Saturday, August 17, 2019
Isolation as Defense: The way Sentinelese lives Essay
Defining alone is much more like having a heavy baggage inside your heart and at the same time, it doesn’t really make someone realize that alone is such an ugly word unless you already felt it but for the residents of North Sentil Island, being alone and away from the civilization is far better for their tribe. It keeps them away from being wordly and too dependent with technology and the many developments that Earth can offer now.            The way Sentinelese lives is far from the luxury and the glamorous life style which most of the â€Å"civilized†people have in present, with several developments and arising new technologies, people of the new generation and well educated individuals compared to the natives were much more civilized and well taught of the right things to do and the right manner and conduct towards the people around them.            There was no thorough account about the people of the North Sentinel Island or whom we call as Sentinelese at present. There were only few encounters with these people and almost all of these encounters can be considered as failed operations or missions. Most of the time, they welcome their unknown visitors by firing arrows and waving their axes towards these unknowns.            Located at the Bengal Bay, particularly in the North Sentil Island, the Sentinelese were part of the Adamanese Indegenous people who lives in most parts of the Andaman Islands. These people looks more like pygmies or Negritos and are naked as if they don’t have any sexual parts which needs some privacy, for the Sentinelese, it does not mean anything and they don’t need clothes. The Sentinelese are only short people, barely reaching four or five feet tall, they have frizzy curly hair and black skin.            These people are mostly hunters and they live their lives by gathering food from the forest and the sea. They make use of metal as their weapons and there was no sigh that they know agriculture. Perhaps the tribe lives and eats throught hunting and gathering wild plants all over the island. The Sentinelese and the outside world (Direct Contacts with the Sentinelese)            If we will look at the present situation and attitude of the Sentinelese, we would assume that these people does not have any education of the current trends in the outside world of the Island. The Sentinelese shows no contact with foreigners or people who does not look like them. Although some notes were taken saying that they somehow had physical contacts with the British who killed mostly their population through the diseases they brought during their colonization in the Islands and Japanese colonizers who killed most of them, looking at them shows no proof of the direct contacts because up to the present, Sentinelese and their tribe has not yet opened their doors to the world.            At present, the Sentinelese tribe remains as the most isolated tribe in the whole world. There was no definite number of the people from this tribe and probably they could be more than 50 people but less than 300 in population. Surviving the 2004 Tsunami, the Sentinelese was able to save themselves and continue to live the peaceful live they thought they can have by simply isolating themselves. Sentinelese’s Defense Mechanism             In 2006, two fishermen were reported to be killed by the people of North Sentil Island. The people thought that they were really dangerous aside from the fact that they fire arrows towards their visitors but the good news that make people quite okay was the news that the two bodies remained intact and was not eaten by the tribe like what people used to believe.            The two fishermen were believed to be drunk when the boat they were into set off in the island and the tribesmen immediately attacked them according to the witnesses. The decision whether to account the incident as murder falls in to two sides. The family of Sundar Raj wants justice while the father of Pandit Tiwari opposed to the diea by supporting the other half of the archipelago who says that preservation of the Island and the tribe is much more needed. RK Tiwari said that in this incident, the victims are the Sentinelese and not his son. He even said that it was the price his son has to pay because of tresspassing in a land he does not own, he had his own justice by being murdered. The Sentinelese on his opinion were just defending themselves. All he wanted to happen was to have the body of his son which is not quite impossible.            If this account will be murder, it is impossible to have or give justice, the authorities need to arrest the whole tribe to know who really killed the two fishermen. At the same time, they might risk too many lives and the arrest might lead to a lot of deaths in both sides. For the authorities, it is better to leave them alone and just focus on getting the bodies of the victims.            This tribe might have been too paranoid of the coming of the unknows which probably drove them into firing arrows and waving their axes but we can’t blame them. Probably the tribes people were only protecting tehmselves from the harm that the civilization can give them thus, letting someone from the outside world in the island would mean of danger. Their past experiences from the colonizers were enough to make them believe that they can stand alone and be protected by tehmselves. â€Å"No man is an island†           Back in the Bible days, God made Adan together with no one like him except the animals he also designed but as days go by, he saw that Adan was lonely and thought that he will give him a companion, hence, Eve was made and together with Adan, they took care of Earth and soon formed humanity.            The longer we keep ourselves from the people around us, the harder it becomes to accept that life is much better with the people who cares for us and the people who we will let to touch our lives. The harder we accept that we need them beacuse they will add color in our life and make it worthwhile, the more impossible it is for us to learn that in real life applied in present status of the whole world, life is unfair and most of the times, we need someone who will make us realize that life is indeed beautiful and pleasant and that in the long run, in the end, they will be the one to save us and care for us no matter what. â€Å"Action speaks louder than words†           The unfriendly gestures of the Sentinelese warriors is enough hint that they don’t want to be disturbed. Visitors are not welcome to the people of the island and as civilized people we too must understand that they want it that way. They too have the right to be in peace no matter what crime they committed because in the first place, it was the civilized people who made their lives miserable and killed their tribesmen. We cannot blame them from being defensive, that’s all they have aside from themselves, their family and their tribe. In the end, maybe it is rightful to leave them alone and let tehm have a time of their own rather than keep of disturbing the peace they have. Isolation            Maybe at this point, that is what they all wanted. They want to be away from the many things that life has to offer and probably, it is the only way they know to protect themselves. It was already a long time ago when the whole world was dealing with the ice age and that people weren’t like the people there is right now. As far as the people can understand it, back on to those times, â€Å"people-like†beings existed and later on developed into more human-like beings. Their evolution resulted to different races in present and at the same time,            It is not quite unreasonable for the Sentinelese to forbid themselves from the modernization or the coming of civilization in their tribe. Perhaps, what they really wanted was to avoid it and live a peaceful life with themselves, away from the busy people walking in busy streets and maybe all they really wanted was to continue living life fishing using arrows and be just the way they are. We don’t have any idea what they really wanted, what they prefer to live with for the rest of their lives but their actions and gestures tells so much already, we better leave them alone, they like it that way.
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