India cautious as it looks to recover American body
Anthropologists being consulted to see what steps can be taken
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NEW DELHI: Indian officials have travelled repeatedly in recent days near the remote island where an American missionary was killed by people who have long resisted the outside world. But they have not set foot onto North Sentinel Island since the killing, and it remains unclear if they will.
“They are a treasure,” Dependera Pathak, director-general of police on the Andaman and Nicobar island groups, said of the Sentinelese people. “We cannot go and force our way in. We don’t want to harm them.”
The Sentinelese, who scholars believe are descendants of Africans who migrated to the area about 50,000 years ago, survive on the small, forested island by hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants. Almost nothing is known of their lives, except that they attack outsiders with spears or bows and arrows.
American John Allen Chau was killed by islanders in mid-November after paying fishermen to smuggle him to the island, where outsiders are effectively forbidden by Indian law. The fishermen told authorities that they saw the Sentinelese bury Chau’s body on the beach. The notes Chau left behind say he wanted to bring Christianity to the islanders.
A boat carrying police and other officials approached North Sentinel on Friday and Saturday, watching the Sentinelese through binoculars. On Saturday the tribesmen were armed with spears and bows and arrows, but they did not attempt to shoot them at the authorities, Pathak said.
“We watched them from a distance and they watched us from a distance,” he said.
Officials have not given up on recovering the body, he said. But they are moving very gingerly, studying the 2006 killing of fishermen whose boat had drifted onto the island.
“We are looking carefully at what happened then, and what [the Sentinelese] did,” he said. “We are consulting anthropologists to see what kind of friendly gesture we can make.”
The islanders buried the two fishermen on the beach in 2006, but dug up the corpses after a few days and propped them upright. Authorities apparently never recovered those bodies, and the killings were never investigated.
There has been no significant contact with the Sentinelese for generations. Anthropologists used to occasionally drop off gifts of coconuts and bananas, but even those visits were stopped years ago.
Anthropologist PC Joshi said he understands why authorities want to recover the body.
“If there is a death, then the cause of death should be known. It’s important,” said Joshi, a professor at Delhi University.
“Of course, we can’t prosecute” the islanders if they killed Chau, he said. Plus, he noted, it may already be too late to learn much from the body, since the heat and humidity on North Sentinel will cause rapid decomposition.
“Ultimately, it’s becoming futile,” he said.
A mystery: Why is this Indian island cut off from the world?
Deeply suspicious of outsiders, Sentinelese attack anyone who comes onto their beaches
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NEW DELHI: For thousands of years, the people of North Sentinel island have been isolated from the rest of the world.
They use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island, and gather plants to eat and to fashion into homes. Their closest neighbours live more than 50 kilometres (30 miles) away. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who comes through the surf and onto their beaches.
Police say that is what happened last week when a young American, John Allen Chau, was killed by islanders after paying fishermen to take him to the island.
Scholars believe the Sentinelese migrated from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, but most details of their lives remain completely unknown. Estimates of their numbers range from a few dozen to a few hundred.
“What language they speak, how old it is, it’s anybody’s guess,” said professor Anvita Abbi, a linguist at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University who has spent decades studying the tribal languages of India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands. North Sentinel is an outpost of the island chain, which is far closer to Myanmar and Thailand than to mainland India. “Nobody has access to these people.”
And, she said, that’s how it should be.
“Just for our curiosity, why should we disturb a tribe that has sustained itself for tens of thousands of years?” she asked. “So much is lost: People are lost, language is lost, their peace is lost.”
For generations, Indian officials have forbidden visits to North Sentinel, with contact limited to rare “gift-giving” encounters, with small teams of officials and scientists leaving coconuts and bananas for the islanders.
Any contact with such isolated people can be dangerous, scholars say, with islanders having no resistance to diseases outsiders carry.
“We have become a very dangerous people,” said P.C. Joshi, an anthropology professor at Delhi University. “Even minor influences can kill them.”
Many of the island chain’s other tribes have been decimated over the past century, lost to disease, intermarriage and migration.
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American tourist enters Andaman island, killed with arrows by tribesmen
The tourist was killed by an isolated island tribe known to fire at outsiders with arrows
Port Blair, India: An American tourist was killed by arrows shot by protected tribesmen living in one of the world's most isolated regions tucked in India's Andaman islands, police said Wednesday.
John Chau, 27, had taken a boat ride with local fishermen before venturing alone in a canoe to the remote North Sentinel Island where the indigenous people live cut off completely from the outside world.
As soon as he set foot on the island, Chau found himself facing a flurry of arrows, official sources told AFP.
Contact with several tribes on the islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases.
Police have registered a case of murder and seven accused persons have been arrested.
"The investigation in this matter is on," senior police officer Deepak Yadav said in a press release.
Chau had made several trips to the Andaman islands recently before finally managing to make it to the remote stretch by offering money to local fishermen.
"He tried to reach the Sentinel island on November 14 but could not make it. Two days later he went well prepared. He left the dingy midway and took a canoe all by himself to the island," local sources said.
"He was attacked by arrows but he continued walking. The fishermen saw the tribals tying a rope around his neck and dragging his body.
"They were scared and fled but returned next morning to find his body on the sea shore."
The Andamans are also home to the 400-strong Jarawa tribe who activists say are at threat from outsiders, who often bribe local authorities to spend a day out with them.
But tribes such as the Sentinelese shun all contact with the outside world and are known to be hostile to any encroachers.
The North Sentinel island is out of bounds even to the Indian navy in a bid to protect its reclusive inhabitants who number only about 150.
Islanders
The Andaman Islands are an Indian archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, between India and Myanmar, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal. The Andamanese are the various indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands.
The Andamanese peoples are among the groups considered Negrito owing to their dark skin and diminutive stature. All Andamanese traditionally lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and appear to have lived in substantial isolation for thousands of years.
The Andamanese settled the Andaman Islands around the latest glacial maximum, around 26,000 years ago.
Port Blair, the archipelago’s capital, is on South Andaman Island, and is a gateway to neighbouring islands. The city’s Cellular Jail is named for its myriad small cells, meant for the solitary confinement of Indian freedom fighters during the 1900s.
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