To me, it becomes a question of whether you are even willing to consider them the same species as the rest of the humans in the world. They have a completely segregated gene pool. They violently attack anyone entering their territory, and apparently have no interest in peaceful contact. While they are clearly still human, I think if we were looking at this from a viewpoint outside of our existence as the progenitor species of these Islanders, one could easily say that speciation has occurred. There’s no need for different species to be completely unable to interbreed (there are plenty of hybrid animals), the question is whether they actually do without specific intervention. Right now the status quo is they reject all outsiders, and we have no interest in doing anything other than leaving them alone, so unless we were to specifically attempt to interbreed with them (or them us), it’s not going to happen. Thus, I see them as a different species.
They’re still human though, so I can see the point about wanting to intervene if there are people that wanted to escape but couldn’t - especially if they wanted their young children to be free of the island. It’s not those people’s fault necessarily that they have had their tribe cut off from everyone else, and these people could potentially add to the rest of human society if given a chance.
So I agree it’s a very tricky subject, where the logical aspects of the segregation suggest one thing, but the human rights issues are still very relevant even if we do consider them a different species. I think the status quo of leaving them alone is perfectly fine; it’s not worth a bunch of people’s lives to try to investigate everything that’s going on in a culture that doesn’t want to be investigated. They clearly have a very sustainable existence, and if they’re wiped out by anything at some later point, it’ll almost certainly be to environmental damage the rest of the world did (or some ridiculous natural disaster no one could have any chance against).
I don’t see what the species stuff has to do with anything else you’ve said. I don’t think there’s any good scientific reason to consider them a different species – they’re probably much, much more similar, genetically, to the rest of humanity than certain groups of chimpanzees (among many other species) are to each other.
One thing I think makes me want to leave them alone is that they are completely self-segregated. They’re not trying to gain the benefits of being part of the global human group, so I feel less compelled to make them play by our rules. I understand the point about them possibly be considered a sub-species, logically if not scientifically.
Then I think about actual people being harmed, and that kind of flies out the window. Isolation is an abuser’s best weapon. And I do definitely think that there are some human rights violations that are just plain wrong, and should not be tolerated. While also realizing that we don’t have the resources to police the world.
On a practical level, I’m content to let India deal with it and hope that there’s nothing bad going on there. On an ethical level, I have no idea what the right answer is.
Christ; a God Guise. That’s your plan? It’s like I’m reading a bad 1940’s action-adventure pulp. Soon we’ll learn that the natives worship an alien crystal which might trigger ‘the invasion.’
To be helpful, the field of Anthropology has spawned volumes of tomes that deal with a varied number of ethical dilemmas in the field. I’m sure they have something for whatever you are trying to get at.
If there was no internationally recognized authority over the islands, we’d be perfectly right to interfere if serious abuse was known to exist, and if we chose to intervene. We should make an effort to correct the abuse, and nothing more. And to be sure that we can intervene without causing more harm than good (that is, infecting the natives with fatal diseases).
As it is, we would be violating the territory of a sovereign nation (India). The proper avenue to address that situation would be though the UN or through international sanctions and/or boycott.
I’d be more welcome to the idea if it didn’t turn out so poorly most of the time. Things have gone VERY poorly for the other Andamanese ethnic groups. I don’t have any confidence that if would go any better in this hypothetical.
Militarily? No. But we absolutely should use economic, diplomatic and humanitarian mechanisms to pressure them to change, to provide relief to the victims, and we should accept refugees from those countries. If we discovered that atrocities were going on on this island and the Indian government was indifferent or pro-atrocity somehow, I’d say we should use those same levers here.
Leave them alone. Apparently there are no oil/gold/magic substances there.:rolleyes:
Technology advances might make the situation scientifically educational (struggling for a word) to sociologists or anthropologists. For the rest of us; just a weird survivor/reality, Truman like porn show.
Why would there be less reason to intervene if children are just dying naturally from some nasty disease rather than being, said, drowned at birth? If someone thinks that we have a duty to save a child about to be sacrificed to the moon god or whatever, why wouldn’t he think too that we have the same duty towards a child dying from an easily curable disease?
Yes exactly. And something is keeping their population stable, it may be disease, it may be infanticide, it may be periodic wars between different groups on the island, but quite obviously a lot of the members of the island are having short lives otherwise the place would be overflowing by now.
Their language is not intelligible even to the nearest other islands tribe, the onge, so their cultural isolation is probably at least 500 years old. You have a good point Clairobscur but even though its not really rational I think most people would more inclined to argue for intervention if they practised infanticide, rather than just disease and tribal warfare keeping their population in check.
Concealed surveillance for “study” would be a tricky proposition. Until you get things vastly more perfected you may not be able to place the “bugs” optimally without ground recon, and someone would eventually notice abnormal bugs in the tree branches.
Meanwhile, detecting something we adjudicate as grievously “wrong” through observation creates an intervention conundrum. What then? Is the world going to boycott or sanction India because they do not “save” members of a tribe of few dozen that lives in isolation and does not meet world standards of health or social order or even commits internal atrocities? Hardly likely. Would the Indian federal government consider it imperative to stop it? And how? The God Guise is a nonstarter. Boots on the ground, they’d have to think about it, given the attitude of the islanders. (which as even sven points out, considering what tends to happen after contact maybe you can’t blame them.)
Actually that is probably how come in the past, when it was the sort of thing that just was done, it was deemed not worth the bother for some regional or colonial power just do an old-school conquest of the island, which would have likely required the crushing of the natives. Realistically, still today the sort of scenario of “OMG they are killing infants, do something” or “OMG human sacrifice do something”, giving the Sentinelese attitude towards contact, would probably require conquering them, the hard way, with all that entails.
To me the question us whether there are universal human rights the need to be upheld, regardless of who is violating them and who is being victimized by them. Perhaps there should be, but there aren’t. Human rights ALWAYS take a back seat to other considerations.
So, no, I don’t think physical intervention is justified with these island folk unless the same rules are enforced everywhere else too. Otherwise it’s just another way of saying, “Do what we say, not what we do, or we’ll beat the crap out of you.”
Why? Ethically, or because you think it wouldn’t work? Certainly I think we have the technology to believably pull off divine apparitions to them. Sure I can see that it might have unintended consequences to their culture, but it would seem to be the least invasive way if we decided we had to do something but weren’t prepared to physically conquer them.
How about a closer to home example? This isn’t an exact analogy but in the US midwest there have been, and may still be, enclaves of polygamous sects that are hostile to outsiders, and sometimes practice statutory and even forcible rape. Google Warren Jeffs, or watch the Showtime documentary.
This group wanted nothing to do with outsiders, and even it’s police force was largely, perhaps completely, loyal to the church leaders. They are a largely isolated culture. Would anyone argue that we shouldn’t intervene with such groups?
Now, if the Sentinelese are doing similar things, how is that different? They’re more “primitive”? They’ve been isolated longer? How are those good reasons?
I understand that we don’t have jurisdiction in India, but let’s not fight the hypothetical. Assume you have jurisdiction; maybe you’re an Indian official, or maybe the Sentinelese are on an Island in US territorial waters.
For all practical purposes, the Sentinelese are not under Indian jurisdiction. They are under the jurisdiction of their own government, whatever form it is that that takes. If they don’t want us intervening in their society, then to do so is an act of war, and we shouldn’t go to war against a nation just because they’re doing things we don’t like to their own people. Not even if they’re so weak they can’t pose any meaningful threat against us. Especially not if they’re that weak, even.
If they were breaking any US laws, absolutely. The issue at hand was illegal sex acts with underage girls or other forms of rape. If we have evidence of such action, it doesn’t matter what they want.
