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Whatever combination of recklessness and zeal that John Allen Chau, an American adventurer and Christian missionary, had for landing on North Sentinel Island, with a football and a Bible, all ended badly. He wanted to "declare Jesus" to one of the last isolated tribes of the planet.
But far from saving their soul, Chau represented a threat to their lives. The North Sentinelese are among the only direct descendants of the first humans in Asia. In their 50-square-kilometer island located in the Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago, they have been living apart from each other for millennia. It's raining arrows on those who approach too much like Chau, they obviously want to keep him that way.
This makes sense since their long isolation has left them without immunity against our germs. Contacts with foreigners have been destructive to other indigenous Andaman communities – be it colonial raids or civilizing missions, settlers encroaching on their lands and exploiting their resources, anthropologists carrying gifts or tourists throw leftovers of food, it is others who have never left.
ALSO READ: It's all about the Sentinel tribe living in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
"They lived on these islands between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. I did well without us. The Andamans would not have been part of India without British colonization, and this logic continues to work even now. It has become a convenient place to move refugees from Bangladesh. No account has been taken of indigenous inhabitants, water shortages or the fragility of island ecology, "says Madhusree Mukerjee, author of The Land of Naked People & ## 39, a book on Aboriginal Islanders.
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The Andaman Islands are home to four Aboriginal tribes, present for tens of thousands of years, long before the British, Japanese or Indian presence. Each of them is a different story of clumsy external interventions. The Great Andamanese, the first to meet foreigners, numbered 5,000. Less than a century after the British had established a prison colony, their numbers decreased considerably while they succumbed to diseases such as measles and syphilis. At present, there are barely 50 remains of a lost culture living on Strait Island. Entire languages and the secret things that they contain have disappeared. "They are like lost souls, misfit people who do not belong to our society or to what they were 100 years ago," says Anvita Abbi, a linguist who has studied languages in the process of disappearance of the great Andamanais.
The Onge also, in the small island of Andaman, were beaten by an extraterrestrial culture. After the British and the Japanese, it was the Indian state that settled the inhabitants of the continent and the refugees on the islands, clearing the forests for plantations, farmland and settlements, making more It is difficult for the Onge to have access to wild pigs and dugongs, spreading diseases and inflicting strong social pressure. . They would be given bottles of alcohol in exchange for valuable resources like honey, resin, ambergris and turtle eggs. "We occupied and laid out areas, confined them to a small space in a tribal reserve," says Denis Giles, editor of the chronic Andaman Chronicle. Now, with logging and poaching destroying their habitat and way of life, "they totally depend on the supplies we provide," he says.
Only the Sentinelese, confined to their island and not detrimental to the "development" of someone else, have succeeded to keep their distance. The Jarawas, whose space is surrounded by populated areas and which was divided by the Andaman Grand Trunk Road, have had decades of interactions with strangers – a meeting that has been fraught with sensations – of hostility to partial easing in the late 1990s, and even incursions into society externally. "What have we done? All kinds of diseases, badual exploitation, poaching of their resources, "says Giles. In recent years, video clips of jarawa girls made to dance for police and tourist safaris have become viral. "The Jarawas are in transition, there may be generational differences between them with respect to contact with strangers – but that should be their entirely choice," says Mukerjee.
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Despite laws such as the Andaman and Nicobar Regulations on the Protection of Native Tribes (1956) and Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti, a special policy for Jarawas framed in 2004 and a dedicated protection policy, the mind is weak with regard to implementation. "Despite the many cases registered, brought before the magistrate, the offenders are released on bail. According to Giles, no one was punished for breaking these laws.
The protection of culture can not be dissociated from the protection of the environment, says Pankaj Sekhsaria, scientist, environmentalist and writer. "These indigenous communities have the first right to land and resources, which the Indian government has not recognized." It is difficult for them to survive when the forests, whose lives and practices are linked, are destroyed. . "The 1,000 square kilometers of the Jarawa tribal reserve, for example, contains the last of the original Andaman evergreen forests and is richer in biodiversity than any wildlife refuge in this region," he said. he notices.
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Too often, the needs of settlers and their economic aspirations were expressed by the desire to integrate and integrate indigenous peoples Jarawas, considered as "Indian citizens". This is just ignorant and racist, says Mukerjee, without attempting to understand the indigenous people themselves. Their idea of the good life, their knowledge, their social and spiritual values are not the same as those of their neighbors. "What can you teach them? About the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi? How could that make sense in their lives, "Giles asks.
Not all" tribes "can be painted the same brush, says Abbi – the Andaman tribes are totally different from central Indian groups or even Nicobarans "How can a society exceed tens of thousands of years?" More importantly, why should it? They know things we do not know about – fish, shellfish, how to survive. Among them died during the 2004 tsunami, as they knew how to read the panels. "What does badimilation mean, they are already badimilated into their environment, and we are not badimilated," says Abbi. her dictionary of great anadromous languages, she discovered that they had no word for rape or badual badault, but they are now very much aware of what this means, having been attacked by strangers. [19659002] 
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We must go beyond our own frameworks to appreciate human diversity, rather than interfering and baduming that everyone wants what we want. For example, according to the anthropologist Visvajit Pandya, the Jarawas orient themselves according to the light and the shadow of the forest. This bright landscape is crucial for their social order. If your daily practices involve stars and fireflies, and you dread intense heat and light, then would not you be right in thinking that beams of light are considered aggression and not a convenience? In other words, your vision of development is not necessarily the same as theirs.
There was a big push for tourism in the Andamans, launched by Niti Aayog, who seems to badume that the islands are virgin territory. , to do again at will. Restricted Area licenses have been removed from several islands, including North Sentinel and Little Andaman. "Among the many Andaman islands that might be conducive to tourism, why choose the most vulnerable ones that are home to indigenous groups?", Giles asks.
And, as police plan to recover Chau's body, it should not aggravate error by traveling to the island or inviting a confrontation, "any further contact could be absolutely deadly," warns Mukerjee.
Originally published in The Times of India
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