The Uncontacted Tribe : Sentinelese
Introduction
We live a modern lifestyle with food from a supermarket, we use cars, planes, trains etc. for transport and communicate through several devices. But still there exist several groups of people who lack all types of modern lifeforms and resist contact with outsiders. These groups are isolated tribes situated with the majority of them in the dense amazon rainforest due to their isolated location but the most secluded tribe of all is Sentinelese tribe in the Andaman Islands in India.
The Sentinelese
Their name comes from the island they reside called the North Sentinel Island. North Sentinel Island is located about 50 kilometers west of Port Blair, the capital of the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India.
The Sentinelese Tribe is one of the six native tribes on Andaman and Nicobar Islands and may be closely related to the Onge or Jarawa Tribe which have populations on the Greater Andaman Island. They follow a hunter gatherer lifestyle and resemble a lifestyle somewhat similar to that of the stone age period .They are known to be hostile with outsiders for unknown reasons. Their population is uncertain but estimates predict a population between 15 and 500 with the range 50 to 200 as the most certain range.
They speak the Sentinelese which is very different from the languages of other tribes in Andaman which could be a result of their isolation. They have mostly inhabited the Islands for thousands of years.
Attempts Of Contact
The Andaman Islands were mostly isolated from the rest of the world until the colonial era when the British established the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a penal colony.
The Island’s first known mention of presence was in 1771 when East India company Hydrographic survey vessel observed a multitude of lights from the north sentinel island.
The first ever encounter with the Sentinelese occurred in 1867 when a merchant vessel sunk off the reef of North Sentinel Island. The crew landed on the beach safely but while proceeding to have breakfast on the third day there was a sudden assault by a group of naked, short haired and red coloured islanders with arrows which were iron tipped. The crew were rescued shortly after by the Royal Navy.
The next significant contact occurs in 1880 when the Royal Navy officer Maurice Vidal Portman who was serving as a colonial administrator to the Andaman Islands led a group of armed Europeans and Andamanese trackers whom they had befriended into the North Sentinel Island to establish contact with the Sentinelese. After their arrival the islanders hid in trees and the group found abandoned villages. The group captured 6 islanders — an old man, a woman and 4 children. The woman and the old man died after their arrival on Port Blair due illness caused by their lack of immunity to foreign diseases. The 4 children also were getting ill, so they were immediately sent back to the island with large amount of gifts to showcase friendly relations.
There have been several instances of encounters of fisherman being too close to the Island’s boundary and getting attacked by the islanders often resulting in death.
After independence of India the government made North Sentinel Island as a tribal reserve and prohibited travel within 3 nautical miles of it.
There have been several expeditions to the island to establish friendly relations with the islanders by giving gifts such as coconuts. Such attempts were unsuccessful until 1991 when the Sentinelese readily accepted coconuts as gifts and did not have weapons in hand indicating a friendly encounter for the first time ever.
But after 1994 such expeditions became more and more rare as the government maintained a policy of no deliberate contact and also erased the pictures of the expedition fearing that there would be an influx of outsiders with the news of friendly expeditions.
Just in the November of 2018 John Allen Chau an American 28 year old Christian missionary ventured to the island with the purpose of establishing a friendly contact with Sentinelese in hope of converting them to Christianity. Chau did not take the necessary permits to visit the island and bribed fishermen to travel to the island. He made several visits to the island in a span of 3 days trying to create friendly relations and giving them gifts.
On 17th November Chau made his final visit to the island. He instructed the fisherman to head back and made his way to the island after which he was killed by an islander. The fisherman saw his body on the shore the next day.
The Debate Over Contact
There have been arguments on the topic of contact with tribes. The first group believes that it is necessary to make contact with civilized tribes and make them reap the benefits of modern lifestyle. While the other group believes that contact with tribes leads to their extinction due to their lack of immunity to foreign diseases which will lead to extinction of their culture and traditions.
What do you think? Do you favour Contact with Tribes or do you favour leaving them alone to ensure continuation of their culture and lifestyle.
Attributions-
^Photo by NordNordWest — Own work, using United States National Imagery and Mapping Agency data, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19199882
