Kachin Culture ID

The Kachin culture belongs to the hill peoples of the northern Burmese highlands and the surrounding mountains, a rugged frontier region where they maintained a fiercely independent way of life distinct from the lowland states.

Kachin communities practised shifting cultivation on the hillsides alongside hunting and the keeping of livestock, adapting their farming to the steep and forested terrain of their homeland.

Kachin society was organised around clans and lineages, with social rank and obligation carefully reckoned, and a religious life centred on spirits and ancestors propitiated through sacrifice and ritual.

Renowned for their martial spirit and their independence in the northern hills, the Kachin formed a distinctive highland culture on the margins of the Burmese world.