N. Sentinel Island is a protectorate of India in the Andaman Sea, off the coast of Thailand. The inhabitants are an Uncontacted Tribe of perhaps a couple hundred people. They are uncontacted because every time they have been approached by boats or planes, the visitors have repelled with spears and bows & arrows.

Little is known about the inhabiting tribe. What is known has been gleaned from viewing them from boats moored far enough away from the tribesmen, who carry spears, bows and arrows, or from the few times the tribe allowed authorities to come close enough to hand over coconuts.

The Sentinelese attracted international attention in the wake of the 2004 Asian tsunami, when a member of the tribe was photographed on a beach, firing arrows at a helicopter that was checking on their welfare.

Today, the island is out of bounds even to the Indian navy in a bid to protect its reclusive inhabitants. Campaigns by non-profit and local organizations have led the Indian government to abandon plans to contact the Sentinelese and have made it strictly illegal to have any contact with the tribe. Even taking photographs or making videos of aboriginal Andaman tribes is punishable with imprisonment of up to three years.

Anthropologists believe that the Sentinelese have thrived on the small forested island, which is approximately the size of Manhattan, for fifty to sixty thousand years.

The women wear fiber strings tied around their waists, necks and heads. The men also wear necklaces and headbands, but with a thicker waist belt. From a distance, they appear healthy and thriving and observers have noted many children and pregnant women at times.

The Sentinelese hunt and gather in the forest, and fish in the coastal waters in narrow outrigger canoes, which can only be used in shallow waters as they are steered and propelled with a pole.

In 2018, an American missionary who was under the impression that the no trespassing laws didn’t apply to him went ashore in his kayak in an attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity. He was repelled on the first attempt, and a couple days later when he returned to the island, he was killed by the tribe.