UN American instagrammer killed by uncontacted tribe in Andaman Islands - becomes pincushion for Stone Age arrows

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46286215

An American man has been killed by an endangered tribe in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Fishermen who took the man to North Sentinel island say tribespeople shot him with arrows and left his body on the beach.

He has been identified as John Allen Chau, a 27 year old from Alabama.

Contact with the endangered Andaman tribes living in isolation from the world is illegal because of the risks to them from outside disease.

Estimates say the Sentinelese, who are totally cut off from civilisation, number only between 50 and 150.

Local media have reported that Chau may have wanted to meet the tribe to preach Christianity to them.

But on social media the young man presented himself as a keen traveller and adventurer.

"Police said Chau had previously visited North Sentinel island about four or five times with the help of local fishermen," journalist Subir Bhaumik, who has been covering the islands for years, told BBC Hindi.

"The number of people belonging to the Sentinelese tribe is so low, they don't even understand how to use money. It's in fact illegal to have any sort of contact with them."

In 2017, the Indian government also said taking photographs or making videos of the aboriginal Andaman tribes would be punishable with imprisonment of up to three years.

The AFP news agency quoted a source as saying that Chau had tried and failed to reach the island on 14 November. But then he tried again two days later.

"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," the report added.

Chau's body was spotted on 20 November. According to the Hindustan Times, his remains have yet to be recovered.

"It's a difficult case for the police," says Mr Bhaumik. "You can't even arrest the Sentinelese."

getting BTFO by Pajeet an-prims is pretty embarrassing way to go

 

[Orkeosaurus]

The more I read about the Sentinelese, the more they sound like real jerks.

 

[Coccxys]

"American instagrammer killed by uncontacted tribe in Andaman islands"

I was expecting his last words to be "it's just a social experiment" until I read the whole Christianity bit.

 

[AprilRains]

I know science and anthropology is fun, but really, what do they offer to the world beside stone tipped arrows?

Dead Instagrammers. That ain't bad.

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

Saint Peter: Welcome to Heaven. What made you die?
Dead Instagrammer: I was trying to convert savages with the good word.
Saint Peter: So you didn't listen to the warning....

 

[AnOminous]

Dead Instagrammers. That ain't bad.

Any time you see a headline that has "Instagrammer killed" you know the story will be a heart-warming tale about how humanity is improving every day.

 

[yeahweknow]

Indian authorities document native Sentinelese victory dance in unprecedented new recording

 

[repentance]

And watch out whitey, they might think you are a spirit. And yes this has happened. I can't remember the name of the tribe. But I saw a documentary on it. It was in Papua New Guinea probably 70+ years ago. Uncontacted people met by white explorers. Luckily they were not hostile. But they thought the white men were spirits of the dead. A woman became convinced that a white explorer was her dead son and kept trying to take him back home with her.

Attenborough made a documentary on a PNG tribe.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11...ple-stay-away-from-the-outside-world/10521126

There are thought to be a number of tribes in the world who've had minimal contact with people from the outside world.

On theory I've seen advanced about why these tribes are so hostile to outside contact is disease having been brought to them in the past by outsiders and knowledge of that being handed down to current generations through oral history.

 

[Some Manajerk]

BraziL and the amazon area may have several tribes that we don't know of. the issue there is they are in constant contact with various logging operations both legal and illegal, and since primitive natives tend to cut into the profit margins logging companies tend to react.... violently to any they encounter. Illegal operations especially have no qualms about wrecking villages and shooting people, and since its in the middle of no where its hard to get a good idea of just how bad it it. really, the Sentinelese probably have the right idea considering how India treats various minority populations.

 

[repentance]

BraziL and the amazon area may have several tribes that we don't know of. the issue there is they are in constant contact with various logging operations both legal and illegal, and since primitive natives tend to cut into the profit margins logging companies tend to react.... violently to any they encounter. Illegal operations especially have no qualms about wrecking villages and shooting people, and since its in the middle of no where its hard to get a good idea of just how bad it it. really, the Sentinelese probably have the right idea considering how India treats various minority populations.

There's an interesting roundup of isolated tribes in this article (ignore the sensationalist headline).

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32451...ws-at-passing-helicopters-and-boats-revealed/

 

[armoreddinnerjacket]

This guy should have read up on Jim Elliot before wandering into hostile territory.

 

[AnOminous]

On theory I've seen advanced about why these tribes are so hostile to outside contact is disease having been brought to them in the past by outsiders and knowledge of that being handed down to current generations through oral history.

Also the ones who weren't aren't hunter-gatherer tribes because that is some primitive bullshit so anyone who knew better would gtfo of the fucking jungle and join civilization.

So only the most xenophobic of such tribes would exist because the less xenophobic ones found something better to do than living like little more than animals.

 

[uncleShitHeel]

First thing that came to mind. Dumbass basically asked for it.

 

[Fandom Trash]

Oh man, even the people who lived in an isolated island for centuries even know instagrammers are terrible!

 

[sasazuka]

On theory I've seen advanced about why these tribes are so hostile to outside contact is disease having been brought to them in the past by outsiders and knowledge of that being handed down to current generations through oral history.

There is some fairly obvious proof that the North Sentinel Island tribe has some survival-centered oral tradition passed down through centuries. After the 2004 Indian Ocean mega earthquake, they retreated to what little higher ground there is on the island before the tsunami hit. They at least know enough that, if the ocean retreats well beyond the normal tidal ebb and flow for a few minutes, it will rush back in soon enough and carry anyone unfortunate enough to be on the beach at that time far out to sea.

 

[LegoTugboat]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...D-make-contact-remote-tribe-killed-arrow.html

'They shot me with an arrow - directly into my Bible': Missionary's journal reveals tribe also tried to shoot him the day before they killed him and he wrote 'Father, forgive them if they succeed'

I'm in a hurry so I can't give a detailed summary, but the guy's mum showed the letters to the Daily Mail, which have been scanned in and all, but here's part of his final entry.


'Woke up after a fairly restful sleep, heading to island now. I hope this isn't my last notes but if it is, to God be the glory.

'One thought occurred to me last night: only young adults were seen and kids, but no elderly - are they separated and must stay on the shore? Are the elderly in the jungle?

'I'm heading back to the hut I've been to. Praying it goes well.'

 

[AprilRains]

So they even issued a warning shot. That was more civilized than they needed to be.

 

[theshep]

Attenborough made a documentary on a PNG tribe.

Yeah, you into the wrong tribal area of the PNG Highlands and you could very well end up being the local's lunch.

Though apparently, the practice of cannibalism is on the decrease. (Note I said decrease, not eliminated!)

 

[Cosmos]

The Sentinelese? Those fuckers are crazy. They've been incredibly hostile towards the outside world for centuries now. Their stubborn determination to remain uncontacted is actually admirable tbh. Here are a few of their other run-ins with outsiders:

• Many have tried to contact the Sentinelese, to write about them, or otherwise.
• But the inhabitants of the 23 square mile island in the Bay of Bengal don't want anything to do with the outside world.
• Their numbers are unknown, but either 40 or 500 remain.

Between waves of refugees, armed conflicts, and bickering over oil reserves, the world feels like it's become a rather small place. The world may be shrinking, but some people are still fighting to keep a little space for themselves. North Sentinel Island serves as a perfect example.

The island has an area of about 23 square miles and is surrounded by a natural barricade of coral reefs. It lies east of India in the Bay of Bengal, and it is home to one of the very last uncontacted tribes on the planet. There are between 40 and 500 members of the Sentinelese living on the island, although it's impossible to estimate their exact numbers.

The Sentinelese are perhaps the most aggressive uncontacted tribe that exists. Nearly every attempt at contact has ended in disaster and sometimes death. Below are six accounts of these attempts at contact.

1880: The British Empire’s famous hospitality

Maurice Vidal Portman/Creative Commons

Photo taken by Maurice Vidal Portman of an Andamanese man in the 1890s. The Andaman Islands are the closest land masses to North Sentinel Island.

During their imperialist period, the British had something of an unusual protocol when it came to unfriendly tribes. If a tribe refused to be contacted or were aggressive toward British colonists, they would kidnap a member of the tribe, supply the prisoner with gifts and treat them well, and free their captive shortly after. In theory, the captive would return to the tribe with reports of generous (if somewhat socially inept) outsiders.

This is the approach that Maurice Vidal Portman took during one of the first explorations of the island. At first, the Sentinelese fled into the jungle at the approach of Portman and his men. Eventually, they stumbled across an elderly couple and some children who couldn't flee fast enough.

As if this kidnapping protocol wasn't bad enough, Portman decided to abduct these elderly people and children. The elderly Sentinelese couple soon grew ill, likely because Portman and his men were carrying a variety of Western diseases that had never reached the island before. In a few days, the couple had died.

The British gave the children a variety of gifts for the tribe and released them back into the jungle minus two grandparents. It seems unlikely that the Sentinelese appreciated this. After this first point of contact, the tribe were more overtly hostile to outsiders.

1970: India explores its new lands

When India gained its independence from Britain, many islands in the area were handed over to India as well, including North Sentinel Island. A few decades later, India decided to make contact with the Sentinelese, using a more scientific and gentler approach than the British.

They made a series of attempts at contact, each headed by the anthropologist Triloknath Pandit. Armed police and naval officers joined Pandit for protection. For the most part, the group would observe the islanders from the safety of boats moored far from the shoreline.

In 1970, however, Pandit's ship strayed too close to the beaches of the island. Several men from the tribe began aiming their bows at the boat, shouting, and behaving aggressively. Pandit reported that several of them squatted on their haunches as though they were defecating. He read this as a kind of insult.

As if this wasn't unusual enough, women quickly emerged from the tree line and paired off with each man on the beach. Each couple embraced passionately in what appeared to be a mass mating display. Under these conditions, the hostile atmosphere evaporated, the tribe eventually returned to the forest, and Pandit's expedition returned to India.

1974: National Geographic attacked

By now, knowledge of the elusive tribe had spread far enough that National Geographic sent a crew there to film a documentary. As the National Geographic boat crossed through an opening in the island's reef barrier, they were greeted with a hail of arrows.

This barrage missed the boat, which pressed on toward the shore despite the assault. The police who accompanied the documentary crew landed on the shore and left a series of gifts for the Sentinelese in the hopes that future encounters would be on friendlier terms. The gifts were an unusual mix of the useful and potentially amusing: aluminum cookware; a toy car; coconuts; a doll; and a live, tied-up pig.

As the police deposited the crew's gifts on the shore, another volley of arrows issued from the tree line. This time, the documentary's director was struck in the thigh, and the crew rushed back to their boats. Crew members reported that the man who shot the arrow laughed proudly while his tribesmen continued the attack until the boats had retreated out of range.

The encounter didn't end here, however: the crew wanted to see how their gifts were received. The Sentinelese retrieved the cookware and coconuts. In a bizarre act, the man who had shot the documentary director took the pig and doll and buried them in the sand. You can watch some of this footage below:

1981: The plight of the Primrose

Google Earth

The wreckage of The Primrose, visible on Google Earth

In India, August is monsoon season. During one of these windy rainstorms, a freighter ship called the Primrose struck one of the coral reefs that surround North Sentinel Island and was stranded along with its 28 sailors. With little to do but wait, the sailors slept through the storm.

When they awoke the next morning, the captain immediately broadcasted an urgent message to Hong Kong: On the nearby shore of the island, dozens of Sentinelese were aiming their spears and arrows at the grounded ship. The captain asked for an airdrop of weapons to defend themselves. The next day, their situation had worsened. The Sentinelese were constructing boats to sail to the coral reef where the Primrose had run aground.

Because of the strong storms during this season, it was impossible to send an immediate airdrop of firearms. However, this meant that the Sentinelese were also unable to sail out to the Primrose. The crew was stranded off the coast of North Sentinel Island for nearly a week until the weather had cleared enough for a rescue helicopter to arrive and ferry the men off of the ship. As the helicopter made a series of trips to the boat, the Sentinelese fired arrows at it in an attempt to drive it off.

1991: Pandit makes progress

Triloknath Pandit continued to make attempts at contact after his 1970 visit. Finally, in 1991, he had some measure of success. Pandit and his crew landed on the beach and were met by an unarmed group of 28 Sentinelese, a mixture of men, women, and children.

Despite the progress, the Sentinelese made it clear that there were limits to what outsiders could and could not do. Some of Pandit's crew were resting in a dinghy that had begun to drift away from the island while he remained on shore. Seeing this, one Sentinelese man drew a knife and threatened Pandit with it. This drifting dinghy made it seem like Pandit intended to stay on the island while his companions sailed off, something that the Sentinelese would not tolerate. The dinghy was brought back to shore, and Pandit sailed off again.

Soon after this visit and despite the progress, it was decided that further contact with these people would not be advisable. With a group so obviously inhospitable to the outside world, to force that world upon them would serve neither the Sentinelese nor global community much good. What's more, continued contact put the Sentinelese at risk. They harbor few defenses against the larger world's illnesses, as demonstrated by the British's first attempt at contact in 1880. For the most part, the islanders were left to their own devices.

2006: Drunk poachers stray too close

Soon after Pandit's successful visit, the Indian government began enforcing an exclusion zone around the island, with heavy fines and jail time to act as deterrents. Despite this, two poachers entered the exclusion zone in 2006 to hunt for mud crabs. As night came, they dropped their anchor some distance from the island and started to drink heavily.

Sometime during the night, the anchor became unstuck. As the men slept, their boat drifted into the coral reefs surrounding the island. They were immediately killed by the Sentinelese the next morning, who buried their bodies into the beach. When a helicopter came to retrieve their bodies, the islanders drove it off with a volley of arrows.

The Indian government's official position is that the islanders are a sovereign people with the right to defend their borders. The Sentinelese would not be prosecuted for killing the poachers. To arrest and prosecute a Sentinelese tribesman would be clearly absurd anyhow.

Since this incident, no further contact has been made with the tribe. Aircraft and satellites keep an eye on the island, occasionally checking in to confirm the tribe's continued existence after major storms. While curiosity about the tribe remains strong, curiosity appears to be the only real reason left to make contact. In the face of the Sentinelese's clear preference for isolation, violating that isolation in the name of curiosity alone seems selfish.

If you're curious as to why they're so hostile, the first entry does a good job of explaining it. The British Empire decided to get in their good graces by kidnapping some of their tribe, showering them with gifts and treating them well, and then sending them back home to tell the others about the generosity of the British. Except this time, the British kidnapped an elderly couple and some children; the elderly couple, having lived in such isolation from the outside world, were vulnerable to diseases the Brits were carrying. They died and the Brits just said "fuck it" and sent the kids back with gifts.

The Sentinelese really didn't appreciate having their children kidnapped and their elderly killed, surprisingly enough.

 

[Rabidcolombian]

Haven't read the whole thread so sorry for my ignorance if this has been asked, but has anyone tried parachuting a robot with a camera on there or something?

 

[heathercho]

Haven't read the whole thread so sorry for my ignorance if this has been asked, but has anyone tried parachuting a robot with a camera on there or something?

No, apparently not. We should parachute some nukes in there too.

Seeing them be so primitive does make me wonder about the validity of some sort of race realism logic though. I know they're on a island and semi isolated, but the fact they haven't gone beyond that is interesting.
Are some strains of human just predisposed to certain behaviour? I know it's not something that will get researched now we live in a shut-it-down PC world, but anthropology was cool before dangerhairs fucked it up.