much to ensure any one. If your
answer is that you will not make a copy of the script publicly available
before production that is your choice, but keep in mind that this will be
noted for the record and that it duly adds to that suspicion
for which there is already a substantial basis as a result of many years
of mission behavior of this very same nature. It casts a
shadow on the willingness of the people on this project to be open to the
issues that exist and increases the feelings that the missions
will come here and do as they please. Matthew
McDaniel 5. Mike Ball
wrote: Sir, I received
your letter expressing your concern about the recently recorded
translation of the JESUS film in the Akha language. Concerning
the script, it was translated by an Akha, not taken directly
from the Akha New Testament. The
script was then approved by several
Akha. The final recording was approved
by an Approval Committee of Akha
people from various regions. All of
them approved the translation
and the recording. We were looking
for a translation that would be
understood by all Akha, not just the Thai Akha. I want to encourage
you that every effort was made to assure that any errors were found and
corrected by allowing people whose first language is Akha to repeatedly
scrutinize the script and recording. While I know
that in the end, any production will have it’s shortcomings,
it’s my prayer that this film will be a great benefit to the Akha
people in all countries. Sincerely, Mike Ball Our Note: In the end a
script full of flaws and racial and cultural slurs was completed. "Its finished" they told me at a
meeting, "can’t be changed now". "God
will judge you for every Akha you keep out of heaven by opposing this
project" "Paul
Lewis (of sterilization fame) is a ‘Man of God’. Please
protest the release of this film to the emails of the people of the Jesus
Project Listed. We have copies of the
Jesus project in Akha and it is
very insulting to Akha people. It
backs up the prejudices that the
missionaries from the west, places like the teach to
the Akha children as to how bad their culture and elders are. Please
Forward. Jesus Film
In Akha Language: Racism at its best! The Jesus
Film Project mailto:jfp@ccci.org Lewis lewis, does
cia give or gave money lewis and
leo would like them to be it would seem lewis cia lewis money
su0pply to lewis roots lewis
sterilizations, dr. in Phyao, Dr. McDaniel lewis
still money supply to people in paul and
elaine lewis pensa
fertility problem Pensa’s
home for girls and other kids Pensa's The
“Young Dynasty” Lauren
Bethel gordon young
and his book and what he said about akha mika Rose martinz Father
Joseph Father Pensa father bosco
mong pyah, pagans pensa dorothy
uhlig letter Bishop
Abraham Father
Norman Father
Clement Lashwey Brian Barney Brian Barney
indiana or Brian barney
played basketball with the dea brian salary
and annual budjets Comment
about gate removal at local church meeting. It was this
stupidity that made their situation as missionaries impossible Ah Jay, Ah Huuh, Father and his
death and house and missionaries there. Abaw leeh
gaw Adjew There is the
Adjew who worked under Lewis. Phillip
talked to him. Seems he had helped keep
the sterilization thing silent. Then there
was the Adjew who worked at Som mah kohm. He wasn’t very pleasant. He was Leo’s wife’s
sister. Then he got busted for dealing
heroin and ran away to Missions and Missionary Behavior and
Policy We
think that the goal oriented approach of western missionaries to convert the
Akha to Christianity, whether they like it or not, is
extremely arrogant and not at all in the spirit of the teachings of Jesus
Christ. If an individual or group with
time and money "lay siege" to an impoverished Akha village to
"convert it" does this village have a choice? We think not, but this practice has been going
on in Akha villages for years. Sects pick
and choose Bible texts to justify their behavior, yet seem completely closed
off to discussion of the issue or reflection on how
their position is perceived. We do not believe that the mainstream evangelicalism or
Christianity from the west has much similarity to the Teachings of Jesus Christ
at this time. We believe that Fundamentalism or Evangelicalism are names
for social and cultural belief systems that may include some of the
teachings of Jesus Christ, but whose main goal is a religious agenda which is
often very competitive within itself.
We do not think it right to foist these kinds of problems and
ethnocentric belief systems on tribal groups.
To look at the literature of these organizations you might think it
some kind of football game, the tribal people the pigskin. In This INVARIABLY means that the people must change, abandon
their traditions and culture. As this is the only thing that these people got
taught. If they had been taught to do
it another way maybe they would. We do not think, from an
theological standpoint, that the teachings of Jesus Christ focused on the
changing of people's culture. However we
do think he had the utmost to say about corrupted religious agendas and
religious leaders who loaded burdens on people which they were unable to
bear. People who made the propagation
of religion a business which completely missed the real needs
of the people for compassion, understanding and help with their daily physical
needs. We believe that in many situations missionaries are one of
the chief causes of the marginalization of tribal cultures and the ENDANGERMENT OF MINORITY LANGUAGES We can readily show proof of this to any visitor who would like
to come and research this subject. We would suggest that those who belong to the Endangered
Languages effort stand up and loudly protest these practices. (Don't hold
your breath, they're all too busy mining SIL databases) We think that the practices of the western mission groups
which INSIST on the abandonment of complete traditions, the imposition
of concrete church buildings in bamboo mountain top villages and the
insistence of the removal of Akha Gates are Human Rights Abuses according to
the UN Draft on Indigenous Rights. We
realize also that these activities are "winked at" in the
west. Majority populations expand, land bases shrink, governments
ignore but we see no other single focused effort so consistently in name and
agenda do all it can which by its very nature will eliminate tribal identity
and force assimilation. And if history
is any record,
after "assimilation" comes extinction of the race as can be readily
seen in the United Statesamong no longer existing tribal groups. We might ask here, why, if western religious systems are so
right, why do they so quickly condemn tribal people's cultures while those
very same western countries took all the tribal lands as they saw fit, and to
this day continue to patent tribal plants and tribal
human genetics? Just who is corrupt in this picture? Just who is in need of converting? Just when are
the right Americans going to come back and pick up all their unexploded bombs
in "Do as
we say, not as we are very busy doing!" "Take
this aid, the price is Jesus." What a
horrible way to get to know anybody. Yaesu Tsaw Hah It was very obvious to me from working with my cook that
those Akha who considered themselves “Christian” had latched onto
some of the most obnoxious behavior and unfortunate behavior. Without hardly
exception they made the intentional point of not teaching anything about
their past, their culture, their history to their children. Sure there were things in Akha culture one
could do without, as with any culture but why not teach the good parts. But the Christians and this was the sole
source of it, intentionally taught what was bad. Taught the role that the western Christians
wanted from them if they were still to get their moneyl. This whole role of christianity was bad and
I wanted nothing to do with it. So
they really didn’t know who Jesus was, they gave up the past, they got
nothing but mouth to replace it with. Other things Missions Luka: I saw Luka today, he seems real scared of me, laughs real
uncomfortable, like he doesn't want to hear the questions, the ideas, the
contradiction, well, I will leave him to that. He was driving his twin truck through maesai with the donor
judge in tow. Gospel? In the current reality here, just seeing what has happened
to the Akha, how much "gospel" seems to be race based, has caused
me to ask whta the "gospel" really is. I think it si that Christ died so that our
perishing nature could be healed and such that we could find the
"good" and our way home, preventing the death of the soul. It all sounds strange I know, a complex
formula of complex events, that are rather unreal
from the modern techno world of white christianity, which did itself the big
favor of divorcing itself from its Jewish roots. The Those who can read Akha were developed by the Catholics and
the Baptists. The Catholics designed
almost no boks, not even a Bible till of late, but the Baptists designed a
New Testament and a few other books.
One can say the Baptists translated no literature for the Akha, that
they totally suppressed their culture even though they had devised a powerful
tool for literature. It appears to me that Akha traditional knowledge jas om ot
twp dostomct categproes and others. One is the
balance of nature by 12 ceremonies and more.
The other appears to be details of civil law. We find it reprehensiblethat the missionaries would
suppress knowledge of a culture that would make it appear that they wanted
spiritual colonial control of a people, which of course they do, obviuosly
colonialists, no "whosoever will" in their theology. Not allowed
here. When other denominations came in only then did the American
Baptists and such complain about "devisiveness" not bothering to
think what they had been champions of. Many of the rules and laws of Akha Traditional Culture
appear no different than the rules and laws governing our secular
societies. The attempt by the
missionaries such as the American Baptists to classify all of th is as a
religion and to replace it with their own theocracy is likely to cause a
backlash against even any good intentions they may have had. To say nothing of having been what one might consider
immoral if not extremely arrogant. Akha Theology and Missions I think that people hope to see big splash conversions in
the villages. The
missionaries have a very bad name here and rightly so. I try to keep put out a different angle on
the story while working at basic needs for the Akha. Real things take a lot of work and the villagers know the
difference. We are currently laying the foudation for a very streamlined
literacy project with fast access to the language. The editor is also working on his own project of a New
Testament and Old Testament in Akha different from that of the American
Baptists. I wonder how
good it will be? Indigenous vs. Missions It is pretty difficult in a short paper to bring in all the
information and illustrative examples of what missions are doing to the Akha
indigenous culture. This is only intended as an opening introduction to the
issue. It certainly behooves teh reader, particularly the
Christian reader to do the necessary research of these issues in order to
enlighten themselves of the incredibly negative
relationship that the Christian people have dealt out to indigenous
peoples. As a burden upon work that
they have fostered. It is NOT the duty
of indigenous peoples to enlighten Christians. Only when the existing and well documented history of
Christian disregard for and ill treatment of the indigenous is understood,
can Christians expect to claim any honest right to their own faith or
reconciliation for their actions. All too often the apparent good Christians claimed to be doing
was not with the full consent of the indigenous they were busy doing it to. It should be made very clear from the outset that
considering the terrible history of Christianity with its frequent plunder of
peoples and their lands, that any God fearing individual might do well to
diassociate themselves from "Christianity" as compared to being a
follower of Jesus. The convenience with which people hide behind the claim to
be Christian to being "born again" continues to play to the
ambiguous history of the group. The entire collective is called upon during perceived
persecution, but no such collective is called upon when sommons are made
regarding "mystakes".
Rather one is likely to h ear, rather than a clear accounting,
"Christians make mistakes, Christians aren't
perfect." And this may be brought
up in the discussion of events which are no less criminal, no less than acts
of genocide. The Christian Church has been involved in acts of genocide
according to the definition of the word via the 1948 acords. And Christianity as a civilization movement
h as been responsible fr massive genocides of peoples of the After all it was Christian America as some call it, which
was a chief consumer of slaves for many years. A place for the most part, a black person
to this day is still a second class citizen, which on would not envy. I can not stress enough that it is the so called Christian
who must bear the burden for examining their traditional relationshiop
towards the indigenous as both a destructive and murderous one. This is the
legacy. This genocide waged by Christian society continues
throughout the world to this day. Neither can I stress enough the n eed to examine the term
Christianity and its inherent ambiguity. When faced
with "pagans" "muslims" every westerner is a
Christian. But when faced with
"charges" one is a "christian" in the west as opposed to
those in the west who "are not".
And further yet, one may claim as is often heard "well they could
not be 'true believers' to have done like that." These three levels of distinction are carefully held while
living under the benefits of all three.
So a "true believer" lives comfortable in a land plundered
from the now dead and impoverished indigenous. Yet the individual, quick and clever, with
mouth and bank account full, claims that he "as a Christian, as a 'true
believer' didn't do it." Or that these events that befell the Indians
were a sign, a judgement even from God, for their evil ways, and that their
heritage was handed to better people. For this reason I prefer to follow the clear and
unambiguous teachings of Jesus rather than lay claim to anything Christian or
suit myself further by claiming to be one, picking and choosing the benefits
at will. So f you live in Now let me turn my attention to missions. If we
consider that American missions particularly come from a country where people
live a way of life that is built in with racial arrogance all conveniently
wrapped up with "being Christian" and considering the past history
of the conquest of the American Continent, what kind of "gospel"
can we assume might show its face on the foreign mission field where
predominantly white missionaries from predominanantly conservative
evangelical fundamentalist heartland America show up? And this is where the contradictions, deceptions and
denials of the "Christian" movement can be seen. Unable for the most part to admit to their racially
arrogant treatment of "minorities" in Amreica would it make much
sense that they would be able to deal with it in the thrid world where they
are under far less accountability.
Every missionaries Aryan dream? I would go one step further. I would suggest that Christianity is an an
opiate administered by an economic movement carefully engineered to give the
missinaries total amensia of wrongfull deeds while filling their own or their
countries coffers. Seen as strictly an economic movement of plunder and ever
increasingly high standards of wealth it quite readily explains the logic and
process. Seen as a religious movement it does not do the same as readily, and
seen in the light of the clear teachings of Jesus it is rife with twisting,
churning, corruption that damages unknowing peoples. So I am envisioning a wall.
On one side the teachings of Jesus and those who would adhere to that,
on the other side Christianity, evangelicals, and all their carefully doctored
"proof texts" from the Bible that allows them to do anything to
other people in the name of Jesus. You yourself will have to decide what side of this wall you
wish to live on but the choice becomes increasingly important as we persue
the incredibly wrong treatment of indigenous peoples by those who call
themselves "Christian". As I enter ito this specific discussion of the mission
treatment of indigenous peoples and their culture I ask many questions as to
"why?" does this occur, why do these abuses of everything Jesus
taught continue to occur at the hands of those who profainly lay claim to be
the sole users of his name? Crosses
everywhere? Missions are the cloaked forward military operation arm of
not western governments, but the white race.
There are exceptions to this but the offenses are far too severe to
beg off when one considers the cost to the indigenous. Behind this offensive white militaries can and do follow. We certainly see this with the Akha. The opium trade, missionaries, the market place
forced on the people, the military coming from the I will carefully point out the contradictions, the methods
of operation and what follows. A person may be a nurse in a mission hospital. But that is an isolated incident in what
the role of the mission over all is and the connected commercial interests
that benefit that same person's country.
LIke army, navy, air force and marines, there is the need for
missions, which soothe the consciences of the war mongers as they haul away
the booty at cheap to no price for western consumer markets. The net ledger balance is in their favor by and far. Would not anyone find a cntradiction in the fact that American
Missions try to evangelize in What do the missions do wrong?? First apparent mystake is racism. Winter and
ice had more to do with the advancement of white people than race, which they
prefer to attribute it to. You worked hard i nthe summer or in the winter there was no
food, no house and after the first freeze, like a pumkin plant, you were
dead. So you worked hard, invented, forged, and made machines and
weather protecting devices, anything that made winter safer. Now if you put that on a ship you could end up in another
man's land where he ate mangos and you had a gun of steel. Some basic
thoughts: 1. Racial
arrogance 2. Religious
belief mixed with all the roles of plunder. (eg. They had and knew nothing so we took it all) 3. Using
Jesus as a justifier of it all. 4. Lack of
knowledge or understanding of the culture. 5. Number 5 is
where the racism really comes in.
White boy (girl) missioanry, mixes his own
culture in and then tells the native of a 1,000 years culture that Jesus is
the only right way and his culture is superior because it is like Jesus and
would the native please abandon his entire culture for "jesus". Now on the other hand the white person need not be ashamed
of the good things they have as much of it came by very hard work, but they
should not mix the reasons for that, with what their religiuos beliefs are,
that they are the same. And there is
no further reason to teach the native to abandon their own culture and all
its knowledge. However one is tempted
to think that these abandoning conversions, or extraction theology is
convenient proof to the people back home that the missionary is in fact doing
something. Yet Americans would never offer to abandon their own
culture, wether they vassilate between claiming it is the same thing as
Christianity and Jesus or not. From claiming that Jesus was a white man the Christians
allow themselves many lies. The problem is that missions come to change people. They claim that they come to change them
like Jesus but in fact they come to change them to be like themselves and
their own culture. As one jokester put
it, God created man in His own image, and man returned the favor. As a result, instead of bringing the native people good with no strings attatched, everything ends up being
connected to the greater agenda of making the native peoples as miserable as
themselves. If it worked that would be one thing, but for the most part
it doesn't all the while contributing to the more rapid downfall of the very
people they pretend to help. Charges Against Missions 1. Missions
are building their wealth on the backs of the poor. 2. They are
supressing indigenous culture and knowledge for their own benefit. 3. They are
removing children of all ages from their natural families and villages in the
mountains. They are thus blocking and
discrediting the natural education of these children while teaching them
deceptions about their own culture which discredits it in the minds of the
children. 4. They fail
to work in the villages through the existing Akha leadership and traditions. 5. They
consistently attmpt to undermind the traditional cultrue of the Akhas all the
while denying that they are doing so. 6. They
particularly target children for anti Akha propaganda in an attempt to split
and divide the villages. 7. Villages
are seen as "targets" and "trophies" to take over. 8. A village
can not be considered to be taken over unless the village completely abandons
their culture. 9. Churches
falsely tell the Akha they are worshipping the devil. 10. Swings
and gates are required to be removed. 11. They
remove young women from the villages discouraging them from marrying among
their own people which effects the birth of Akha
children. 12. Their
entire mission policy is based on the racially arrogant agenda that they and
their culture is superior to all things Akha though
most of what they know about Akha culture is disinformation. 13. The
overall policy of the missions is to collectivize and control a free people
and the destruction of their culture is crucial to this process. How can the
Akha defend themselves against this financial
onslaught? Boarding School Dear TAHR: This is a
very serious matter. I do not
know the names of the people at the church.
We are not exactly on talking
terms. There are
numerous administrators and pastors. There are
also numerous churches here. It is very
hard to get this information and the reason should be no mystery. They don't
like people to know what they are doing. The Church
in I have been working
to safeguard the villages, and hold them together against government
attempts to take their land and force them to either starve or relocate. In the Doi
Mae Salong Area the Akha have already lost much of their land while the
Chinese plantation owners of tea, fruit and flowers prosper enormously
with increased farm holdings. This same
event is repeating itself elsewhere. For this
reason it is extremely serious that no children be taken from their villages,
not that it was ever good. But at this time,
any indication of a weakening village, less workers, only old people,
increases the government pressure to take more land or relocate the village. As well, the
Akha have a unique culture. It has
never been necessary to destroy
their culture in order to tell them the inherent truths of Jesus. Truths
seperate from a western view of it, if you will. Yet the
Chinese missions here have taken great delite in villifying every aspect of the
culture in a black and white fashion which causes polarization on the issue and
villages to split. In other words if
you are to believe in Jesus, you must stop
being Akha. Its
that basic. Stop being who you are,
and what you know. This was
first instituted by the catholics and others such as Paul Lewis in this region. The Chinese
missions here are basically American Baptist. All of these
missions I have alerted that they were creating an impending cultural
disaster. In more and
more villages they have made pay offs or struck fear in the villagers
if they did not convert. Hua Mae Kom
Akha village, over run. Mae Chan
Luang Akha village, Split These two
are just a couple. All of the
Chinese Baptist Missions are networked to the Maesai Chinese Baptist But there are
many missions in this network, they have meetings, and there are also
American Chinese Baptist, American Baptist, and German missionaries working in
this same network. Maesai Lisaw
Children's Home Huai Krai
Mission Huai Krai Mission
## Haen Taek
Chinese for Akha boarding school Emanuel
Gospel Fellowship at Huai Krai (Ms. Sing?
American Taiwanese, her mission has repeatedly tried to take over the
traditional villages in her area.
After a take over there is no more practice of the
traditional knowledge system of the Akha or their orthodox environmental
theology) There are
more, but I do not know where they are all located. They now
have many churches in the mountains, using Lahu and Lisaw to pressure
the more resistant AND INTACT Akha. Besides this
boarding school, counting the others, it adds up to hundreds more children. You will not
find any tradition left with any of these children. They are required
to convert. This breaks
the parent child link, made hard by distance already, to the oral traditions
and knowledge system that each Akha child learns. The
conditions of poverty in the villages are immense. Rather than fight government policy,
they take advantage of this incredible tragedy and pull the
children. They have pulled so many
girls particularly that there are not enough for
the young men to marry. This is
definitely a case of illegality at a very |