Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Laurena
Speaker 1: volbebom Here. The inhabitants of North Sentinel Island are one
Speaker 1: of the few peoples on Earth almost entirely uncontacted by
Speaker 1: outside society, and they seem to want to keep it
Speaker 1: that way. For centuries, the island's indigenous people, known as
Speaker 1: the Sentinels, have rejected most attempts by the outside world
Speaker 1: to infiltrate their tropical home in the Bay of Bengal.
Speaker 1: It's a fairly small island, only about twenty three square
Speaker 1: miles that's around sixty square kilometers. We don't even have
Speaker 1: a good idea of how many people live there. Estimates
Speaker 1: vary between fifty and five hundred. The few glimpses of
Speaker 1: life on North Sentinel Island paint an intriguing picture of
Speaker 1: an untouched society of hunter gatherers who live in simple structures,
Speaker 1: gather island fruit, spearfish from dugout canoes, and cook over fires.
Speaker 1: What's amazing is that this society thrives less than twenty
Speaker 1: miles or about thirty kilometers from neighboring islands where indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures have integrated with the outside world, not always with
Speaker 1: happy results. An Indian anthropologist by the name of Madamala
Speaker 1: Chattapadhyai was the first woman to visit the isolated group
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, but has vowed never to go back.
Speaker 1: In an interview with the National Geographic magazine, she said,
Speaker 1: they've been living on the island for centuries without any problem.
Speaker 1: Their troubles started after they came into contact with outsiders.
Speaker 1: The tribes of the islands do not need outsiders to
Speaker 1: protect them. What they need is to be left alone.
Speaker 1: Case in point. In twenty eighteen, Norse Sentinel Island made
Speaker 1: the news when a young American missionary named John Alan
Speaker 1: Chow was killed on the island after repeatedly ignoring Sentinely's
Speaker 1: warnings to stay away. Choo was only the latest in
Speaker 1: a line of unwelcome outsiders, including fishermen, merchants, escape convicts,
Speaker 1: and filmmakers whose intrusions onto the island were met with
Speaker 1: an angry volley of arrows. North Sentinel is part of
Speaker 1: a large island chain called the Andaman and Nicobar Islands,
Speaker 1: currently a territory of the Indian Union. There are one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty four islands in this tropical archipelago located
Speaker 1: out in the northeast Indian Ocean between me and Maar
Speaker 1: and India. Only about thirty of the islands in the
Speaker 1: chain are inhabited. In the seventeen hundreds, the islands were
Speaker 1: explored by Dutch, Austrian and British merchant ships looking for
Speaker 1: the best trade routes to the spice rich Indian subcontinent.
Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy one, a ship from the British East
Speaker 1: India Company was the first spot signs of life on
Speaker 1: North Sentinel Island, cooking fires flickering in the night. The
Speaker 1: first permanent European settlers arrived in the Andemen and Nicobar
Speaker 1: Islands in the eighteen fifties, when the British built a
Speaker 1: penal colony on Great Andaman Island to house colonial prisoners
Speaker 1: from British ruled India. In eighteen ninety six, a prisoner
Speaker 1: tried to escape on a raft and washed up on
Speaker 1: the shore of North Sentinel. A search party found him
Speaker 1: a few days later, dead from multiple arrows. The prisoner's
Speaker 1: death confirmed previous reports from shipwrecked Indian merchants of unfriendly
Speaker 1: greetings the island and its inhabitants remained unperturbed for another
Speaker 1: half century. They were known to fire arrows at any
Speaker 1: fishing vessel or naval ship that got too close to
Speaker 1: its beaches. But in nineteen sixty seven, the Anthropological Survey
Speaker 1: of India sent a team of twenty people, including police
Speaker 1: and Indian authorities to attempt to make peaceful contact with
Speaker 1: Sentinel Lease. However, instead of being greeted with the anticipated hostility,
Speaker 1: the team landed their boat on an empty beach with
Speaker 1: no people in sight. That first trip to the small island,
Speaker 1: the anthropologists saw no central Leese at all. According to
Speaker 1: one of the leaders of the expedition, the Sentinel Liese
Speaker 1: must have seen the outsiders coming and gone into hiding.
Speaker 1: The team followed footprints into the jungle until they came
Speaker 1: to a clearing with eighteen nicely built, leaned two huts.
Speaker 1: Each home had a well tended fire in front of it,
Speaker 1: and hastily abandoned meals of roasted fish and fruits. They
Speaker 1: estimated that forty to fifty people lived in the village.
Speaker 1: The anthropologists left gifts for the Sentinel lies coconuts, which
Speaker 1: don't grow on the island, iron rods, and plastic utensils,
Speaker 1: but when they made further attempts at returned visits in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and eighties, their contact party was repelled
Speaker 1: each time. In the early nineteen nineties, the Anthropological Survey
Speaker 1: of India made another attempt to establish contact with Sentinel Lees.
Speaker 1: The outreach team included the first female anthropologist to join
Speaker 1: the endeavor, the aforementioned Madamala Chettapadyai. She specialized in the
Speaker 1: indigenous tribes of South Andaman Island, but had never been
Speaker 1: to North Sentinel. Both Chettapadyai and her parents were required
Speaker 1: to sign waivers from Indian officials, acknowledging the danger of
Speaker 1: the expedition. When the team arrived offshore, the usual complement
Speaker 1: of armed men appeared, but instead of gesturing angrily and
Speaker 1: firing their weapons, the Sentinal Onliese calmly walked toward the shoreline.
Speaker 1: Chettapadyai told the National Geographic we started floating coconuts over
Speaker 1: to them. To our surprise, some of the sentinal onlies
Speaker 1: came into the water to collect the coconuts. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: was the presence of a woman, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: the sentineallyiese let down their guard. Some of the men
Speaker 1: waded out to their boat and examined it. They happily
Speaker 1: accepted all of the coconuts. They even allowed some of
Speaker 1: the outsiders to walk around the beach and interact with
Speaker 1: sentinely as women, teenagers, and children, but they were not
Speaker 1: allowed to enter the jungle or see the village. Encouraged
Speaker 1: by this interaction, the anthropologists returned a few months later
Speaker 1: with a much larger team, but the situation quickly soured.
Speaker 1: The Sentinel Lees weren't satisfied with collecting floated coconuts, so
Speaker 1: they boarded the ship and took the whole bag. One
Speaker 1: Sentinel liese man even tried to grab one of the
Speaker 1: police officer's rifles, though he probably didn't know what it was,
Speaker 1: and the officer forcefully took it back. Chattapadyay said the
Speaker 1: man got angry and whipped out his knife. He gestured
Speaker 1: to us to leave immediately, and we left. Since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, Indian law has made it illegal for fishermen, tourists, researchers,
Speaker 1: or other civilians to approach or Land on North Sentinel Island.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, two fishermen from me and
Speaker 1: mar made an emergency landing on the island and were killed.
Speaker 1: Their bodies buried in the sand. But that wasn't going
Speaker 1: to stop John Alan Chow a twenty six year old
Speaker 1: evangelical Christian missionary and adventure blogger who hired local fishermen
Speaker 1: to take him there in November of twenty eighteen. Choo
Speaker 1: was part of an international movement of young adventurers who
Speaker 1: yearned to bring Christianity to the unreached corners of the globe.
Speaker 1: He was a well trained outdoorsman and received several rounds
Speaker 1: of vaccinations to ensure that he didn't bring any outside
Speaker 1: diseases to the Sentinelees. He chronicled his missionary trip in
Speaker 1: a diary and came prepared to deal with any contingencies
Speaker 1: of contact with hostile residents, including dental forceps for removing arrows.
Speaker 1: When Chow first waded up to the island, he brought
Speaker 1: a large fish as a gift. He wrote in his diary,
Speaker 1: I hollered, my name is John, I love you, and
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you. The Sentinelies responded with arrows. Chow came
Speaker 1: back and dodged even more arrows, including one shot from
Speaker 1: a young boy that pierced Chow's water Proof Bible, A.
Speaker 1: Chow wrote that night, if you want me to actually
Speaker 1: get shot or even killed with an arrow, then so
Speaker 1: be it. I think I could be more useful alive, though,
Speaker 1: But to you God, I give all the glory of
Speaker 1: whatever happens. I don't want to die, but tragically, that
Speaker 1: is what happened. According to the fisherman who smuggled Chow
Speaker 1: to the island, they saw the Sentinel Liese drag his
Speaker 1: body to the beach and bury it. The Indian government
Speaker 1: was unable to recover his remains. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: the Anthropological Survey of India issued a document recommending a
Speaker 1: hands off eyes on policy toward North Sentinel Island. Instead
Speaker 1: of trying to visit, they say the government should offer
Speaker 1: protection to the Sentinel Liz's Eden from the Four Tees, travel, tour,
Speaker 1: transport and trade, which is advice both wise and kind,
Speaker 1: considering that the Sentinel Ease have made it pretty clear
Speaker 1: that that's what they'd prefer. Today's episode is based in
Speaker 1: the article why North Sentinel Island is off limits to
Speaker 1: all visitors on how stuffworks dot com, written by Dave Ruse.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot com, and it was produced by Tyler Klang.
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