North Sentinel Island is an island de-jure owned by India but is de-facto self-governing. It is illegal to visit the island due to how dangerous it is, along with the risk of spreading diseases that the inhabitants do not have any resistance to.
The island is inhabitated by around 50-500 (true number unknown) indigenous people who have inhabited the island for over 60,000 years. The Sentinelese people are well-known to attack most outsiders who dare to come visit the island. Apparently, one major catalyst was when a British man kidnapped an elderly couple and four children. The couple died and the children were returned but had serious diseases which may have spread to the rest of the islanders.
In 2018, an American tourist illegally visited the island in order to attempt to convert them to Christianity. He was later killed by the Sentinelese.
I don’t why, but for some reason, this island is quite fascinating. There is so little known about it. The very concept of an isolated society that wants to be left alone is something that I find interesting.
Have any two cents to give?
It would be cool to send a remote device (super disinfected of course) to record their language and find out how to communicate with them. We shouldn’t send any people to the island though unless they tell us to.
they certainly know how to treat missionaries, i’ll give them that
Of all the Sentinel Islands, it is a (if not the) northern one.
They probably don’t know what capitalism is. I’m jealous.
And because of that their day is probablly:
wake up when you feel like it
Do a couple hours of chores and housework
Couple hours of resource management, agriculture, harvesting whatever
Couple hours for lunch whenever you feel like it
Spend the afternoon doing whatever you want
Couple hours of chores for dinner
Go to bed whenever you want
Going to the north sentinelese to beg them to let me join them
“No.”
dies
I just hope no one ever finds rare earth or fuel on their island
let them vibe
Let them be the first to reach out if they want to have anything to do with us. Otherwise just leave them alone.
As the world looks like in it’s current state, forcing contact upon them is only going to be cataclysmic to their world. Maybe, in some better future where we are sure we won’t kill them with diseases, steal their resources, exploit them or destroy their culture an attempt at contact can be justified but we are currently nowhere near civilised enough to be able to do that.
I wonder how long it will be until inbreeding reaches a critical state and the island becomes naturally uninhabited.
I mean, there’s no new bloodlines coming in, and there’s only so many marriages and branches in the family trees that can happen.
The common 50/500 rule seems to be exactly the amount of people in this island.
India’s policy of “leave them alone” is the only right one. Maybe someday their culture will change and they’ll seek out contact on their own, but until then it’s their call to make and anyone trying to force contact on them deserves what they get.
I think we should NEVER force contact with them. We can kinda initiate it, but the decision to make contact should come from them. If they want to live like that, let them be. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with their lifestyle since they chose to keep it. Don’t force people to have a modern lifestyle if they don’t want it.
But it’s weird that India claims the island, even though they don’t own it.
But it’s weird that India claims the island, even though they don’t own it.
That does “give them access” to the resource in a 200 nautical miles radius from it, so even if they don’t get too close to the island they can still extract resources farther out around it or they just claim it to avoid others from using it as a base against India.
But it’s weird that India claims the island, even though they don’t own it.
…India does own it
When you can’t enter the island, you technically don’t own the island
oh my bad I thought you meant the Andamanese in general. Yea technically they don’t own Sentinel.
Give them a bunch of guns, anti-ship missiles and air defense systems in case another Anglo tries to set foot on their land. In fact give them nukes too, just to be sure.
Apart from that just leave them be and don’t bother them.
PS
(The first part is a joke)
Just give them nukes, the rest is a joke.
They should be left alone unless absolutely necessary is my take on it, they’re just minding their own business.
Also, retreating into complete isolation as a result of their first contact being with nasty colonial Anglos is totally understandable.
Hell, I can respect their call. (Not that the choice is mine anyhow)
Critical support to the Sentinalese for defending themselves from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant people of liberal belief!
That’s what I’d say… but also, leave 'em alone, I suppose…
My two cents is that if every native population had the standing policy of “immediatly murder whitey” the world would be a better place.
