The North Sentinel Islands
North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. It is home to the Sentinelese, also known as the Sentineli and the North Sentinel Islanders, an indigenous people in voluntary isolation who have rejected, often violently, any contact with the outside world. They are among the last tribal people to remain virtually untouched by modern civilization.
The Island is the part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Aboriginal Tribes Act of 1956 prohibits travel to the island and any approach closer than five nautical miles (9.26 km) in order to prevent the resident tribespeople from contracting diseases to which they have no immunity. In practice, Indian authorities recognize the islanders' desire to be left alone and restrict their role to remote monitoring; they do not prosecute them for killing people. However, the government has stated that the relaxation of the prohibition was intended only to allow researchers and anthropologists, with pre-approved clearance, to visit the Sentinel islands.
Along with the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas, the Onge, the Shompen, and the Nicobarese, the Sentinelese are one of the six native and often reclusive peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Sentinelese have repeatedly attacked approaching vessels. This resulted in the deaths of two fishermen in 2006 and a US missionary, John Allen Chau, in 2018.
Geography
North Sentinel lies 36 kilometres (22 mi) west of the town of Wandoor in South Andaman Island, 50 km (31 mi) west of Port Blair. It has an area of about 59.67 km2 (23.04 sq mi) and a roughly square outline.
North Sentinel is surrounded by coral reefs, The entire island, other than the shore, is forested. There is a narrow, white-sand beach encircling the island, behind which the ground rises 20 m (66 ft), and then gradually to between 46 m (150 ft) and 122 m (400 ft) near the centre. Reefs extend around the island to between 0.93 and 1.5 kilometres (0.5–0.8 nmi) from the shore.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tilted the tectonic plate under the island, which resulted in lifting it by 1 to 2 metres (3 to 7 ft). Large tracts of the surrounding coral reefs were exposed and became permanently dry land or shallow lagoons, extending all the island's boundaries by as much as 1 kilometre (3,300 ft) on the west and south sides and uniting Constance island with the main island.
Language
Because of their complete isolation, nearly nothing is known about the Sentinelese language, which is therefore unclassified. It has been recorded that the Jarawa language is mutually unintelligible with the Sentinelese language. The Anthropological Survey of India's 2016 handbook on Vulnerable Tribe Groups considers them mutually unintelligible.
Age of Tribe
The Sentinelese have been widely described as a Stone Age tribe, with some reports claiming they have lived in isolation for over 60,000 years, but Pandya theorizes that really the Sentinelese arose either from a deliberate, more recent migration or from drifting off the Little Andaman.
Appearance
Members of an unspecified Andaman tribe fishing, c. 1870
Comparative distributions of Andamanese indigenous peoples, early 1800s vs. 2004. One report by Heinrich Harrer described a man as 1.6 metres (5 ft 3 in) tall, possibly because of insular dwarfism (the so-called "Island Effect"), nutrition, or simply genetic heritage. During a 2014 circumnavigation of their island, researchers put their height between 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m) and 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) and recorded their skin colour as "dark, shining black" with well-aligned teeth. They showed no signs of obesity and had very prominent muscles.
Population
North Sentinel Island population was estimated to be between 50 and 400 people in a 2012 report. India's 2011 census indicates 15 residents in 10 households, but that too was merely an estimate, described as a "wild guess" by the Times of India.
A handbook released in 2016 by the Anthropological Survey of India on Vulnerable Tribe Groups estimates the population at between 100 and 150.
They reject any contact with other people, and are among the last people to remain virtually untouched by modern civilization.
The population faces the potential threats of infectious diseases to which they have no immunity, as well as violence from intruders. The Indian government has declared the entire island and its surrounding waters extending 5 nautical miles (9.26 km) from the island to be an exclusion zone.
History
British visits
British surveyor John Ritchie observed "a multitude of lights" from an East India Company hydro-graphic survey vessel, the Diligent, as it passed by the island in 1771.
Towards the end of the year 1867 summer monsoon season, Nineveh, an Indian merchant ship, was wrecked on a reef near the island. The 106 surviving passengers and crewmen landed on the beach in the ship's boat and fended off attacks by the Islanders. They were eventually found and were rescued by a Royal Navy rescue party.
An expedition led by Maurice Vidal Portman, a government administrator who hoped to research the natives and their customs, landed on North Sentinel Island in January 1880. After several days, six Sentinelese, an elderly couple and four children, were captured and taken to Port Blair. The colonial officer in charge of the operation wrote that the entire group, "sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents".
After Indian independence
Indian exploratory parties under orders to establish friendly relations with the Sentinelese made brief landings on the island every few years beginning in 1967. In 1975 Leopold III of Belgium, on a tour of the Andamans, was taken by local dignitaries for an overnight cruise to the waters off North Sentinel Island. The cargo ship MV Rusley ran aground on coastal reefs in mid-1977, and same happen with the MV Primrose in August 1981. The Sentinelese are known to have scavenged both wrecks for iron.
After the Primrose grounded on the North Sentinel Island reef on 2 August 1981, crewmen several days later noticed that some men carrying spears and arrows were building boats on the beach. The captain of Primrose radioed for an urgent drop of firearms so his crew could defend themselves. They did not receive any because a large storm stopped other ships from reaching them, but the heavy seas also prevented the islanders from approaching the ship. A week later, the crewmen were rescued by a helicopter under contract to the Indian Oil And Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). Settlers from Port Blair also visited the sites to recover the cargo but found nothing.
The first peaceful contact with the Sentinelese was made by Triloknath Pandit, a director of the Anthropological Survey of India, and his colleagues on 4 January 1991. Indian visits to the island ceased in 1997.
In January 2006, two fishermen fishing illegally in prohibited waters were killed by the Sentinelese when their boat drifted too close to the island. There were no prosecutions.
In November 2018, John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old US missionary trained and sent by Missouri-based All Nations, was killed during an illegal trip to the restricted island, planning to preach Christianity to the Sentinelese.. Fishermen who helped Chau's illegal access to the island told police that they had seen the tribespeople dragging Chau's body around but the authorities had not been able to independently verify his death. The case is being treated as a murder but there has been no suggestion that the tribesmen would be charged.
Chau's journal indicated he was aware of the risks he faced, having been shot at by an islander with a bow and arrow on a previous attempted visit, and of the illegality of his visits to the island. In a final note to his family sent via the fishermen, Chau wrote "You guys might think I'm crazy in all this but I think it's worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed ..." The family is not insisting on the return of the body to the US.
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