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Sugar Cookie

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An American missionary was killed by arrows shot by protected tribesmen living on a remote Indian island after he arrived there in a bid to convert them to Christianity.

John Allen Chau, 27, paid local fishermen to help him get to North Sentinel Island, one of the world's most isolated regions in India's Andaman islands.

Chau took a boat ride with the fishermen before venturing alone in a canoe to North Sentinel Island, where the indigenous people live cut off completely from the outside world.

As soon as he set foot on the island, which is home to the Sentinelese tribe and off-limits to visitors, Chau found himself facing a flurry of arrows, official sources said.

But the Sentinelese who killed Chau can't be prosecuted as contact with them and several tribes on the islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases.

Police have registered a case of murder and seven accused persons have been arrested. Their names have not been released, but they are the fishermen who took Chau to the island.

An Indian Coast Guard helicopter sent to retrieve the bodies was repelled by a volley of arrows from the community, believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...killed-protected-tribesmen-remote-island.html
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I agree with prosecuting those who took him to the island, but the lure of whatever he paid them would've been strong. The victim was a fool or was craving martyrdom.
 
His time would have been better spent in his own community feeding and clothing the homeless. Plenty of Americans need help too. That is if you are not in this for the attention. :yawn:
 
This guy was a fucking moron. He wanted to 'help those lost souls' but would have done far more harm than good.
Part of the reason those folks kill outsiders is because they know what outsiders bring in.
And in most cases it's outside diseases they can't fight against. That's one of the reasons it's illegal to go there.
 
Now that's a damned shame.
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I agree with prosecuting those who took him to the island, but the lure of whatever he paid them would've been strong. The victim was a fool or was craving martyrdom.
Or thought his Sky Daddy would protect him.

Oh, wait, that falls under "being a fool."

My bad. Carry on.
 
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I am increasingly becoming irritated with these morons who sneak into dangerous places (North Korea, China, etc) sure God will protect them in their holy mission and then creating all sorts of problems requiring others to rescue them before they lemming-like charge back in. Take note: stop assuming people care what you have to say and use some common sense. Act unto your own before you abandon responsibility for personal notoreity. Pride is a helluva drug.
 
I've been reading about the Sentinelese people on and off ever since I found out about them. These guys don't fuck around and are known to fire their bows at helicopters and ships that venture to close.

In a kind of weird interest in anthropology, I hope I live to see the day when their 'Leonardo da Vinci' equivalent invents a ballista or catapult like weapon and starts taking out large targets.
 
Amazing that there could still be a group like this in the world. You would think outside interests would have forced itself upon them, even if it is an island in the middle of the fucking ocean. You would think the people there would seek to travel to neighboring areas, and would bring back info that would bolster curiosities and lead to more outside exploration.

Just incredible they so effectively have remained so thoroughly cut off.

Such a badass, awesome story.

I WAS dissapointed to read that based on previous attacks/murders theyve carried out, it is not believed they practice cannibalism.
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All the more incredible there's not even good pictures of them.
 
I WAS dissapointed to read that based on previous attacks/murders theyve carried out, it is not believed they practice cannibalism.
<...>
All the more incredible there's not even good pictures of them.

This guy here pretty much sums up their situation in this twitter summary -



If the thread is blocked here (because I can't see it on my system) -

There's been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They're probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So here's a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island.

The Sentinelese are often described as “uncontacted,” but this not strictly true. They had a very significant contact in 1880 with Commander Portman.

Portman, the black sheep third son of some minor noble, was assigned by the English Royal Navy to administer and pacify the Andaman Islands, a job he pursued from 1880-1900 with the full measure of his own perversity.

Portman was erotically obsessed with the Andamanese, and he indulged his passion for photography by kidnapping members of various tribes and posing them in mock-Greek homoerotic compositions.

During his 20 years in a sexualized heart of darkness, Portman measured and cataloged every inch of his prisoner’s bodies, with an obsessive focus on genitals.

<...>

Portman spent most of his time in the greater Andaman Islands, but in 1880, he landed on North Sentinel. The natives fled, and his party ventured inland to find a settlement which had been abandoned in haste.

But they located an elderly couple and a few children they were able to abduct. The couple quickly died, likely from ailments to which they had no immunity.

The children spent a few weeks with Portman doing god knows what, after which he returned them to the island. Portman returned on a couple occasions, but the Sentinelese hid from him each time.

The story related by the children was certainly passed down among the 100 or so inhabitants of the island, and even today, Portman’s fatal kidnapping is just beyond a human lifetime.

So when the Indian government attempted contact with anthropologists in the 1960s and 70s, the Sentinelese were understandably hostile to outsiders. The Indian government soon gave up.

In 1981, a cargo ship named The Primrose ran aground on the coral reef surrounding North Sentinel. The crew radioed for assistance and settled in for a long wait. But in the morning they saw 50 men with bows on the beach, building makeshift boats.

The crew called for an emergency airlift and were evacuated, and not a moment too soon. Rough waves had thwarted the Sentinelese in their attempts to board, but the weather was clearing.

The ship and its cargo were left at the island, awaiting discovery by Neolithic eyes. Today you can still see the gutted remains on The Primrose on Google Earth.

Imagine climbing on board that ship. A completely alien vessel filled with alien things. Imagine seeing simple machines for the first time. A hinge. A latch. A wheel. Things that would instantly make sense in a satisfying way. Others would be so incomprehensible to avoid notice.

I have never been able to find out what cargo was on The Primrose in all my years of reading. There was about 100 tons of some sort of consumer product on board, and I’m curious what it was. But even absent the cargo, think about all the things that must have been on that ship.

In the 1990s, when anthropologists returned to the island to make new attempts at contact, they were met with a different attitude. Not friendly, exactly. But they were willing to accept gifts. Many would wade into the water with smiles to accept coconuts.

<Tweet with video of the encounter>

And in those videos, you can see that these pre-iron age people now had metal weapons, like the knife carried by this man. They had scavenged metal from the Primrose and cold-forged it into tools.

After collecting gifts for a few minutes, a few members of the tribe would approach and make menacing gestures, signaling that it was time for the outsiders to leave. They have never lost their desire for isolation, despite the gifts.

And they remained consistent in their intolerance against intruders. In 2006, two fishermen were killed after drifting into the island when their anchor detached while they were sleeping.

The Sentinelese are lucky they were so effective at preventing contact. The neighboring Jawara weren’t so fortunate. The tribe went from 9,000 to a couple hundred from lack of genetic immunity and only forestalled annihilation due to aggressive segregation. Their future is bleak.

Yet on North Sentinel, they’ve maintained a small community for 60,000 years which is by all indications happy. There is no way to integrate them into the modern world without wiping out nearly every member of their tribe.

And their aggressiveness is not the mark of savagery. It just that their conception of outsiders is mostly framed by some foot-faced English pervert who murdered some old people and did weird things to their kids. So let’s do them a favor and leave them alone.
 
While I understand the allure to a missionary minded person of bringing the word to one of the last places on earth that has not heard it, it was a stupid move. I especially don't like the fact that his family is trying hard to lobby for no penalty to those who got him onto the island saying it was "his choice". These idiots still think this is only about their son. The safety of the entire island is at stake due to them having not been exposed to any disease. There are strict laws in place to protect that island and anyone breaking them should be faced with penalty.
 
Yeah i had read about that creep kidnapping people and then wondering why the tribe didnt wanna be friends later. I hadnt read about the sexual stuff though, although it's not at all surprising given what disgusting trash colonizers were. God i fucking hate white people.
 
You can be an adventurer/adventure blogger and ALSO a nutter christian though.

I would think if this was a case where the media, especially the foreign media, was seeking to make the story even more exciting and controversial by claiming he was trying to convert this tribe to the world of Jaysus, the guys family would be out vocally squashing the nonsense. Maybe i just havent seen it , but i didnt think they were countering any of it.

Also i thought i read there was bits of his diary or some form of communication made public where he spoke of his God mission.
 
The "missionary" was willing to expose all those natives to diseases they have no resistance to. On another island in the region, that tribe was exposed to outsiders and 90% of them died from foreign disease in short order. He deserved to die, for being willing to risk THEIR health to promote his religious beliefs.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...n-chau-missionary-killed-by-sentinelese-tribe
Indian authorities say they have no plans to recover the body of John Allen Chau, an American missionary who was killed by members of an isolated tribe on a remote island.

An anthropologist involved in the case told the Guardian authorities had concluded that for now it was impossible to retrieve the remains of Chau without provoking further conflict with the Sentinelese, the small tribe who populate North Sentinel Island.

“We have decided not to disturb the Sentinelese,” said the anthropologist, who asked not to be named. “We have not tried to contact them for the past many days, and have decided not to continue trying.”

He said it had been determined that any further efforts to retrieve Chau’s body carried an unacceptably high “possibility of clash between the outsiders and the Sentinelese”.

“We should not hamper their sentiments,” he said. “They shoot arrows on any invader. That is their message, saying don’t come on the island, and we respect this.”

He said there were concerns that continued surveys of the island could force the Sentinelese to disrupt their daily patterns to begin guarding the island more closely – further disrupting a community that Indian government policy says should be left alone.

He said the message had been relayed to the US embassy in Delhi. “They understand the situation and are not pressing us,” the source said.

Chau, 26, is believed to have been killed sometime between the afternoon of 16 November and the following morning, when fishermen who he had paid to smuggle him to the island say they saw his body being dragged across the sand and buried.
[....]
According to Chau’s diaries, which he gave to the fishermen before departing for the island a final time, the American wanted to “declare Jesus” to the Sentinelese, whose home forms part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian territory scattered across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.

The Guardian understands an investigation is officially continuing against the seven men accused of helping Chau reach the island. The absence of a body will complicate efforts to issue a formal death certificate, the source said.

The US consulate in Chennai has said it cannot comment on the case for privacy reasons.
 
Hell, no one else wants to go try to retrieve him, because they don't want to get shot with arrows. Regardless of not wanting to disturb the islanders, that would be a huge motivator to leave it be. Hey, they did motor around the island from a distance and didn't see him. That's as close as they're willing to go, and I don't blame them at all.
 
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