WEBVTT - Why Is North Sentinel Island Totally Off-Limits? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.880 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Laurena 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:12.879 volbebom Here. The inhabitants of North Sentinel Island are one 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:16.760 of the few peoples on Earth almost entirely uncontacted by 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.880 outside society, and they seem to want to keep it 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:24.720 that way. For centuries, the island's indigenous people, known as 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.320 the Sentinels, have rejected most attempts by the outside world 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:31.120 to infiltrate their tropical home in the Bay of Bengal. 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:34.920 It's a fairly small island, only about twenty three square 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.920 miles that's around sixty square kilometers. We don't even have 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.919 a good idea of how many people live there. Estimates 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:47.080 vary between fifty and five hundred. The few glimpses of 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.479 life on North Sentinel Island paint an intriguing picture of 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.920 an untouched society of hunter gatherers who live in simple structures, 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:59.640 gather island fruit, spearfish from dugout canoes, and cook over fires. 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.400 What's amazing is that this society thrives less than twenty 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.040 miles or about thirty kilometers from neighboring islands where indigenous 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.480 cultures have integrated with the outside world, not always with 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:17.959 happy results. An Indian anthropologist by the name of Madamala 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:21.480 Chattapadhyai was the first woman to visit the isolated group 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:25.040 in the nineteen nineties, but has vowed never to go back. 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.000 In an interview with the National Geographic magazine, she said, 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.600 they've been living on the island for centuries without any problem. 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.360 Their troubles started after they came into contact with outsiders. 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.440 The tribes of the islands do not need outsiders to 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.400 protect them. What they need is to be left alone. 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.840 Case in point. In twenty eighteen, Norse Sentinel Island made 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.000 the news when a young American missionary named John Alan 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:56.280 Chow was killed on the island after repeatedly ignoring Sentinely's 0:01:56.360 --> 0:02:00.840 warnings to stay away. Choo was only the latest in 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:05.640 a line of unwelcome outsiders, including fishermen, merchants, escape convicts, 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.240 and filmmakers whose intrusions onto the island were met with 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:14.600 an angry volley of arrows. North Sentinel is part of 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.840 a large island chain called the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.720 currently a territory of the Indian Union. There are one 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:25.399 hundred and eighty four islands in this tropical archipelago located 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:27.919 out in the northeast Indian Ocean between me and Maar 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.360 and India. Only about thirty of the islands in the 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:36.680 chain are inhabited. In the seventeen hundreds, the islands were 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.400 explored by Dutch, Austrian and British merchant ships looking for 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.600 the best trade routes to the spice rich Indian subcontinent. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.440 In seventeen seventy one, a ship from the British East 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:50.200 India Company was the first spot signs of life on 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:55.640 North Sentinel Island, cooking fires flickering in the night. The 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.120 first permanent European settlers arrived in the Andemen and Nicobar 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.880 Islands in the eighteen fifties, when the British built a 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:05.600 penal colony on Great Andaman Island to house colonial prisoners 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:09.720 from British ruled India. In eighteen ninety six, a prisoner 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:11.960 tried to escape on a raft and washed up on 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.240 the shore of North Sentinel. A search party found him 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:20.560 a few days later, dead from multiple arrows. The prisoner's 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:25.040 death confirmed previous reports from shipwrecked Indian merchants of unfriendly 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:29.640 greetings the island and its inhabitants remained unperturbed for another 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.799 half century. They were known to fire arrows at any 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.440 fishing vessel or naval ship that got too close to 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:41.680 its beaches. But in nineteen sixty seven, the Anthropological Survey 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:45.080 of India sent a team of twenty people, including police 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.520 and Indian authorities to attempt to make peaceful contact with 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:53.720 Sentinel Lease. However, instead of being greeted with the anticipated hostility, 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:56.560 the team landed their boat on an empty beach with 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:01.840 no people in sight. That first trip to the small island, 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.800 the anthropologists saw no central Leese at all. According to 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.200 one of the leaders of the expedition, the Sentinel Liese 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.160 must have seen the outsiders coming and gone into hiding. 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.280 The team followed footprints into the jungle until they came 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.799 to a clearing with eighteen nicely built, leaned two huts. 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.840 Each home had a well tended fire in front of it, 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:26.480 and hastily abandoned meals of roasted fish and fruits. They 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.920 estimated that forty to fifty people lived in the village. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.760 The anthropologists left gifts for the Sentinel lies coconuts, which 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.160 don't grow on the island, iron rods, and plastic utensils, 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:41.279 but when they made further attempts at returned visits in 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.839 the nineteen seventies and eighties, their contact party was repelled 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:50.640 each time. In the early nineteen nineties, the Anthropological Survey 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.240 of India made another attempt to establish contact with Sentinel Lees. 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.920 The outreach team included the first female anthropologist to join 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:04.400 the endeavor, the aforementioned Madamala Chettapadyai. She specialized in the 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.360 indigenous tribes of South Andaman Island, but had never been 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:11.919 to North Sentinel. Both Chettapadyai and her parents were required 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.960 to sign waivers from Indian officials, acknowledging the danger of 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:20.360 the expedition. When the team arrived offshore, the usual complement 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.960 of armed men appeared, but instead of gesturing angrily and 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:28.040 firing their weapons, the Sentinal Onliese calmly walked toward the shoreline. 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:33.880 Chettapadyai told the National Geographic we started floating coconuts over 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.839 to them. To our surprise, some of the sentinal onlies 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:41.839 came into the water to collect the coconuts. Perhaps it 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.839 was the presence of a woman, but for some reason, 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.200 the sentineallyiese let down their guard. Some of the men 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.239 waded out to their boat and examined it. They happily 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.640 accepted all of the coconuts. They even allowed some of 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.080 the outsiders to walk around the beach and interact with 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:01.040 sentinely as women, teenagers, and children, but they were not 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:06.320 allowed to enter the jungle or see the village. Encouraged 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.400 by this interaction, the anthropologists returned a few months later 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.480 with a much larger team, but the situation quickly soured. 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:18.360 The Sentinel Lees weren't satisfied with collecting floated coconuts, so 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.560 they boarded the ship and took the whole bag. One 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:23.720 Sentinel liese man even tried to grab one of the 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.840 police officer's rifles, though he probably didn't know what it was, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:32.479 and the officer forcefully took it back. Chattapadyay said the 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.560 man got angry and whipped out his knife. He gestured 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:41.640 to us to leave immediately, and we left. Since nineteen 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:46.440 ninety six, Indian law has made it illegal for fishermen, tourists, researchers, 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.920 or other civilians to approach or Land on North Sentinel Island. 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.359 In two thousand and six, two fishermen from me and 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:56.279 mar made an emergency landing on the island and were killed. 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:01.320 Their bodies buried in the sand. But that wasn't going 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.280 to stop John Alan Chow a twenty six year old 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.440 evangelical Christian missionary and adventure blogger who hired local fishermen 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:12.000 to take him there in November of twenty eighteen. Choo 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:14.920 was part of an international movement of young adventurers who 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:19.960 yearned to bring Christianity to the unreached corners of the globe. 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.280 He was a well trained outdoorsman and received several rounds 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.000 of vaccinations to ensure that he didn't bring any outside 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:30.400 diseases to the Sentinelees. He chronicled his missionary trip in 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.720 a diary and came prepared to deal with any contingencies 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:38.640 of contact with hostile residents, including dental forceps for removing arrows. 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:42.040 When Chow first waded up to the island, he brought 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:46.080 a large fish as a gift. He wrote in his diary, 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.120 I hollered, my name is John, I love you, and 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:54.800 Jesus loves you. The Sentinelies responded with arrows. Chow came 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:58.200 back and dodged even more arrows, including one shot from 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:02.880 a young boy that pierced Chow's water Proof Bible, A. 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.240 Chow wrote that night, if you want me to actually 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.600 get shot or even killed with an arrow, then so 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.000 be it. I think I could be more useful alive, though, 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.840 But to you God, I give all the glory of 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:21.600 whatever happens. I don't want to die, but tragically, that 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.840 is what happened. According to the fisherman who smuggled Chow 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:28.520 to the island, they saw the Sentinel Liese drag his 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.960 body to the beach and bury it. The Indian government 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:37.160 was unable to recover his remains. In twenty twenty one, 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.680 the Anthropological Survey of India issued a document recommending a 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:45.800 hands off eyes on policy toward North Sentinel Island. Instead 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.040 of trying to visit, they say the government should offer 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:54.559 protection to the Sentinel Liz's Eden from the Four Tees, travel, tour, 0:08:54.840 --> 0:09:00.520 transport and trade, which is advice both wise and kind, 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.680 considering that the Sentinel Ease have made it pretty clear 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:11.880 that that's what they'd prefer. Today's episode is based in 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.719 the article why North Sentinel Island is off limits to 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.800 all visitors on how stuffworks dot com, written by Dave Ruse. 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:20.760 Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:23.280 how Stuffworks dot com, and it was produced by Tyler Klang. 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.920 Before more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:31.320 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.