North Sentinel Island Facts Sentinelese John Allen Chau

100 Facts About North Sentinel Island, The Sentinelese And John Allen Chau

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Contents

Introduction

  1. North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal, a territory of India.
  2. The island is the home of the Sentinelese, also known as the Sentineli, one of the last uncontacted tribes on all of planet Earth.
  3. The Sentinelese have inhabited North Sentinel Island for thousands of years and are one of the only truly isolated communities in the modern world.
  1. In November of 2018, the Sentinelese made headlines for the murder of an American missionary named John Allen Chau, who illegally traveled to the island, in an attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity.
  2. Deadline reports that Justin Lin, is set to direct The Last Days of John Allen Chau as his next film, and Ben Ripley is penning the script.
  3. The Sentinelese have expressed their desire to remain isolated, by vigorously defending attempts at contact by outsiders.
  4. North Sentinel Island is approximately 23 square miles, making it about the same size as Manhattan.
  5. The Indian government has declared the entire island and its surrounding waters, extending 5 nautical miles from the island, to be an exclusion zone, to protect the Sentinelese from outside interference and preserve their culture.
  6. Although we call the island’s tribe, the Sentinelese, we don’t know what they call themselves and they’re most likely unfamiliar with the name we have chosen for them.
  7. The tribe practices traditional hunting and gathering, with no practice of agriculture.

Geography

  1. North Sentinel Island’s geography makes it ideal for isolation, surrounded by dangerous coral reefs, it has no natural harbors and it’s located outside commonly trafficked shipping routes.
  2. A majority of the island is covered by dense, tropical and subtropical, moist broadleaf forest, except for the shore, and uplifted reefs.
  3. The highest point of North Sentinel Island is about 400 feet. The island is encircled by a narrow beach, beyond which the land rises about 66 feet.
  4. Constance Islet, also referred to as Constance Island, is a formerly distinct, forested islet, that was located about 2,000 feet off the southeast coast of North Sentinel, at the edge of the reef. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake lifted North Sentinel, and its reefs by up to 2 meters, extending all the island’s boundaries and uniting it with Constance Islet.
  5. North Sentinel is about 30 miles west of Port Blair, and about 40 miles north of its counterpart, South Sentinel Island, which is located in the Duncan Passage. Unlike North Sentinel, South Sentinel is uninhabited, but is sometimes used by diving expeditions because of its remoteness.

The Andamanese

  1. The Sentinelese are part of the Andamanese, the indigenous population of the Andaman Islands.
  2. It had been long believed that the Sentinelese were direct descendants of the first wave of modern humans, that left Africa for Asia about 60,000 years ago. It is now believed that the first humans who made it to the Andaman Islands, arrived about 26,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, when sea levels were lower than they are today.
  3. The indigenous Andamanese tribes can be classified into the following tribes: the Great Andamanese and Jarawas of the Great Andaman archipelago, the Jangil of Rutland Island, the Onge of Little Andaman, and the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island.
  4. The Jangil tribe was also known as the Rutland Jarawa. They were nicknamed Rutland Jarawa because they are believed to be related to the neighboring Jarawa people.
  5. Some researchers believe that the Sentinelese are an offshoot of the Onge and the Jarawa tribes, which have acquired a different identity, due to their isolated habitation on separate islands.

Population

  1. Estimates put the Sentinelese population between 15 and 500 people. A misconception pertaining to them is that their population is declining. There. is no factual basis for such assumptions, except census figures, which have been estimated figures.
  2. In 1901, when the British undertook the first census in the Indian subcontinent, officials counted 625 Great Andamanese.
  3. In 1931, the estimated population of the Sentinelese was 50. The census superintendent explained that the estimate was generated after several visits to the island, by counting the number of huts and sleeping places.
  4. The Great Andamanese were once the most numerous of the 5 major groups in the Andaman Islands, with an estimated population between 2,000 and 6,000. By 1951, when independent India conducted its first census, the number of Great Andamanese had decreased to 23, there were only 150 Onge, 50 Jarawa, and 50 Sentinelese.
  5. In 1971, the estimated population of the Sentinelese was 82. There wee 4 Great Andamanese recorded and 150 Onge.
  6. In 1981, 26 Great Andamanese were recorded, and a 1986 expedition recorded 91 Sentinelese tribe members.
  7. In 2001, the Census of India officially recorded 21 Sentinelese men and 18 Sentinelese women. The survey was conducted from a distance, therefore it may not have been accurate.
  8. In 2004, a post-tsunami expedition of North Sentinel recorded 32, and a 2005 expedition recorded 13 individuals.
  9. The 2011 Census of India recorded 12 Sentinelese males and 3 Sentinelese females.
  10. During a circumnavigation of North Sentinel in 2014, researchers recorded 6 females, 7 males and 3 children younger than 4. The males were all apparently younger than 40 years old.

Appearance

  1. A 1977 report by geographer, Heinrich Harrer, describes a Sentinelese man as 5 feet 3 inches tall. The report explains that the tribe might be short because of insular dwarfism, which is referred to as the “Island Effect.”
  2. During a 2014 circumnavigation of the island, researchers put their heigh between 5 feet 3 inches and 5 feet 5 inches. They described their skin color as dark, shining black and explained that their teeth were well-aligned.
  3. Sentinelese women wear fiber strings tied around their waists, necks and heads.
  4. Male tribe members wear ornaments, including necklaces and headbands, with a thicker waist belt than the women. They also tuck daggers into their waist belts, but for the most part, they’re essentially naked.

Practices

  1. The islanders are commonly referred to as Stone Age, but this is clearly not true. There is not reason to believe, that they have been living in the same way, for the tens of thousands of years, that they have been in the Andamans. Their ways of life will have changed and adapted many times, like all people.
  2. The tribe uses metal, which has been washed up, or recovered from shipwrecks on the island reefs.
  3. The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers, using bows and arrows to hunt terrestrial wildlife, such as wild pids.
  4. Members of the tribe don’t know how to make fire, instead, they wait for lightning to strike to get fire.
  5. According to Survival International, it is thought that the islanders live in 3 small bands. They have 2 different types of houses, large communal huts with several hearths for a number of families, and more temporary shelters, with no sides, which can sometimes be seen on the beach, with space for one nuclear family.
  6. North Sentinel Island is the only inhabited land mass on the globe without some level of law enforcement and system of penalties. While Indian law protects the island from outside interference, it doesn’t extend to the islanders and no prosecutions are pursued against the murder of outsiders.

Food and Diet

  1. The Sentinelese are not considered an ocean-going tribe, because they have never possessed any vessels larger than a 2 man, or 3 man canoe, which are insufficient, even for inter-island travel.
  2. The islanders are not cannibals. The rumor started during the colonial times but a 2006 analysis by the Indian government following the death of 2 fishermen on the island, found that the tribe doesn’t practice cannibalism.
  3. The tribe uses canoes for lagoon fishing, and they use long poles rather than paddles or oars to propel them.
  4. The meat they eat consists of sea turtles and small birds found on the island. They also eat wild honey, nuts, clams and forest plants.

Language

  1. There are 2 families of Andamanese languages, Ongan and Great Andamanese. Ongan is the language spoken in the southern Andmaman Islands. The known versions of Ongan include Onge which is spoken by the Onge tribe, and Jarawa, which is spoken by the Jarawa tribe.
  2. Jangil is an Ongan language, that was spoke byt he now extinct Jangil tribe.
  3. Vishvajit Pandya’s 2009 book, In the Forest, explains that the traditional name for North Sentinel Island in the Onge language is “chia daakwokweyeh.”
  4. Sentinelese is the presumed language of the Sentinelese tribe. The language is classified as an Ongan language, but it is completely unintelligible.
  5. Like the Sentinelese language, the Jarawa language is completely unintelligible.
  6. Great Andamanese is the language spoken in the north, middle and south Andamans. There are about 10 different varieties of the languages, all of which are closely related. Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese dialects. Sadly, the last speaker of the language passed away in 2010. Reuters explains that one of the world’s oldest dialects, which traces its origins to tens of thousands of years ago, has become extinct after the last person to speak it died on a remote island. Boa Senior, 85 year old last speaker of Bo, was the oldest member of the Great Andamanese tribe.

History of Contacts

  1. In the late 13th century, explorer Marco Polo was on his way to India and sailed past the Andaman Islands. He described the islanders as savages and compared them to dogs. Historians believe that his description of the islanders was based on hearsay, since he never actually visited the Andaman Islands.
  2. The first recorded mention of North Sentinel occurred in 1771. One night, British surveyor, John Ritchie was doing work for the East India Company, on the Diligent, a hydrographic survey vessel. Ritchie spotted numerous lights, gleaming on the shore, while sailing past North Sentinel. The light may have been from fire. The ship was on a mission, and had no reason to stop at the island to investigate, so the tribe remained undisturbed.
  3. In March of 1867, Jeremiah Homfray, a British administrator, sailed to North Sentinel, in search of escaped prisoners from the neighboring Andaman Island. As Homfray approached the shore, him and his crew saw several members of the tribe, fishing with bows and arrows. They weren’t sure that the islanders would be welcoming, so they decided not to stop at the island.
  4. In 1867, a wreck occurred on a reef, near North Sentinel. The incident involved an Indian merchant ship called the Nineveh. The 106 surviving passengers and crewmen, managed to swim their way to the beach, in the ship’s boat. On the morning of the third day, they were eating, when they were suddenly attacked by several islanders. The Nineveh’s captain reported that the Sentinelese shot iron tipped arrows at the wreck survivors. They brandished sticks and threw stones at the tribe members, to keep them away. The captain escaped using the ship’s life boat and was eventually rescued by a passing brig. The other survivors of the ship wreck, were eventually picked up by a Royal Navy ship.
  5. In 1880, Royal Navy officer Maurice Portman, led an expedition to North Sentinel, hoping to research the natives, and their customs. Portman’s group landed on North Sentinel in January of 1880, and found a network of pathways and several small, abandoned villages on the island. They also found a skeleton, hidden between the roots of a large tree. Initially, Portman and his team were unable to find a living soul, on the island. The tribe most likely hid in the forest when they heard the Europeans approach.
  6. After a few days, Portman and his team found 6 tribe members, an old man and woman, and 4 children. They captured them, and in the interest of science, they took them to Port Blair, located on Andaman Island, which is about 30 miles away from North Sentinel. Unfortunately, all 6 of the kidnapped islanders got sick and the elderly couple died in Port Blair. The 4 children were given gifts and sent back to North Sentinel. Many believe that the children spread their illness to the rest of their people.
  7. Portman returned to the island in 1885, and for the last time, in 1887. From then on, the tribe consistently refused any interaction with the outside world, asserting their independence by rejecting visitors by any means necessary.
  1. In 1896, a Hindu convict escaped from prison and landed on North Sentinel. A few days later, a search party discovered his remains. His body was full of arrow wounds and his throat was cut.
  2. In 1926, Lieutenant Colonel Ferrar, landed on the island, where he glimpsed 3 of its inhabitants. Bows, arrows, a paddle and a skeleton were taken for research and he left gifts, including mugs and plates. He concluded that the islanders seemed to shoot birds since the arrows were unusual in being barbed with birds’ bones and decorated with feathers. Ferrar examined the island for 6 hours and estimated that it sheltered about 60 people. Based on calculation of food supply, anthropologists estimate that the island can support no more than 100 people.
  3. In 1947, North Sentinel came under Indian control, following India’s independence from the United Kingdom. Although the Island was under Indian control, the Indian government decided not to make contact with the Sentinelese, so the island remained isolated until 1967. From 1947 to 1970, the island basically operated as quasi-independent nation.
  4. In 1956, the Indian government issued the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, which declared North Sentinel a tribal reserve, prohibiting travel within 3 nautical miles of the island. Furthermore, in order to prevent intrusion by outsiders, armed patrols are continuously carried out in the surrounding waters.
  5. In 1967, Indian anthropologist, Triloknath, “T.N.” Pandit, became the first professional anthropologist to land on North Sentinel. Through binoculars, T.N. and a group of 20 people, including the governor, armed forces and naval personnel saw several clusters of the islanders on the coastline. They retreated to the forest as the team got closer. Pandit and his team were allowed to venture about 1 kilometer inland, and enter a clearing, with about 18 lean-to huts, which were made from grass and leaves and showed signs of recent occupation, as evidenced by still-burning fires at the corner of each.
  6. In 1970, an official surveying party landed at an isolated spot on North Sentinel, and erected a stone tablet, that declared the island part of India. The Indian government knew that leaving the North Sentinel and the tribe isolated and ceasing to claim any control, would lead to illegal exploitation of the natural resources, by the numerous mercenary outlaws who took refuge in those regions. This would most likely contribute to the tribe’s extinction so the stone tablet was a necessity.
  7. In 1974, a National Geographic film crew visited the island, alongside a team and anthropologists, including Pandit. They were accompanied by armed police, to film a documentary called Man in Search of Man.

The film crew planned to give the island’s inhabitants gifts for 3 days and attempt to make a friendly contact. When the motorboat broke through the island’s barrier reefs, the locals emerged from the jungle and shot arrows at it. The crew landed at a safe point on the coast and left gifts on the sand, including a miniature plastic car, some coconuts, a doll, aluminum cookware and a live pig. The islanders launched more arrows at the crew, one of which struck the documentary director in his thigh. The tribe member who shot the director withdrew to the shade of a tree, where he was seen laughing proudly, while others speared and buried the pig and the doll. They took the coconuts and cookware.

  1. Leopold III, then the exiled King of Belgium, toured the Andaman Islands in 1965 with local dignitaries, who brought him near North Sentinel. According to Pandit, as soon as the boat Leopold was on got too close, a tribe member shot an arrow in his direction. The king was overjoyed and said it was the best day of his life.
  2. In 1977, the Rusley cargo ship capsized on coastal reefs off the coast of North Sentinel. In 1981, the Primrose cargo ship ran aground in a storm, after it struck a coral reef near the Island, leaving thirty one crew members stranded. The sea was too rough to lower the lifeboats, and the ship didn’t seem to be in danger of sinking, so the captain decided to keep his crew on board, and wait for help to arrive.

A few days later, a crew member on lookout duty in the ship’s watch tower, noticed a group of small but well built men, emerging from the forest and making their way towards the beach. They were naked, except for belts that circled their waists, and they were holding spears, bows and arrows, which they had begun waving in a manner that didn’t seem friendly. Fearing for their lives, the captain made a desperate call to their shipping company’s office, and asked for an immediate airdrop of firearms so that his crew could defend themselves. The treacherous weather, fortunately kept the tribesmen’s canoe’s at bay, and high winds blew their arrows off the mark. The crew kept up a 24 hour guard, with makeshift weapons, a flare gun and axes, as news of the emergency slowly filtered to the outside world.

After nearly a week, the Indian Navy dispatched a tug boat and a helicopter to rescue the sailors, and the islanders scavenged the ship. Later expeditions to the island found the tribe using metal tools and weapons, possibly constructed from the ship’s remains. The Primrose was left behind, and you can still see the remains of the ship’s wreckage today, on Google Maps, and Google Earth.

  1. In 1991, T.N. led a team that made the first friendly contact with the Sentinelese people. In 1967, they started dropping gifts and coconuts to the island once a month. For the first 20 plus years of doing so, the islanders maintained their hostility towards the team.

On January 4, 1991, anthropologists on the expedition noticed a few of the tribe members gesturing and waving at them, as if they were thanking them for the gifts. Once the boat was at a safe spot, a crew member gave the tribe members a bag of coconuts and a pig. Unlike previous deliveries, the islanders did not bring any weapons when they approached, to retrieve the gifts. An Anthropologist gestured for them to come closer but they got nervous and went back to the shore. T.N. and his team returned to North Sentinel that afternoon and this time about 20 islanders were waiting for them on shore. One of the men pointed a bow and arrow at the crew but a women pushed it down, and the man buried his weapons in the sand. Numerous islanders hopped in the water while the crew tossed them coconuts, hand to hand. The crew made sure to record a video of the exchange, which marked the first friendly interaction with the tribe in decades.

  1. In an interview with The American Scholar, Pandit described the first friendly contact with the tribe. He explains that many of the islanders started running down the beach and splashing through the surf toward the boat, leading the director to leap out of the boat into chest high water. This scared one of the islanders, who quickly grabbed a coconut before calming down. A few weeks later, the team returned to the island with more coconuts, and some of the islanders hopped on the boat and grabbed sacks of the coconuts. T.N. was alone in the water with a member of the tribe, and his boat sailed a short distance away. The tribesman pulled out an iron bladed knife and made a gesture, Pandit explained, like he was going to cut out my heart. He probably thought I was planning to stay, but the boat quickly returned to pick T.N. up. He returned to North Sentinel, several more times, before he retired from the Anthropological Survey, in 1992.

The interaction proved that friendly contact with the islanders, was possible, although a substantial period of time was required, to build trust.

Despite the peaceful interaction, the tribe’s hostility towards outsiders they were unfamiliar with continued. For example, in 2004, after the Indian Ocean earthquake caused the deadliest tsunami on record right next to the island, an Indian Coast Guard helicopter was sent out to survey for damage. The tribe survived the tsunami, and when a tribesman saw the helicopter, he took out his bow, and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.

  1. In 1991, anthropologist, Madhumala Chattopadhyay, became the first female anthropologist, to make contact with the Sentinelese. National Geographic explains that she wanted to study the tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar islands since childhood, and as an adult anthropologist, spent 6 years researching them, eventually publishing 20 research papers on the subject, as well as the book, Tribes of Car Nicobar. At the time, women weren’t included in the groups that went to establish contact with hostile tribes on the island so she had to give a written undertaking saying that she knew about the risks involved and wouldn’t claim compensation from the government for any injury or loss of life.
  2. In January of 2006, two fishermen, Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari, were illegally fishing for mud crabs in the protected area surrounding the island. During the night, their anchor failed to hold their boat against the currents, and they drifted toward the island, where they were killed by members of the tribe. An Indian Coast Guard helicopter was sent to retrieve the bodies, and saw them on the beach, half buried in the sand. Natives shot arrows, as they tried to carry the corpses away, forcing them to retreat without them.

John Allen Chau

  1. John Allen Chau, is the American missionary, who was killed by the Sentinelese, in 2018, after he illegally traveled to North Sentinel Island, in an attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity.
  2. Deadline reports that Sky Yang is set to star in the Justin Lin directed feature, The Last Days of John Allen Chau. The project is based on an Alex Perry-penned article for Outside Magazine.
  3. John Chau was born on December 18, 1991 in Scottsboro, Alabama.
  1. Patrick remembers the first time John mentioned living on a desert island, at the age of 10. It was in 2002, John had read Robinson Crusoe, and the family was on vacation in Hawaii, when John announced that one day he wanted to live in a place exactly like that, swinging through the trees, jumping into the water, and spearing jellyfish. On June 15, 2016, John shared the following Jim Elliot quote on Facebook:
  1. The Guardian explains that John attended a small, Christian high school in Vancouver, with 90 students across 7 grades. In 2008 as a junior, he went on a school missionary trip to Mexico where he helped build an orphanage. He enjoyed the experience, and when he returned home to Vancouver he began researching remote tribes and found out about North Sentinel Island.

According to The New York Times, it was an obsession. Ever since Mr. Chau had learned in high school through a missionary website, the Joshua Project, that the North Sentinel people were perhaps the most isolated in the world, he was hooked. Much of what he did the rest of his short life was directed toward this mission.

The Joshua Project is a Christian organization, and research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups of the world with the fewest followers of Christ. According to the organization’s website North Sentinel is located within the so-called 10/40 window, which is an area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where missionaries have difficulty converting people to Christianity. The region is commonly referred to as “The Resistant Belt” and is home to some of the largest unreached people groups in the world.

  1. John attended Oral Roberts University, which is a Christian college, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
  1. For 3 years, beginning in 2017, John worked for 6 months, as a park guide at the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, located in Northern California. On December 18, 2017, John shared a post on Instagram, to celebrate his 26th birthday. The caption explains that his 25th year of life was wild, and he says that he worked his second season at Whiskeytown. Sadly, in 2018, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area endured one of the most devastating wildfires in its history, the Carr Fire, which burned nearly 230,000 acres and killed 8 people. The fierce inferno was nicknamed the Carr fire, because it started at an intersection near Carr Powerhouse Road.

The National Park Service explains that it was the most destructive fire, in national park system history. On July 19, 2018, John shared a post on Instagram about the fire. In the caption, he wrote, Oh Whiskeytown, the park where I’ve worked the past three seasons and lived alone in a cabin, is now closed, indefinitely with much of it burned.

  1. In 2015 and 2016, John took 4 trips to the Andaman Islands. GQ explains that, foreigners are primarily allowed to shuttle between Port Blair and a handful of resort beaches, because much of the island chain is reserved for 4 hunter-gatherer tribes, including the Sentinelese.
  2. In 2017, John was accepted to a boot camp, run by All Nations. According to their website, All Nations is an international Christian missions training, and sending organization, committed to preparing Christians to share the gospel and establish churches in parts of the world where the name of Jesus Christ is little or not known. The New York Times explains, “just months before undertaking the most forbidding journey in his life as a young missionary, to a remote Indian Ocean Island, John Allen Chau, was blindfolded and dropped off on a dirt road in a remote part of Kansas. After a long walk, he found a mock village in the woods inhabited by missionaries dressed in odd thrift store clothes, pretending not to understand a word he said. His role was to preach the gospel. The others were supposed to be physically aggressive. Some came at him with fake spears, speaking gibberish. It was part of an intensive and somewhat secretive 3-week missionary training camp.”
  3. On August 9, 2018, in a major move to boost tourism in the Andamans, the Indian government decided to remove the requirement for most foreigners to have permits to visit nearly all of the inhabited islands in the Andaman and Nicobar chain, including North Sentinel. However, visiting the island, without government permission remained illegal, under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation of 1956. Home ministry officers clarified that permit relaxation, at least in these islands, was not aimed at promoting tourism, but increasing flow of people, particularly anthropologists and researchers with required clearances.
  4. In October of 2018, John traveled to Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and took up residence in what he described as a safe house. He prepared an initial contact kit which included picture cards for communication, gifts for the Sentinelese people, medical equipment, and other necessities. On October 21, 2018, John shared an Instagram photo showing himself on a boat, with a caption that reads, Kayaking the tropics in this endless summer.
  1. The Guardian explains that John carefully documented his activities in a hand written diary. The resulting 13 page testament, written with the earnestness and self-consciousness of someone who had digested many missionary and anthropologist accounts of indigenous contact and knew he might be writing for posterity, recounts his final days in fascinating and tragic detail.
  2. Hoping it would lessen the risk of accidentally infecting the tribe, he entered a self imposed quarantine. For 11 days, he went without direct sunlight. He prayed, exercised, and read the Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons, a 19th century missionary account.
  3. Chau paid 5 local fishermen, 25,000 rupees, which is about $350.00 U.S. dollars, to break the law and take him close to North Sentinel on November 14, 2018, under cover of darkness in their 30 foot long wooden boat. They arrived late at night, and anchored nearby.
  1. On November 15, 2018, John attempted his first visit.  The fishermen anchored their boat about 500 meters from the North Sentinel’s shore, and refused to go closer, so John stripped to his underwear, because he thought it would make the tribe more at ease, and paddled his canoe toward the island with his waterproof Bible. As he got closer, he saw a hut, and some dugout canoes. All of a sudden, several islanders ran towards John.  Their faces were painted yellow and they were making high pitched noise. “My name is John”, he shouted from his canoe, “I love you and Jesus loves you.” When the islanders began stringing their bows, he panicked. According to his diary, John threw some fish, that he brought as a gift, towards the tribe members, then turned and “paddled like I never have in my life.”
  2. On the afternoon of November 15, 2018, a few hours after his initial attempt, John decided to give it another shot.  This time, he successfully landed on the island where he laid out gifts.  He started walking towards a hut, and tried to stay out of arrow range but suddenly, about half a dozen islanders emerged and began shouting at him. John sang them worship songs and started preaching to them from the Book of Genesis.
  3. Eventually, according to John’s last letter, as he tried to hand over fish and gifts, a boy shot a metal headed arrow at him. The arrow struck the waterproof Bible he was holding. He pulled it out, gave it back to the boy, and hastily retreated.
  4. John decided he would make his next attempt without the fishing vessel floating nearby. Appearing alone might make the islanders more comfortable, he though. And if the approach went badly, this would spare the fishermen from having to bear witness to his death. Shortly after dawn, on November 16, 2018, John asked the fishermen to drop him off alone, so the fishermen did so. Sadly, this would become, the last time John was seen alive.
  5. On the morning of November 17, 2018, the fishermen returned to the island, where they saw a group of islanders, drag John’s dead body along the beach and bury it in the sand.
  6. Despite efforts by Indian authorities, which involved a tense encounter with the tribe, John’s body was not recovered.

The Future of North Sentinel Island

  1. A 2018 Reddit post, claimed that North Sentinel Island was a secret military base. While that is not true, the Andaman Islands have been making headlines, as an ideal location for a military base. CNN explains, as a major outpost in the Indian Ocean, the islands join the Bay of Bengal with the wider Indo-Pacific, via the Malacca Strait, one of the busiest and most important trade routes in the world.
  1. In a 2018 Down to Earth article, author Rajat Ghai explains that leading microbiologists differ on whether the decomposing body of John Chau, could cause the tribe to be wiped out due to disease. While the body will give out pathogens, whether or not the Sentinelese are susceptible to them is not known.
  2. While the Sentinelese have been able to protect themselves against outsiders, climate change could destroy the tribe. The United Nations explains that indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, due to their dependence upon, and close relationship, with the environment and its resources.
  3. The Indian Express reports that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands might not be inhabitable in the future due to rise in sea levels. “Islands like the Andaman and Nicobar, Maldives etc, will have to be vacated. People will have to be migrated from there as due to rising sea levels, these places will become non-inhabitable. The focus has to be on adaptation and building climate resilience. Even with an under two-degree rise in global temperature, there will be a sea-level rise, glaciers will melt and many communities will be affected.  Some of these events are irreversible. So the focus has to be on adaptation for the coming future.”
  4. In a Mint article, Brahma Chellaney explains: “These tribes might be isolated, but their demise will have serious consequences.  With their reverence for, and understanding of, nature, such groups serve as the world’s environmental sentinels, safeguarding 80 percent of global diversity and playing a critical role in climate change mitigation and adaptation.”
  5. The European Space Agency explains that the 8.9 Richter scale earthquake that triggered the Asian tsunami on December 26, 2004, had a lasting effect on North Sentinel Island. The formerly submerged coral reefs that ring the island are now exposed to the surface, as the entire North Andamans gruop has experienced tectonic uplift.
  6. Following natural disasters, like earthquakes, the Indian government conducts aerial surveys, to monitor the Sentinelese and ensure their well being, but those surveys seem counterproductive, since the tribe most likely wouldn’t want outsiders to interfere, even if they appeared to be in need of some assistance.
  7. Along with climate change, human safaris were a major problem in the Andaman Islands.  In 2017, a Survival International article explained that tour operators in India’s Andaman Islands are selling human safaris to the reserve of a recently contacted tribe, despite government promises to ban the practice. 
  8. The tribe’s extreme isolation makes them very vulnerable to diseases to which they have no immunity, meaning contact would almost certainly have tragic consequences for them.
  9. Organizations like Survival International, must continue to lobby, protests and use public pressure, to ensure the Sentinelese people’s wish, to remain uncontacted, is respected.  Although the island is currently a protected area, Survival’s work focuses on pressuring India to stop illegal poaching in their waters, and ensuring officials maintain their policy of no contact. 
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