“The fact that their language is so different even from other Andaman islanders suggests that they have had little contact with other people for thousands of years.”ĭr Ghosh said other tribes in the region had embraced contact with outside populations and their numbers had dwindled. Survival International believes the Sentinelese are descended from migrants from Africa. “Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese,” the group says. Survival International, an organisation advocating for the protection of ancient tribes, says the Sentinelese are the least disturbed people on the planet. “However they did not respond - they were probably drunk - and the boat drifted into the shallows where they were attacked and killed.” “As day broke, fellow fishermen say they tried to shout at the men and warn them they were in danger,” Samir Acharya, the head of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, told The Telegraph at the time. The pair, Sunder Raj, 48, and Pandit Tiwari, 52, were fishing illegally for mud crabs when their anchor failed during the night. In 2006, when two fisherman accidentally floated ashore, they were swiftly executed and buried in sandy graves. The Indian Navy enforced a buffer over 10 years ago that has been, for the most part, respected. A photograph taken from the air is one of the defining - and only - images of the Sentinelese people. It was met by a spear-wielding native who chased the visitors away. In 2004, fearing the tribe had been wiped out by the devastating Boxing Day tsunami, the Indian government sent a helicopter to inspect. News_Image_File: A member of the Sentinelese tribe, Andaman Islands, India. Even one non-hostile encounter (with Pandit) turned hostile when a warrior pointed a spear in his direction as if to say “now you can go”. “They have clearly shown each time contact has been attempted that they do not want outsiders. They left coconuts and knives and cloth and cookware and mirrors all luxury items foreign to a tribe that had lived without them for 60,000 years.ĭr Ghosh said progress was made but did not last. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Indian government sponsored anthropologist T.N. In 1974, a documentary maker took an 8-foot-long arrow in the thigh. In the 1970s, each new visitor was turned away by a shower of arrows and spears. Smaller expeditions made visits in the following years but hostilities soon emerged. The islanders, from all reports, hid from the arriving party. In 1967, the Indian government sent a search mission ashore. “They look reasonably stable but of course it’s impossible to tell what living conditions are like because nobody has been able to get close enough to tell.” They fish and eat washed up coconuts and manage to survive,” she said. “They have survived up to now and been fairly stable from what we can tell in terms of population. She told the Sentinelese are doing fine on their own. Picture: Gautam Singhĭr Devleena Ghosh from the University of Technology Sydney specialises in Indian Ocean history and culture. News_Image_File: It looks like paradise, just don’t try to visit. The rest of society needs to carry on without them. If you ask the experts, they say the same thing: “Leave them alone”. No ecotourists, no holiday-makers, no fishermen, no government officials.īut will they stay away forever? Can the civilised world really leave this ancient tribe to fend for itself without modern medicine or electricity? India has sovereignty over the island but has enforced a four-kilometre exclusion zone. It is covered by dense jungle and surrounded by sandy white beaches and coral reefs. North Sentinel Island is twice the size of Norfolk Island. News_Image_File: The locals don’t welcome visitors. The consequence for failing to adhere to that message, as two crab fishermen discovered in 2006, is certain death. Their language may be unfamiliar but the message is impossible to misinterpret: “You are not welcome here”. Those who dare to visit are met by men and women wielding spears and arrows. THERE is an island in the Bay of Bengal guarded fiercely by one of the worlds last remaining uncontacted tribes.
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