The People Who Live On This Island Will Kill Anyone Who Tries To Come Ashore

North Sentinel Island, located in the Bay of Bengal, between Myanmar and Indonesia, is home to an isolated tribe that has never been colonized or even made contact with. These people are one of the last Stone Age tribes on Earth whose culture has been completely untouched by modern civilization. Despite the fact that the island formally belongs to India, no one dares to visit it and approach the Sentinelese tribe. The reason is their extreme violence and hostility – anyone who has ever tried to come ashore the island was attacked or even killed.

The Sentinelese are believed to have lived on the island for 60,000 years! After this unthinkable period of time in isolation, it’s no surprise that they are so hostile to outsiders, which may be due to past conflicts with the outside world. In order to protect the Tribe and prevent unnecessary violence, the Indian government has also made it illegal to approach it closer than three miles. Due to the inability to study the tribe and the island, we don’t know much about them.

It is estimated that the tribe counts between 50 and 400 members and lives exclusively by hunting and gathering. Though it is difficult to observe the island from the air because of the dense tree cover, it is established that the Sentinelese are not familiar with agriculture. Their drive to protect their culture from the outside world is probably the reason they have survived in isolation for so many years. Who knows how long they will manage to live in the middle of the ocean without having the slightest interest in the “civilized” rest of the world. And perhaps being without contact with us is a good thing.

More at The Mind Unleashed, survivalinternational.org and dailymail.co.uk

29 cultures and tribes at risk of disappearing

It took over four years for photographer Jimmy Nelson to document 29 cultures and tribes at risk of disappearing from their remote corners of the world. He set out to "celebrate the beauty of these cultures and their traditional ways of life" and beautifully captured his subjects.

Colombia's Nuka Make tribe faces extinction

Only a decade ago, the Nuka Make, a Colombian indigenous community, lived a peaceful life disconnected from the modern world. Nomadic hunter-gatherers, they roamed a chunk of the Amazon three times the size of London, spending days trekking to one corner just to fish, then weeks to another to hunt.

Now driven out of their territory by the Farce left-wing guerrillas, the tribe occupies a shabby glade half the size of a football field on the outskirts of a frontier town, San José del Guaviare. "We fled day and night through the jungle," a young woman, Monica, says. "Finally we arrived in this place, no one is happy here."

The Nuka say their new home is poor for hunting and fishing. Local farmers get angry when they hunt in the forests. To make up for the loss of food, Acción Social, the government's aid organisation, delivers rations. However, the women say it is not sufficient. "They often forget to bring us the rations, and sometimes it is not enough," says Sandra, a young Nuka mother. "We do not like some of the things they give us, our bodies are not used to it."

The Guardian

Amazon tribe feared 'massacred'

The head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru.

On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antônio Custódio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker. But after the police pulled out, officers with the indigenous protection service (Funai) decided to return fearing a "massacre". They claimed that groups of men with rifles and machine guns were still at large in the rainforest. Reports suggest the traffickers may have been attempting to set up new smuggling routes, running through the tribe's land.

"We decided to come back here because we believed that these guys may be massacring the isolated [tribe]," Carlos Travassos, the head of Brazil's department for isolated indigenous peoples, told the Brazilian news website IG. "We are more worried than ever. The situation could be one of the greatest blows we have seen to the work to protect isolated Indians in decades. A catastrophe … genocide!"

More on The Guardian

More on Altino Machado's Blog

'Uncontacted' Amazon tribe found in Brazil

Government researchers in Brazil say they have found one of the world's last uncontacted tribes in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest.

Aerial pictures revealed by the Brazilian government's agency of indigenous affairs (Funai) showed four large thatched huts fully surrounded by various crops in the Vale do Javari region. Aloysio Guapindaia, a Funai director, also said they would work to keep the tribe isolated and safe. The tribe is thought to belong to the Pano linguistic group that straddles the border between Brazil, Peru and Bolivia.

Al Jazeera

Survival launches tourist boycott of ‘human safari park’

Survival today called for tourists to boycott the main highway in India’s Andaman Islands – an illegal road which cuts through the land of the endangered Jarawa tribe.

The Andaman Trunk Road is both illegal – India’s Supreme Court ordered it closed in 2002, but it remains open – and highly dangerous for the Jarawa, who number just 365. The hunter-gatherer Jarawa have only had friendly contact with outsiders since 1998 and so tourists risk passing on diseases to which the tribe has little immunity. An epidemic could decimate the tribe.

Thousands of tourists, both Indian and international, travel along the road each month. Rules supposed to protect the Jarawa are routinely broken, and the Jarawa reserve is in effect a human safari park.

Survival International - More about the tribe here

“Dance, sing, stay up all night - live a life of dignity, with high morals”

Gaddafi addresses Tripoli crowd - Transcript on Al Jazeera

Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Filmed So Governments Take Notice

Survival International's campaign with newly released photos of the tribe, followed by a breathtakingly haunting film by the BBC, has raised awareness of one of the last uncontacted tribes in the world.

The BBC film, narrated by actor Gillian Anderson was made in collaboration with the Brazilian government for the new BBC 1 'Human Planet' series. Shooting from a kilometer away with a powerful zoom lens in order to minimize disturbance, the BBC crew captures gardens, homes, and people covered in red body paint. An undisturbed civilization. Unfortunately, it may not remain this way.

The Huffington Post