Abstract
Protestant Akha highlanders of Northern Thailand held a Silver Jubilee in 1987 celebrating the initial conversions to Christianity twenty-five years earlier. The Akha-language translation of the passage from the Gospel of Matthew selected as the Jubilee's theme evokes the image of a laden basket from a pre-Christian folktale accounting for the differentiation of Akha from other ethnic groups, and the Protestant Akha used this traditional image to separate themselves from non-Christian Akha. This paper explores the transformation of a symbolic vehicle for interethnic differentiation into a vehicle for intraethnic differentiation. Use of this laden basket image is viewed as part of intraethnic dialogues of identity, which are themselves embedded in dialogues of identity between Christian as well as traditionalist members of the Akha tribal minority and Buddhist Thai, who are Thailand's dominant majority both politically and culturally.