The Sentinelese

The Sentinelese are an uncontacted tribe living on North Sentinal Island, one of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. They vigorously reject all contact with outsiders.

India has an island (sentinel island), a territory that remains virtually untouched by modern civilization…..

A tropical island forming a portion of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal area, the North Sentinel Island is a habitat of a tribe that has existed for about 60,000 years.

Below, some related incidents.

• In 1967, the Indian government initiated contact with Sentinelese in association with anthropologist T. N. Pandit. They tried extending a hand of friendship by leaving gifts for the tribe and beckoning them. However, the tribesmen would turn their backs on the government delegates and sit on their haunches in a defecating posture.

• Again, in March 1970, when Pandit’s team made another attempt to befriend the Sentinelese, the tribesmen hurled cryptic words at them. When the group signaled and spoke to make them believe they wish to buddy up, the tribe threw another shocker at the unassuming party. A woman from the tribe joined a warrior man and sat on the shore in a cozy embrace; other women of the tribe followed suit.

• The visits were sporadic until 1981. A National Geographic film crew tagged along in 1974, and the director caught an arrow in the thigh for his trouble. The exiled King Leopold III of Belgium passed close to the island on a boat tour in 1975, and the Sentinelese warned him off with arrows. For some reason, the king was absolutely delighted by the whole thing.

• After the 2004 Tsunami which wreaked havoc in South India and parts of the Indian Ocean, the government had sent helicopters from the Indian Coast Guard to render aid to the Sentinelese and drop food packets. At this site, a member of the Sentinelese tribe reacted by shooting arrows at it.

• In 2006, they showed their strong aversion to foreign contact by killing two Indian fishermen who accidentally went too close to the island in their boat while hunting for mud crabs.

Now the Indian government remotely monitors the island and declared that if you are visiting this island (within a 3 km radius) it is a criminal offense.

Meet The First Women To Contact the World’s Most Isolated Tribes

Anthropologist Madhumala Chattopadhyay is the first women to contact the sentinelese tribe. She had wanted to study the tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar islands since childhood, and as an adult anthropologist spent six years researching them, eventually publishing 20 research papers on the subject as well as the book Tribes of Car Nicobar.

Floating Coconuts Story

Chattopadhyay and her group approached the island in a small boat, steering the vessel along an empty beach toward a spire of smoke. A few Sentinelese men, four of them armed with bows and arrows, walked out to the shoreline. “We started floating coconuts over to them. To our surprise some of the Sentinelese came into the water to collect the coconuts.”
In the two to three hours that followed, Sentinelese men waded from the beach into the water repeatedly to collect the coconuts—a novel product that does not grow on their island—while women and children watched from a distance. Yet the threat of an attack on the anthropologist outsiders remained present,

Chattopadhyay recalls. “A young man aged about 19 or 20 stood along with a woman on the beach. He suddenly raised his bow. I called out to them to come and collect the coconuts using tribal words I had picked up while working with the other tribes in the region. The woman gave the boy a nudge and his arrow fell to the water. At the woman’s urging, he too came into the water and started picking coconuts,” she says. “Later some of the tribesmen came and touched the boat. The gesture, we felt, indicated that they were not scared of us now.” The AnSI team climbed to the shore but the tribe did not take them to their settlement.

Chattopadhyay, who now works in India’s Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, has not returned to the Andaman and Nicobar islands in 19 years and has no interest in returning to North Sentinel. “The tribes have been living on the islands for centuries without any problem. Their troubles started after they came into contact with outsiders,” the anthropologist says. “The tribes of the islands do not need outsiders to protect them, what they need is to be left alone.”

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