North Sentinel Island: The land Uncontacted

There is an island in the Bay of Bengal that the Indian government has made illegal for most people to visit, and for those who do go, it can be one of the most hostile places on Earth. 

As humans, we love to explore. The unknown always has a certain appeal that piques our curiosity in an unexplainable way. But now, virtually every piece of land on Earth has been discovered and explored, there are almost zero uncharted areas left on earth and, likewise, very few tribes of people that have been left uncontacted, but there is one place that meets both of these criteria. That place is North Sentinel Island. The native Sentinelese that live there have, for the most part, managed to keep foreigners away for around 60,000 years, but how is this possible in our age of modern technology and globalization?

Geography

North Sentinel Island is located in the Bay of Bengal and it is one of 572 islands in the Andaman Island archipelago. Even though the people on this island are related in some way to the people on nearby islands, the language that has developed in total isolation on North Sentinel Island is totally unrecognizable to people like the Onge and Jarawa (people on nearby islands). The language spoken by the Sentinelese is known only by them and no one else on Earth. The capital of the island group is the city of Port Blair, which is just over 50 kilometers away from North Sentinel Island. Despite their proximity, the Sentinelese have no clue what or where Port Blair is. No native has ever voluntarily left the island to go somewhere else, except to fish. The island is entirely surrounded by a shallow reef, but the island itself has no natural harbors, which has contributed to why it’s been so difficult for foreigners to land on the shores.

Their civilization is thousands of years behind many first-world countries technologically. The technology they do have is similar to that of the stone-age. From the little data there is available, we know that they live in slanted huts in scattered villages. For food, they live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and often fish along the reefs in the shallow waters surrounding the island using canoes and long spears. This all makes perfect sense considering that they have had no access to technologies developed by the rest of the world over the last 60,000 years. 

Are They Truly Uncontacted?

There have been many attempts over the last few centuries to contact the Sentinelese, but only two of these encounters have been friendly, and many have resulted in violence and death. One of the first recorded encounters with the Sentinelese actually occurred by accident in 1867 when an Indian ship called the Nineveh was shipwrecked on the island’s reefs. One hundred and six of the crew members swam to the shores of the island and built a temporary camp along the beach. Strangely, after three days of nothing, the Sentinelese all of a sudden emerged from the jungle and attacked the ship’s crew with bows and arrows. It’s unclear as to what provoked the Sentinelese to attack on the third day. The crew were able to hold them off and were later picked up by another ship.

Thirteen years later a group of anthropologists kidnapped six Sentinelese people, 2 elderly and four children. The two elders died after becoming sick back at Port Blair, and the anthropologists returned the four children to North Sentinel Island, despite them being sick as well. This probably sent the wrong message to the Sentinelese people, and they have been far less friendly to visitors since. In 1974 the director of a National Geographic film caught an arrow to the leg as they were approaching the island. In 1981 a cargo ship was grounded on the reef and the Sentinelese attacked the crew, who were able to be rescued by helicopter before any real damage was done. 

The only successful recent encounter was in 1991 when anthropologists came bearing coconuts. The Sentinelese put their bows down, came right up to the boats, took the coconuts, and even looked around at and touched other items on the boats. Since then, however, things have only gotten worse. In 2006, two fishermen were killed by the Sentinelese after their boat drifted ashore. In 2018, an Evangelical missionary was killed after bringing his boat ashore for the third time. 

Such little interaction with the Sentinelese may very well make them the most isolated and least-known group of people in the entire world. 

Politics
North Sentinel Island is a bit of a tricky situation politically. What makes it so tricky is that, since there’s never been any real contact with the Sentinelese, there have been no treaties or formal documents signed by the Sentinelese regarding the island’s status. Thus, the island has never given up its sovereignty. Officially, the island is overseen by India as part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory. But, due to the fact that the Sentinelese have never technically relinquished their sovereignty, it is also labeled as an ‘autonomous region of India,’ which allows it to govern itself with practically no interference. For now, because of how much the Sentinelese seem to dislike the company of visitors, because of how impossible it seems to be to communicate with them, and because of the potential spread of disease among the Sentinelese, the Indian government has banned anyone, barring governmental approval, from traveling within three miles of the island. Probably a good call for now…