On a tiny island in the Indian Ocean live a people who have never heard of Patty Hearst or the Symbionese Liberation Army. The island is North Sentinel Island, and the people are known in English as the Sentinelese. While their island, part of the Andaman Archipelego, is nominally controlled by India, the Sentinelese operate autonomously and have almost no contact with the outside world.
While many neighboring islands have been colonized by outside populations and their native peoples assimilated to varying degrees, the Sentinelese have managed to maintain their independence due to two factors: they are violently determined to maintain isolation and their island is small. The tribe has long had a habit of attacking and sometimes killing those who land on, or (in the case of two poachers) come too close to their island. Due to this little is known about the tribe, although it is presumed that they are genetically and linguistically related to the other tribes on nearby islands. They do have bows and arrows and are presumed to be hunter gatherers.
The Indian government did briefly make attempts to establish friendly contact with the tribe, which included throwing coconuts to the Sentinelese from a boat. Currently, India’s policy seems to be to protect Sentinelese isolation without making further attempts at contact. For once, a government making an effort not to destroy indigenous peoples.
After the 2004 tsunami that devastated much of southeast Asia, rescue helicopters skimmed North Sentinel Island to try and assess the state of the island’s population. A Sentinelese man responded with characteristic hospitality and fired an arrow at the passing chopper. It appears that the Sentinelese, like four other (mostly) non-assimilated tribes on nearby islands, fled to high ground before the tsunami hit. All five tribes seem to have had a much higher survival rate than the much more technologically advanced societies affected by the tsunami. There’s something to be said for living as part of nature.
Indian biologists conducted a genetic study of members of the Onge and Great Andamanese peoples in 2005 suggest that they (and their presumed relatives the Jarawas and Sentinelese peoples) came to the islands from Africa in one of the early waves of human migration somewhere between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago. Imagine the joys of sailing a vast ocean in the Stone Age.
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Learn More:
Sentinelese in general:
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter8/text8.htm#sentineli
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/goodheart/rep-goodheart.htm
http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/jarawa/sentinelese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese
Tsunami:
http://www.nativeamericanchurch.com/Signs/SixthSenseTsunami.html
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/01-02-05.asp
Genetics:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/150845/indian_island_tribes_linked_directly_to_african_eve/
