Most isolated island in the world: North Sentinel Island.

The death of an American visitor who visited North Sentinel Island illegally drew international attention to the little island's isolated residents. The are one of the world's few mostly "uncontacted" peoples, thanks in part to geography — North Sentinel is a small island off the main shipping routes, surrounded by a shallow reef with no natural harbours — and in part to the Indian government's protective laws, as well as their own fierce defence of their home and privacy. Outsiders have visited the island multiple times in the last 200 years, and it has often ended horribly for both sides. 

Who Are The Sentinelese, and What Do They Do? 

According to a 2011 census effort and anthropologists' estimates of how many people the island could support, the population of North Sentinel Island is most likely between 80 and 150 people, while it might be as high as 500 or as low as 15. The Sentinelese are linked to other indigenous communities in India's Bay of Bengal, but they've been secluded for long enough that other Andaman groups, such as the Onge and Jarawa, don't speak their language. 

We know they live in lean-to houses with slanted roofs because of a solitary visit to a Sentinelese settlement in 1967; Pandit described a collection of huts erected facing one another with a carefully-tended fire outside each one. We know they make small, thin outrigger canoes that they steer with long poles through the reef's rather shallow, calm waters. The Sentinelese fish and gather crabs from those canoes. They're hunter-gatherers who, assuming their way of life is anything like that of similar Andamanese peoples, eat fruits and tubers that grow wild on the island, eggs from seagulls or turtles, and small game such as wild pigs or birds. Unwelcome visitors have learnt to appreciate their competence with all of these weapons, including bows and arrows, spears, and knives. Many of those tools and weapons have iron tips, which the Sentinelese are likely to find washed up on the beach and adapt to their needs.

The Sentinelese use wooden adzes tipped with iron to make mesh baskets. In the mid-1990s, salvage crews anchored on the island reported nighttime bonfires on the beach and the sounds of people singing. However, no one outside North Sentinel Island knows the Sentinelese language; anthropologists usually refer to people by their own names, but no one outside North Sentinel Island knows what the Sentinelese call themselves, let alone how to greet them or inquire about their views on the world and their role in it. 

What we do know is that they don't care for company, and they've made that apparent even without speaking the same language. 

Why are the Sentinelese so dislike to visitors? 

An East India Company warship passed around Sentinel Island one night in 1771 and noticed lights sparkling on the coast. However, because the ship was on a hydrographic survey expedition and had no need to halt, the Sentinelese were left alone for nearly a century, until an Indian commercial ship named the Nineveh ran aground on the reef. 86 passengers and 20 crew members made it to the beach by swimming and splashing. They gathered there for three days before the Sentinelese, armed with bows and iron-tipped arrows, determined the visitors had overstayed their welcome. 

The passengers and crew of the Nineveh retaliated with sticks and stones, and the two sides negotiated an uneasy truce until a Royal Navy ship arrived to save the shipwreck survivors. While they were in the area, the British chose to make Sentinel Island a part of their colonial holdings, a decision that only the British cared about until 1880. That's when the colony of Andaman and Nicobar was handed over to a young Royal Navy commander named Maurice Vidal Portman. In 1880, Portman landed on North Sentinel Island with a large company of naval officials, convicts from the penal colony on Great Andaman Island, and Andamanese trackers, claiming to be anthropologists.

They saw only abandoned settlements; the inhabitants appeared to have spotted the intruders approaching and fled to safer ground further inland. However, one old couple and four children must have been separated from the rest of the group, and Portman and his search party apprehended them and sent them to Port Blair, the colonial capital on South Andaman Island. All six Sentinelese who had been kidnapped fell ill quickly, and the elderly couple perished in Port Blair. Portman believed it would be a good idea to leave the four ailing children on the beach of North Sentinel, along with a tiny present package. We have no means of knowing whether the children's illness spread to the rest of their community or what impact it had.

The Sentinelese, on the other hand, did not have fond feelings for international visitors as a result of their encounter. On a handmade raft, an escaped convict attempted to exit the Great Andaman Island Penal Colony in 1896. He washed up on North Sentinel Island, a perfect example of the phrase "out of the frying pan and into the fire." A colonial search party discovered his body a few days later, covered with arrow wounds and with his throat slashed. The British made the prudent decision to leave the Sentinelese alone for the next century or so. 

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Is being Friends with Sentinelese Possible?

A team of anthropologists led by Trinok Nath Pandit, operating under the auspices of the Indian government, landed on North Sentinel Island a hundred years after the shipwreck of the Nineveh. They discovered just hastily abandoned huts, just as Portman had. People were fleeing so swiftly that the fires outside their homes were still burning. Pandit and his crew left behind gifts such as fabric bolts, chocolates, and plastic buckets. Despite the anthropologists' concerns, naval officials and Indian police escorting Pandit stole from Sentinelese, seizing bows, arrows, baskets, and other valuables from their unsecured dwellings. 

Since India's independence in 1947, North Sentinel Island has been in legal ambiguity. India claimed the territory in 1970.

India claimed the small island in 1970, and a survey placed a stone tablet on the beach to prove it. The response of the Sentinelese is unknown. 

Pandit and his colleagues attempted to make contact by dragging a dinghy onto the beach, dropping out coconuts and other presents, and then fleeing. The Sentinelese were not fond of live pigs, which they speared and buried in the sand, or plastic toys, which received a similar treatment. Metal pots and pans, on the other hand, seemed to amuse them, and they rapidly developed fond of coconuts, which aren't grown on the island. Pandit and his associates would deliver them by the bagful, frequently with bows and arrows aimed on them until they fled.

In an fierce echo of the Ninevah, a cargo ship named the Primrose and her crew of 28 got aground on the reef in 1981. The sailors were rescued by helicopter this time, and later visitors to the island claim that the Sentinelese used metal from the ship to make tools and weapons. A entire ship must have been an astonishing find for artisans who were used to dealing with fragments of metal that washed up on the beach. Pandit and his team increased their efforts the next year, visiting the island every month or two.

That consistency and perseverance paid off a decade later, a year before Pandit's retirement. In early 1991, a group of islanders arrived at the beach with only their woven baskets and the adzes they used to hack open coconuts to collect their gifts (although later encounters proved how well those adzes could be used in self-defense). They got closer to the strangers than they'd ever gotten before. When the anthropologists returned later that day, they saw two dozen Sentinelese people standing on the beach, and an amazing situation had unfolded. A woman pushed the bow down as a man raised his bow to aim at the tourists. The man retaliated by tossing the bow and arrow into the sand and burying them. It’s It's still unclear if this was a discussion in progress or a ritual show, but the natives ran out to the tourists' boats to collect their coconuts as soon as the weapons were disposed of. 

The friendliness of the Sentinelese, however, had its limits. A Sentinelese man signalled to Pandit that it was time for the guests to leave on a subsequent visit a few weeks later by pulling his knife and made a chopping gesture. 

"They would turn their backs on us and squat down on their haunches, as if to defecate, if we tried to enter their domain without honouring their preferences or went too close for comfort." That was intended as a snub. They would shoot if we didn't pay attention and stop.

They would shoot arrows as a last resort if we didn't pay attention and stop," Pandit told Indian Express. 

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The delicate bond between the islanders and the anthropologists never progressed beyond coconut giveaways; the Sentinelese never reciprocated with gifts, never invited the visitors to remain or explore inland, and neither side ever learned how to communicate with the other. And the Sentinelese didn't always welcome the anthropologists; on occasion, armed men greeted them on the beach. In 1996, the Indian government put a stop to the anthropologists' visits.

When Indian Coast Guard helicopters flew over the island following the tsunami of 2004, they discovered the Sentinelese in fine shape but not delighted to see them — and not afraid to assault them with bows and arrows. In 2006, an Indian crab harvesting boat washed up on the beach, and the Sentinelese killed both fishermen and buried their bodies. 

So, what happens next?

Given this background, it's hardly surprising that the Sentinelese people regarded American visitor John Allen Chau as a trespasser when he arrived on their island three years ago and sang hymns on the beach. They chased him away twice, but when he came ashore a third time, they killed him, according to reports. They appear to have buried his bones, like they did in 2006 with the two Indian fishermen. The hunt for Chau's body has been halted by the Indian authorities, citing a risk to both search troops and the Sentinelese people.

The tragedy has generated debate about how to protect marginalised tribes like the Sentinelese. Pandit has pushed for them to be left alone. The Sentinelese, according to the now-retired anthropologist, have made it apparent that they do not desire contact and are comfortable on their own. Officials from India continue to visit the island on a regular basis to conduct censuses (the last one was in 2011).

Conclusion

So, in my opinion, we must let people live their live as they want it to be and not change anything in it. I believe that Sentinelese are living the best life possible as they are away from noisy and selfish world full of haters and most importantly, they don’t care about money.

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