Dead missionaries, wild Sentinelese
An anthropological review of a global media event
MICHAEL
SCHÖNHUTH
Michael Schönhuth is a
Professor for Cultural
Anthropology at the
University of Trier, Germany.
His research interests include
religion, culture and modes
of connectedness in both
mediatized and at the same
time localized worlds.
His email is
schoenhu@uni-trier.de.
Fig. 1. North Sentinel Island,
home of the Sentinelese, as
seen from above.
It was only a short time ago and already water under
the bridge: in mid-November 2018, the American mis-
sionary and adventurer John Allen Chau was killed by
the arrows of a ‘Stone Age people’ while in pursuit of his
evangelical mission. The scene of the ‘crime’ was a little
island called North Sentinel in the Gulf of Bengal, which
was declared a protected area by the Indian government
60 years ago in order to safeguard tribals from outside
interference.
It was not the lethal consequences of this event alone
which fired the interest of the world media: it seemed
as if the Stone Age itself would be interfering in world
affairs for a moment. A dash of exoticism (the last Stone
Age people), a dash of unruly and spooky islanders
defending themselves against modernity, a seem-
ingly naive missionary on his crusade, but also a bit
of Robinson Crusoe and a murder that was obviously
not followed up by local authorities: this global village
thriller provided material for countless media narratives
in the following weeks.
This article attempts to examine these events and the
subsequent media narratives from an anthropological
point of view, and using the insights gained, enters into a
broader discussion on the ‘proper’ way to deal with ‘small
isolated peoples/communities’.
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 35 NO 4, AUGUST 2019 3
North Sentinel Island
SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL
The dead missionary
There is quite a lot of background information available
on John Chau on the World Wide Web, as he was fairly
Internet-oriented, ran an Instagram account and wrote his
own blog. Strongly religiously socialized, in his last years
he was a member of the All Nations Family, an interna-
tionally active evangelical missionary society based in the
USA, which also recruits missionaries and prepares them
for their self-chosen mission assignments in special ‘boot
camps’ ‘in parts of the world, where the name of Jesus
Christ is little or not known’.1
Chau was thus part of a movement of independent evan-
gelical groups which have grown strongly over the last 20
years and which are engaged in international missionary
work outside the established Christian churches. One of
Chau’s role models was Jim Elliot, an American evangel-
ical missionary who in 1956, with the support of Christian
Missions In Many Lands Inc (CMML) – which still sup-
ports US missionaries financially and logistically in their
overseas missions today2 – together with four colleagues,
wanted to evangelize the Huaorani in the lowlands of
Ecuador. Until then, neither the Incas, nor the Spanish con-
querors, nor the Ecuadorian government had succeeded
in colonizing or ‘civilizing’ this ethnic group, labelled
as warlike – a reason why the Ecuadorian ­government
Fig. 2. First ever friendly
contact of Madhumala
Chattopadhyay’s team with
the Sentinelese tribe.

SUDIPTO SENGUPTA/PROBASHIONLINE.COM

The author thanks

his colleagues Christoph
Antweiler, Maria Christina
Blohm, Karin Naase, Felix
Riedel and Philipp Zehmisch
for helpful criticism and
suggestions. For all possible
shortcomings or potential
errors, the author takes
responsibility alone.
1. www.allnations.us.
2. https://www.cmml.us/
about.
3. Gettleman et al. (2018): s­ upported the mission project to the best of its ability. Due humanistic protection mission under the headline: ‘First
‘The last part of the note
conveys fear. He wrote, “It
to several misunderstandings and secretly carried guns, ever aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe released’
almost seems like certain the missionaries were killed by the Huaorani with lances – cannot be traced back to a first discovery. This group had
death to stay here”’. (Feser 2000: 154-156). Chau seemed inspired to repeat already been known to FUNAI for 20 years. The media-
4. For the original such an evangelization coup in the 21st century with one staged discovery was part of a protection strategy against
illustration see: http://
www.probashionline.com/ of the very few still ‘uncontacted’ peoples, also described the Peruvian government, which has always denied the
madhumala-chattopadhyay- as wild and warlike. He had meticulously prepared for his existence of isolated groups in this border region that
first-friendly-contact-with- mission with a total of four trips to the Andaman Islands has been earmarked for oil projects and timber clearing
the-sentinelese-jarawa-
andamans/ (accessed 14 April
since 2015. Chau did not strive for the possible ‘martyr’s (Blohm 2010: 96).
2019). death’ as a final blood testimony of his mission, but he This also applies to the Huaorani in the Oriente of
5. For a comprehensive accepted it approvingly, as his last records suggest. 3 Ecuador, who served as a mission model for Chau, and
chronological overview with who were, for a long time, of little interest to colonizers
documented sightings or Isolated indigenous communities
contacts between 1688 and and therefore remained largely undisturbed. However,
today see Pandya (2009a,b). One motivation for Chau was the fact that the Sentinelese with the beginning of the rubber boom between 1880
6. For another one of purportedly had no contact with the rest of the world (and and 1915, they became victim to organized hunts. They
these pictures of friendly
encounters with government
thus also with ‘God’s word’, which makes them particu- ‘earned’ their still-warlike reputation during this time,
anthropologists in the 1990s larly attractive for an evangelical mission). Mission socie- especially for the way they fought on retreat. State oil con-
see: https://static.boredpanda. ties like the All Nations have maps of the world on which cessions and private gold prospectors in the region did the
com/blog/wp-content/ all ‘uncontacted’ groups – allegedly more than 100 world- rest, so the missionaries, who were also killed during their
uploads/2018/04/north-
sentinel-island-untouched- wide – are listed, and they impart regional linguistic, med- mission in 1956, probably only met residual groups with
modern-civilization-people-9. ical and survival knowledge in their preparatory training. long and painful contact experience.
jpg. How uncontacted are such groups and what is behind the There is no evidence that Marco Polo sighted Sentinelese
7. As I do not have the
reprint rights to these,
term? Legal anthropologist Maria Christina Blohm, who in 1290 on his voyage to China (the island was on his
you may take a look at advises the United Nations (UN) on issues such as the way). Indian anthropologists, such as Vishvajit Pandya
these remarkable and protection of indigenous peoples, systematically distin- and Triloknath Pandit, assume that there was much trade
extremely sharp colour guishes three categories of isolated indigenous communi- between the population of North Sentinel and the neigh-
photographs via: https://
www.nationalgeographic. ties (Blohm 2010: 95): bouring islands, and probably also intergroup marriages,
com/culture/2018/11/ • people living in voluntary isolation (pueblos which would have been interrupted by English coloni-
andaman-islands-tribes/#/01_ aíslados) zation (Pandya 2009a,b). There is evidence that in 1880
sentinel_840149.jpg, passim.
8. cf. Shenker’s Ted talk:
• not contacted (no contactados), and – at least the British officer, Portman, responsible for the Andaman
https://www.youtube.com/ theoretically Islands, visited the island, abducted several Sentinelese
watch?v=VN357QrUdEc. In • undiscovered indigenous communities. and for ‘scientific purposes’ shipped them to the colonial
a similar vein: Saini (2018) However, the majority of these groups have been in more base, Port Blair, on the main island, where the two adults
for the Sentinelese.
9. https://www.welt.de/ or less voluntary contact with other ethnic groups, traders, among them died of infections. The surviving children
wissenschaft/article2073321/ illegal settlers or government representatives in their were taken back to North Sentinel with gifts (artefacts of
Keine-Kaeseglocke-fuer- peripheral areas for decades. Even the video recordings the ‘modern’ civilization). It is not known whether they
isolierte-Voelker.html.
10. http://science.
of an allegedly newly discovered ‘tribe’ by the Brazilian may have also introduced germs which might be unprob-
sciencemag.org/ Indian authority FUNAI – with which the non-govern- lematic to our immune systems, but are life-threatening to
content/348/6239/1061. mental organization Survival International advertises their

4 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 35 NO 4, AUGUST 2019


Fig. 3. In the wake of the
2004 tsunami, this member
of the Sentinelese tribe was
photographed firing arrows
at a helicopter.
Blohm, M.C. 2010. Zugang
zu humangenetischen
Ressourcen indigener
Völker Lateinamerikas.
Eine Stakeholderanalyse.
Wiesbaden: Gabler/
Springer.
Corry, S. 2015. Uncontacted
tribes don’t need the
‘protection’ of Western
anthropologists. Truthout,
4 July. https://truthout.
org/articles/uncontacted-
tribes-don-t-need-the-
protection-of-western-
anthropologists/ (accessed
30 January 2019).
Feser, H. 2000. Die Huaorani
auf den Wegen ins neue
Jahrtausend. Münster:
Ethnologische Studien
Bd. 35, Institut für
Völkerkunde der Albert-
Ludwigs-Universität
Freiburg- LIT.
Gettleman, J. et al. 2018. John
Chau aced missionary
boot camp. Reality proved
a harsher test. The New
York Times, 30 November.
https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/11/30/world/
asia/john-chau-andaman-
missionary.html?action=c
lick&module=RelatedCov
erage&pgtype=Article&re
gion=Footer. (accessed 30
January 2019).
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 35 NO 4, AUGUST 2019 5
uncontacted groups and have wiped out half the popula-
tion in other places.
This incisive external experience has certainly been
engraved in the collective memory, as have the numerous
other more or less unwanted encounters over the next
100 years, such as those caused by shipwrecks, private
and touristic organized trips and attempts at friendly con-
tact by the Indian government. Given the alleged hostile
‘nature’ of the Sentinelese, these government parties for a
long time ‘would avoid approaching the tribe directly and
watch them from the safety of their ships or leave gifts in
remote parts of the island’ (Sengupta [2015] 2018). It was
not until January 1991, when Madhumala Chattopadhyay,
then a researcher with the Anthropological Survey of India,
and the first female government party member ever, made
direct friendly contact with members of the Sentinelese in
the shallow waters of the island’s surf.4
After further more or less successful encounters in the
1990s, all attempts at contact were stopped by the Indian
government after 2005.5
Stone Age people amongst us?
In the opening lines of several media articles there is talk
of the Sentinelese as ‘Stone Age people’. How fitting is
this label? ‘Stone Age’ is an archaeological term, first used
by museum curator Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in the
1820s to classify the antiquity collection of the Danish
National Museum into three phases according to the basic
materials of the prehistoric artefacts (Stone Age, Bronze
Age and Iron Age). Even if today’s system is based on
flowing transitions and regional differences, the (Late)
Stone Age defined by Thomson – at least in Europe –
definitely ended about 4,000 years ago. ‘Can we not then
assume that people who have preserved technologies for
hundreds or even thousands of years also have social
forms of organization, rites and thought patterns that are
an example of the phylogenetic precursors of their own
culture and civilization’, the physician and anthropolo-
gist, Andreas Heinz, recently asked in a contribution to
INDIAN COASTGUARD/SURVIVAL REPR.
the discussion, and he answers: ‘The alleged “Stone Age
peoples” have … by no means survived the millennia in a
kind of freezer, but look back on a history as long as their
contemporary colonizers’ (Heinz 2018; my translation).
Ajay Saini, an expert on Andaman history states: ‘In the
past, Malays, Burmese and Chinese visited the Andamans
for slaving expeditions. The captured people were sold as
slaves in Ceylon, Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. A
hatred for all strangers was the natural result. The British
colonisation did nothing to alter this, as the establishment
of a penal colony in the Andamans led to reckless deforest-
ation that the tribes people fiercely resisted’ (Saini 2018).
The history of the survival of such groups to the present
is a history of constant and successful response to human-
led and ‘natural’ disturbances: the tsunami that devastated
numerous coastal regions in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and
has since become part of our collective media memory, not
only affected hundreds of thousands of coastal inhabitants
and numerous Western tourists, but also North Sentinel at
the same time. Its inhabitants reacted to the tsunami so
early and wisely that they apparently survived the disaster
largely unscathed, as a reconnaissance flight by the Indian
government after the tsunami surprisingly found out.
The Sentinelese have obviously withstood external
human threats for centuries. Their behaviour towards Chau,
who had received unambiguous warnings from the islanders
during his first two unsuccessful attempts at contact the day
before his killing, is part of this survival strategy.
Murder, manslaughter or legitimate defence of
external borders?
The question of how the killing of Chau is to be judged
legally depends on the assessment of the island’s status
under international law. The Republic of India, founded
in 1947, is the legal successor of the British colony, but
its claim to the island was only documented in 1970 by
the installation of a stone tablet at a remote place on the
island (Goodheart 2000). Understandably, there are no
treaties or agreements with the people of the island, with
Goodheart, A. 2000. The
last island of the savages:
Journeying to the
Andaman Islands to meet
the most isolated tribe
on earth. The American
Scholar, 5 September.
https://theamericanscholar.
org/the-last-island-
of-the-savages/#.
XLNKPU2P7AU
(accessed 14 April 2019).
Heinz, A. 2018. Debatte zu
Machleidt, Heinz (ed.):
Positionen und Modelle
der transkulturellen
Psychiatrie und
Psychotherapie – Von
welchen Grundannahmen
und welchem
anthropologischen
Verständnis gehen wir
aus? München: Elsevier,
Urban & Fischer.
https://shop.elsevier.de/
media/wysiwyg/PDF/
Debatte_24571.pdf
(accessed 30 January
2019).
Kittel, S. 2008. Keine
Käseglocke für
isolierte Völker. Welt
Wissen. https://www.
welt.de/wissenschaft/
article2073321/Keine-
Kaeseglocke-fuer-isolierte-
Voelker.html. (accessed 30
January 2019).
Maani, S. 2019. Voelkerkunde
und Psychologie:
Wenn fremde Kulturen
verschwinden.
Deutschlandfunk. https://
www.deutschlandfunk.
de/voelkerkunde-und-
psychologie-wenn-
fremde-kulturen.1184.
de.html?dram:article_
id=435885 (accessed 30
January 2019).
Pandya, V. 2009a. In the
forest: Visual and material
worlds of Andamanese
history (1858-2006).
Lanham, MA: University
Press of America.
— 2009b. Through lens
and text: Constructions
of a ‘Stone Age’ tribe in
the Andaman Islands.
History Workshop Journal
67(Spring 2009): 173-193.
https://www.jstor.org/
stable/40646218 (accessed
14 April 2019).
Saini, A. 2018. The lesson
from this missionary’s
death? Leave the
Sentinelese alone. The
Guardian, 27 November.
https://www.theguardian.
com/commentisfree/2018/
nov/27/missionary-death-
sentinelese-andaman-
islands (accessed 30
January 2019).
Sengupta, S. (2015)
2018: Madhumala
Chattopadhyay, the
woman who made the
Sentinelese put their
arrows down (updated
30 November 2018). The
Print. https://theprint.
in/opinion/madhumala-
chattopadhyay-the-
woman-who-made-the-
sentinelese-put-their-
arrows-down/156330/.
6 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 35 NO 4, AUGUST 2019
whom direct verbal communication is still not possible. In
addition, North Sentinel has been subject to the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes)
Regulation (ANPATR), 1956, which should protect the
tribals and their land from outside interference, and to the
Foreigners (Restricted Areas) Order since 1963, restricting
access to certain areas by foreigners. Entering the island
has been completely prohibited for unauthorized persons
since the 1990s.
The current government under Prime Minister Narendra
Modi relaxed the regulation in 2018 as part of a tourism
initiative, but Chau’s mission attempt was also illegal
under Indian law. If one takes the view that the island has
never lawfully become part of India, the Sentinelese in this
case were only exercising their right to self-defence, as
they did in the past. If one sees them as part of India, then
at least a legitimate reading would be that the archer who
killed Chau only enforced the Indian state’s monopoly on
the use of force in its place, since India never maintained
its own police force on the island.
For the Sentinelese, it’s difficult to say when and how
their unconditional defensive readiness might have devel-
oped – all the more so, considering that a few encounters
like that of Chattopadhyay in 1991 have been documented,
which show friendly contacts with Sentinelese by govern-
ment anthropologists (cf. Pandya 2009b: 178).6 Interestingly
enough, photos of these friendly contacts are hard to find on
the World Wide Web. Instead, a narrative arc stretches from
photographs of the Sentinelese taken by Indian photogra-
pher Raghubir Singh for National Geographic Magazine
(July 1975: 66-91), during the first-ever visit of a film crew
to North Sentinel in 1974 for the documentary Man in
search of man7 (cf. Pandya 1992b: 174), up to the enigmatic
and blurred photo taken from a government helicopter after
the 2004 tsunami, where a Sentinelese with bow and arrow
is pictured targeting the intruding aircraft. It is a narrative of
a fierce and fearless tribe that withstands any contact with
the rest of the world.
In any case, the existing trope of a violent Stone Age
people has been a good match for the Indian government
since the mid-1990s in relation to its no-contact policy.
This image of warlike Sentinelese, which the government
promoted through the deliberate public circulation of
photos, was gratefully received and constantly recounted
by national and international media. The myth thus became
part of a perhaps politically meaningful but in any case
intended staging. Seen this way, Chau’s case is only the
latest act in this performance.
What to do (or not to do)?
Within the interested scientific community and among
human rights activists, three basic positions and behav-
ioural alternatives for dealing with isolated peoples can
currently be distinguished:
1. ‘Leave them alone! If their land is protected, they
can survive and thrive’, Sarah Shenker, a senior
activist with Survival International (the world’s largest
non-governmental organization for the protection of
indigenous peoples’ rights) declared in 2015.8
2. ‘The question of whether they get in touch does not
arise at all. It is rather a matter of protecting the forest
dwellers from the culture of violence at the remote
edges of Brazilian society’, German anthropologist
Wolfgang Kapfhammer said in 2008.9
3. ‘Contact them now and support them in the long
term’, is the tenor of a highly controversial editorial by
American anthropologists Kim Hill and Robert Walker
in the journal Science 2015, which took into account
the fact that more and more members of isolated
groups at that time were seeking contact with the out-
side world on their own.10
The respective arguments behind these positions can be
found in the quoted sources.
The fronts are hardened; the ‘right’ way to act or posi-
tion oneself within this debate is controversial, even
among experts. Uncontrolled contact, as in the case of
Chau, is forbidden simply because of the virulent risk
of infection and its possible catastrophic consequences.
But even ‘controlled’ contact is no guarantee of physical
survival, as the report of a former FUNAI official shows:
‘I believed it’d be possible to make contact with no pain
or deaths; I organized one of the best equipped fronts
that FUNAI ever had. I prepared everything … I set up
a system with doctors and nurses. I stocked with medi-
cines to combat the epidemics which always follow. I had
vehicles, a helicopter, radios and experienced personnel.
“I won’t let a single Indian die,” I thought. And the con-
tact came, the diseases arrived, the Indians died’ (Sydney
Possuelo, quoted in Corry 2015).
Survival International’s demand is understandable,
but it would presuppose that the respective governments
would be able to enforce the necessary ban on contact
against economic and political interests as well as illegal
attacks by settlers or gangs. FUNAI, the Brazilian indig-
enous authority responsible for indigenous groups, for
example, has far too little funding to ensure effective pro-
tection. The constant advance of the agricultural border is
also further restricting the habitat of isolated groups. An
additional dilemma which is difficult to solve even for
support groups is the fact that ‘uncontacted‘ groups, by
definition, cannot be asked whether and how they want to
make contact, or how they want to be protected, by whom,
from whom and in what way.
North Sentinel has the advantage over almost all land-
locked areas in that it is not located on any strategically
important traffic arteries and has no significant resources
for commercial exploitation. The island does not have a
natural bay and is surrounded by coral reefs that make it
impossible for larger boats to approach. A government
with the appropriate political will and the necessary means
should be able to reliably enforce and monitor a protection
mandate through this special island position.
How difficult this is in practice is shown by how easy
it was for Chau to undermine the protective shield of the
Indian authorities with a little bribe. Furthermore, as long
as national governments enforce sovereignty claims, any
change of government or policy also means a potential
reversal of the protection policy for groups living in isola-
tion. The relaxation of the Foreigners (Restricted Areas)
Order rule by the Modi government in India in the name
of tourism promotion, or the announced policy for opening
the Indian protected areas to national resource interests by
the new president of Brazil, Bolsonaro, bear eloquent wit-
ness to this.
In a provocative radio essay, the Austrian writer and
psychoanalyst Sama Maani recently called for a reversal
of the gaze: ‘The fact that the livelihoods and traditions of
the indigenous people in South America and elsewhere are
threatened is, of course, denied by no one. But I am afraid
that we completely misjudge the reality of these people.
I maintain that the moment an indigenous ethnic group
comes into contact with our civilization, it is no longer an
indigenous ethnic group, but part of global modernity…
When we talk about the situation of indigenous peoples,
the disappearance of their cultures and so on, we should
always think about our own desires and projections’.
It is this reversal of the gaze that also characterizes an
anthropological reading of the case. It does not necessarily
make the media event and the attitudes of its actors more
understandable, but it is an invitation to reinterpret the
media hype and our role within it by thus adopting a more
informed approach towards a complex subject matter. l