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?

  • muddi [he/him]English
    16•2 months ago

    I’m glad India owns the islands. Not that India is some champion of indigenous peoples, in fact they are an imperial power in their own right. But it would have been worse if some Western nation owned it (like they still do other islands in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans, wtf)

    The Sentinelese make obvious that lustful chauvinistic gaze of the West that I haven’t seen in other countries, except maybe imperial Japan, which was copying the West anyhow. The whole idea that the world is there is be “studied” and that places like the Sentinel islands are some final frontier is fucked up.

    I understand the linguistic and anthropological curiosity a little, though I think researchers should be more humble. Most are humble actually, it’s the general public that still has chauvinism.

    The missionaries bother me the most. Christianization has killed off many local cultures, claiming to liberate them but not saying the quiet part about control and whatever prophecy about the end days where everyone needs to be Christian I think. In India, the lower castes and pariahs mostly are Christian, with the promise of equality, but in reality they still have the caste system within their communities and are just pariahs in different ways at large now. So not much has changed. I am also brown and live in the US, so I have felt the lustful gaze of missionaries throughout my life here. I get missionaries banging on my door every week now. It’s kinda scary, considering the KKK were around only a while ago here.

    Also interesting fact, the Andaman and Nicobar island were home to British jails for political prisoners. Indian rebels and revolutionaries met in jail there and even founded parties for independence and socialism. In a way, the islands are a birthplace of Indian revolutionary spirit