India is home to over 700 tribes across various states and regions, making up for about 8.6 % of the country’s population. While the tribes in central India are known as the Adivasis or the indigenous people, there are several other tribes that are very well known, like the Kuki and Metei tribes in Manipur, Bhils, the oldest tribe of India in Western Indian states like Rajasthan and Gujarat, Deoris, the indigenous tribe of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and even the Andamanese tribe from the Andaman Islands, to name a few. Every traveller that has travelled through any part of India might have come across at least one of these tribes at any given point, but what if I told you that there exists a tribe of people who you have never met or can never meet? You might not even have heard of them.
Contact rejected
The Sentinelese tribe resides on North Sentinel, a small forested island amongst the five hundred others on Andaman and Nicobar Islands. These are an uncontacted tribe of Indigenous people who have voluntarily and vehemently refused any kind of contact with the outside world. People of the Sentinelese tribe are the most isolated indigenous people in the world. The Sentinelese are infamous for resisting all interaction with outsiders and attacking anyone who approaches their area.
While that may sound unbelievable, there have been reports that claim that in the year 2018, an American missionary, John Allen Chau, was killed by Sentinelese while he attempted to convert them to Christianity.
A similar incident was noted when two Indian fishermen, Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari, were killed in the year 2006 after their boat broke free and drifted into the shore. They had moored their boat near North Sentinel to sleep after engaging in poaching in the waters surrounding the island. In the waters surrounding the island, poachers are known to engage in illegal fishing, diving for lobsters and sea cucumbers, and capturing turtles.
Contact could wipe out population
Despite the seeming irrationality of these instances, the Sentinelese have a very good rationale for what they are doing. Being a native tribe, its members are susceptible to the diseases that are present in the outside world and that any stranger may be carrying. Thus, these attempted contacts with the Sentinelese have the potential to wipe out their entire population because of these diseases that include even something as minor as the flu or a common cold.
The people of the tribe had taken the decision to remain aloof a very long time ago when several of the Indigenous peoples were wiped out because of the wide ranging diseases along with the violence that had occurred after the British colonized their islands. They had made it clear to the governments of the various countries that they did not want any contact.
There have been a few brief instances in the past when the Sentinelese permitted the authorities to approach them closely enough to give them some coconuts, but the majority of our knowledge about them has come from watching them from boats moored more than an arrow’s distance from the coast. Although the nearby Onge people refer to North Sentinel as “Chia daaKwokweyeh,” it is unclear even how they identify themselves or their island.
The Sentinelese fish in the coastal seas and hunt and gather in the rainforest. They build boats, very small outrigger canoes, in contrast to the Jarawa people who live nearby. Since they are guided and pushed with a pole, similar to a punt, they are only suitable for usage in shallow waters.
Means of livelihood
Their means to a livelihood largely depends on hunting and gathering; thereby, they are a nomadic tribe. While there has not been a lot of exposure or understanding of the tribe, the media has still often managed to get some insights on the group. Therefore, a lot of the experts strongly believe that the people of this tribe live in three groups. Their houses are categorised into two groups, large communal huts with several hearths for a number of families and more temporary shelters with no sides, which can sometimes be seen on the beach, with space for only one family unit.
It is understood that the women of the tribe wear fibre strings that are tied around their waists, necks and heads while the men wear headbands and necklaces. The men are also noted to be wearing waist belts but those are discovered to be thicker. They carry spears, bows and arrows.
While all of this evidence might make one wonder whether the Sentinelese tribe is still living in the Stone Age because of the backward ways of living, several studies have proved that the idea is not necessarily true. Even though their means of survival might have remained the same as the stone age, their way of life might have been subject to change over the course of the tens of thousands of years that they have existed on the Andaman Islands, like everybody else’s.
Other such tribes
All the evidence that is gathered about the Sentinelese people is by observing them from a distance since the tribe reacts with hostility when faced with any encounter with the outside world. The observers reported that the people of the tribe have been leading a healthy life with several children and pregnant women, noting that the tribe is thriving in its solitude, which resurfaced the doomed fate of the Great Andamanese, who the British attempted to civilise during the colonialism period. The infiltration into their territory had eventually led to the wiping of their entire population.
A very prominent example of the Sentinelese’s hostility was first noted in 2004, when the tribe had attracted international attention during the Asian Tsunami, when a member of their tribe was captured firing arrows at a helicopter that was checking on their well-being on the beach of the island. They have voluntarily remained aloof since then, even though several attempts have been made across decades to contact them.
In the current times, the Indian government has abandoned any plans to contact the tribe, and all visits to the island where the Sentinelese reside have been declared as strictly illegal, with the Indian Coast Guards patrolling around a buffer zone in order to prevent any attempts that may be made by outsiders from coming too close.
