this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 6 months ago

Unconditional support for our sentinelese comrades in their struggle to resist the imperial invader

[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago

They should be left alone unless absolutely necessary is my take on it, they're just minding their own business.

Also, retreating into complete isolation as a result of their first contact being with nasty colonial Anglos is totally understandable.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 months ago (1 children)

~~airdrop furry porn~~

Leaving them alone is the only real answer

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Not airdropping Danganronpa, BB and BCS in 4K would be biggest mistake, idk how they lasted 60 thousand years without it.

But yeah.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 months ago

LEAVE THEM ALONE

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago

I find it endlessly fascinating too. Uncontacted peoples in general can inspire a lot of wonder and curiosity in me. It's like trying to wonder how people felt throughout history, except that with history you have all these records and accounts and evidence left behind to give you an idea. You'll never know for sure, you can get an idea.

How these people feel and comprehend the world? Total mystery. They are disconnected from the vast majority of humanity in experiences and knowledge.

We know so little about them, and their day to day life would be entirely disconnected from the day to day life of you and me. They know the same about us - basically nothing, except that whenever we visit we tend to bring disaster to their homes. They don't want anything to do with it and will shoot arrows at visiting helicopters.

And how wild is that? I have to imagine seeing a helicopter when you skipped several tool ages would overwhelm the mind, but it doesn't. They're not interested in our planes, helicopters, hulking cargo ships - they just want to be left alone. It's not like they don't know we're cooking some wild shit out here, either. They've looted the wreckage of a cargo ship that ran ashore and since then they've been observed using new tools in new ways.

I sometimes wonder if we'll blow ourselves up one day and leave these guys to inherit the Earth.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago (2 children)

They probably don't know what capitalism is. I'm jealous.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Going to the north sentinelese to beg them to let me join them

[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

And because of that their day is probablly:

wake up when you feel like it

Do a couple hours of chores and housework

Couple hours of resource management, agriculture, harvesting whatever

Couple hours for lunch whenever you feel like it

Spend the afternoon doing whatever you want

Couple hours of chores for dinner

Go to bed whenever you want

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago

let them vibe bunny-vibe

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago

Let them be the first to reach out if they want to have anything to do with us. Otherwise just leave them alone.

As the world looks like in it's current state, forcing contact upon them is only going to be cataclysmic to their world. Maybe, in some better future where we are sure we won't kill them with diseases, steal their resources, exploit them or destroy their culture an attempt at contact can be justified but we are currently nowhere near civilised enough to be able to do that.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago

they certainly know how to treat missionaries, i'll give them that

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Earth is probably the North Sentinel Island of the Milky Way.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

Alien Jesus theory confirmed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Earth is the bad neighborhood aliens lock their windows when they drive by

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

I just hope no one ever finds rare earth or fuel on their island

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

Critical support to the Sentinalese for defending themselves from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant people of liberal belief!

That's what I'd say... but also, leave 'em alone, I suppose....

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

They will outlive us

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I wonder, in a hypothetical scenario where we achieve global communism, would it still be appropriate to maintain no contact? Let’s assume for argument’s sake that we can get around the practical issues like disease, would we not owe them some form of consideration? As it stands, I feel like contact with the rest of the world would only make their lives worse and probably end their civilization as they know it, but if we had a far more just and equitable society, would refusing to engage start to resemble a form of chauvinism? Or at least neglect?

I’m honestly not sure what the answer is, or if I’m just wrong and the answer is simpler than I’m making it out to be. I feel like it’s easy to argue for no contact, for a variety of reasons, but is there a point at which non-interference starts to look like a form of captivity?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

If they want in on FALGSC, we welcome them with open arms. If they want to be left alone (which they clearly seem to want), we leave them alone. It's not complicated.

They aren't imperialists, or capitalists, or colonists. (But I repeat myself.) They pose no threat to a communist state. We leave 'em alone, lest we become imperialists ourselves.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The correct course of action for a post-communist world can only be decided in a post-communist world. Leave it till then, it's enough for us to know that we shouldn't do anything right now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The question doesn’t necessarily rely on a post-communist society. Assuming so just makes it easier to answer by eliminating some obvious objections, like that they’d have the global financial system forced on them or inevitably become dispossessed and marginalized, all the things that exposure to capitalism does.

The question I have is more about whether there are conditions where non-contact becomes the more ethically dubious position. It seems clear that they don’t want visitors, but if they were suffering greatly or faced existential danger, it would get a lot harder to maintain a non-interference position as you start recognizing that interfering can’t possibly be worse than death.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

I imagine that if there was a serious existential threat to the region and/or all life on Earth, it would be wrong to not contact them, such as a mega-tsunami of the century, an asteroid impact, a potential quasar blast, the eventual warming of the Sun, or of humanity needing to leave the Earth in space arks.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

India's policy of "leave them alone" is the only right one. Maybe someday their culture will change and they'll seek out contact on their own, but until then it's their call to make and anyone trying to force contact on them deserves what they get.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

Of all the Sentinel Islands, it is a (if not the) northern one.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Give them a bunch of guns, anti-ship missiles and air defense systems in case another Anglo tries to set foot on their land. In fact give them nukes too, just to be sure.

Apart from that just leave them be and don't bother them.

PS(The first part is a joke)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Just give them nukes, the rest is a joke.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

My two cents is that if every native population had the standing policy of "immediatly murder whitey" the world would be a better place.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

lmao
2000+ years of Tamils, Burmese, Arabs and Sumatrans sailing the Indian ocean and your first kidnapping is still by an anglo

Also daily reminder that when you say "Indian" you're referring to these guys as well (and Jarawas, as well as mainland Indian ethnicities like Malyalis, Tamils, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis etc)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They have a choice to leave their island. They don't use this choice so this means they really want to live like that

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Their choice isn't an informed one though since they know nothing about the outside world other than outdated knowledge of a few of the horrors of the 1800s like diseases and british people.

They are incidentally making the right choice now but even once FALGSC is implemented and terf island is returned to the sea they will still be isolating based on the same information.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think that until the world universally defeats capitalism and settles, and/or there is a great existential risk to the island or the planet/human race in general, we should leave them alone for now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Personally, regardless of our situation, even if we live in a perfect paradise, I believe the choice should always be theirs.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think we should NEVER force contact with them. We can kinda initiate it, but the decision to make contact should come from them. If they want to live like that, let them be. I don't think there's anything wrong with their lifestyle since they chose to keep it. Don't force people to have a modern lifestyle if they don't want it.

But it's weird that India claims the island, even though they don't own it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

But it’s weird that India claims the island, even though they don’t own it.

That does "give them access" to the resource in a 200 nautical miles radius from it, so even if they don't get too close to the island they can still extract resources farther out around it or they just claim it to avoid others from using it as a base against India.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But it's weird that India claims the island, even though they don't own it.

...India does own it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

When you can't enter the island, you technically don't own the island

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

oh my bad I thought you meant the Andamanese in general. Yea technically they don't own Sentinel.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wonder how long it will be until inbreeding reaches a critical state and the island becomes naturally uninhabited.

I mean, there's no new bloodlines coming in, and there's only so many marriages and branches in the family trees that can happen.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

The common 50/500 rule seems to be exactly the amount of people in this island.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

It would be cool to send a remote device (super disinfected of course) to record their language and find out how to communicate with them. We shouldn’t send any people to the island though unless they tell us to.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Isn't this the island on which some guy got lost and then allegedly cannibalized or did I mix it with some other?

It's probably be best to leave it alone even after achieving full global communism, full support for the island!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I believe you might be thinking about Rockefeller’s son who some people theorize joined a cannibal tribe or something to that degree.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Hell, I can respect their call. (Not that the choice is mine anyhow)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The current model of limited gift giving and contact to learn their language is reasonable and a valuable endeavor. There is no reason we should not be able to learn from them, or try to slowly improve their opinion of the outside world.

Other then that? Leave them alone.