North Sentinel Island (with Japanese Dictionary)
Uncontacted tribes are communities that live without significant influence from, or interaction with, the outside world. The most isolated such tribe can be found on North Sentinel Island, one of the Andaman Islands in the northeastern Indian Ocean. Since the people’s own name for themselves is unknown, they are called the Sentinelese. The tribe rejects contact with the outside world, responding to most attempted visits with hostility ー they fire arrows at approaching boats, and have killed outsiders who set foot on their shores.
Despite their isolation, some degree of contact with the Sentinelese has occurred in the past. Centuries ago, slave traders would take Andaman Islanders to sell as slaves. The British later claimed the islands as a colony, and Indians who had participated in rebellions against British rule were imprisoned there. The British also kidnapped Andaman Islanders including some from North Sentinel Island and forced them to undergo weeks of “education” in British culture and systems before sending them back, confused and often sick, to their tribe. More recently, combat in the Andaman Islands during World War II may also have affected the Sentinelese. Such experiences have almost certainly played a part in shaping their hostile attitude toward outsiders.
In 1967, the Indian government, which officially governs the area, began conducting anthropologist-led expeditions to North Sentinel Island, offering gifts, such as coconuts, in attempts to establish peaceful contact. These expeditions continued over the following decades, but, for the most part, failed to achieve significant, sustained contact. Efforts were stopped in 1996 after similar attempts to establish contact with the Jarawa tribe, a group on a nearby island, resulted in many Jarawa dying of infectious diseases, such as measles. India now follows an “eyes-on and hands-off ” policy with regard to the Sentinelese, and it has introduced legislation forbidding boats from coming within about 9 kilometers of the island’s shores to protect the tribe from such a fate.
Some scholars disagree with India’s policy, however, believing technological advances offer significant benefits for uncontacted groups. US anthropologists Robert S. Walker and Kim R. Hill assert that well-organized, controlled contact, which would include medical treatment and food, would be better than leaving such groups vulnerable to accidental and dangerous interactions with outsiders. Walker and Hill believe that since such harmful interactions are almost guaranteed to occur, isolation is not sustainable in the long term, and controlled contact is more “humane and ethical.” Once peaceful contact is established, they say, governments could better protect the groups from outside threats.
Survival International, an international NGO, strongly opposes Walker and Hill’s view, pointing to terrible outcomes throughout history that resulted from similar approaches. Violence, alcohol abuse, and disease have destroyed many such tribes and reduced others to merely a few survivors. Tribes whose lands are protected, however, carry on living as they have for centuries. The Sentinelese, who have survived for hundreds of generations as hunter-gatherers, are by all appearances healthy, happy with their existence, and uninterested in the outside world. Given such a situation, contact with that world is unlikely to turn out well for them.
