Joshi noted that the visit not only risked Chau’s life, but also the lives of islanders who have little resistance to many diseases. Joshi, an anthropology professor at Delhi University who has studied the islands. While visits to the island are heavily restricted, Chau paid fishermen last week to take him near North Sentinel, using a kayak to paddle to shore and bringing gifts including a football and fish. Police are consulting anthropologists, tribal welfare experts and scholars to figure out a way to recover the body, he said. “We have to see what is possible, taking utmost care of the sensitivity of the group and the legal requirements.” “It’s a difficult proposition,” said Dependera Pathak, director-general of police on India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where North Sentinel is located. John Allen Chau was killed last week by North Sentinel islanders who apparently shot him with arrows and then buried his body on the beach, police say.īut even officials don’t travel to North Sentinel, where people live as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, and where outsiders are seen with suspicion and attacked. In 2012, a video of a naked Jarawa woman dancing for tourists set alarm bells ringing and led to tightening of rules and enforcement.Īnd, in 2016, there were reports of a fair-skinned baby, assumed to have been fathered by an outsider, being killed by Jarawa men according to a custom of the tribe.NEW DELHI: Indian authorities were struggling Thursday to figure out how to recover the body of an American killed after wading ashore on an isolated island cut off from the modern world. Some say the younger generation has even learnt bits of the Hindi language from frequent interaction with tourists. Some travel companies were accused of organising “human safari tours” so that tourists could catch a glimpse. They fiercely resisted contact with outsiders before opening up gradually in the 1970s. The 2011 census estimated their population to be around 400. The nearby Jarawas were the earliest tribe in the Andamans to be contacted by the British. “The government’s responsibility should be to keep a watch over them in the sense (that) no unauthorised people reach them and exploit them. The Sentinelese are still a highly vulnerable population. The Sentinelese “are a highly vulnerable population and would disappear in an epidemic,” he added. They have declined demographically and culturally,” he told Down To Earth magazine in a recent interview. “Of the four Andaman tribal communities, we have seen that those in close contact with the outside world have suffered the most. ![]() Pandit who visited North Sentinel 50 years ago believes there should be no rush to make contact with the Sentinelese. They do make periodic checks, albeit from a safe distance, to ensure the tribe’s wellbeing, following a strict “eyes on, hands off” policy. The authorities then declared that no further attempts would be made to contact the Sentinelese. Starting in the 1960s, anthropologists succeeded in exchanging gifts and conducting field visits but abandoned their efforts some 25 years ago in the face of renewed hostility.Īn Indian Coast Guard helicopter that flew over the island after the 2004 Asian tsunami was attacked with arrows. Since Mr Portman touched down on the island, brief visits have been paid but the Sentinelese remain untouched by modern civilisation. “It is mere conjecture, but might this experience may account for the Sentinelese’s continued hostility and rejection of outsiders?” ![]() “It is not known how many Sentinelese became ill as a result of this ‘science’ but it’s likely that the children would have passed on their diseases and the results would have been devastating,” according to its website. Limited attempts to make contact with the island have been made in recent years. It is likely that, like other isolated tribes and indigenous visited by colonisers, they had succumbed to diseases given to them by their kidnappers. “They sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents,” wrote Mr Portman. The kidnapped group was then taken to the South Andaman Island capital of Port Blair “in the interest of science”. “We caught three unhurt and brought them on board,” Mr Portman wrote. A Sentinelese man drew his bow and a mass scuffle broke out. ![]() This was because Mr Portman and his crew came across a family in a thick forest - who were freaked out by the sudden appearance of the strange visitors. “We cannot be said to have done anything more than increase their general terror of, and hostility to, all comers.” ![]() “This expedition was not a success …” he wrote. They ended up spooking the “timid” islanders, who reacted by aggressively driving him and his men away. The islanders fell sick after being kidnapped by the colonists.
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