analogy:
there are millions of experienced single people in the world available as potential sex partners, but some folks aint going to be happy unless they get a virgin. more fun, you see, to impose ones habits onto a blank slate.
missionaries and zealots are rapists of the soul.
Kim Hill, Professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, discusses some options in this Nov 30 New York Times article. He notes that the status quo is probematic. First, he’s concerned about the possibly small population size. Second, “accidental contact is a disaster waiting to happen.” The island is about 30 miles away from a city of 100,000 after all. NYT:
Mr. Hill’s solution is to learn what the islanders want so that they can make the decision about their future.
“Humans are an extremely social species,” he said. “No groups want to live isolated forever. They do it out of fear.” What’s the counterplan then? It seems to be going back to the 1970s-1990s policy. Hire an anthropologist and have him (her?) give gifts regularly to the tribe. For example, more than three times. Oh, and try not to steal their shit as souvenirs when you leave your gifts behind. “It takes a certain amount of courage and hard thinking,” Mr. Pandya said about the next step. “It has to start with gift giving, years of gift giving, then the language has to be learned through this gift giving. You have to make an effort to engage in dialogue. It’s not easy, but everybody is entitled to think about their future, that is the first right, the right to have rights.” India is a poor country, growing fast. They can afford a young anthropologist to devote his life to contacting the North Sentinelese, if they wanted to. I’m not saying that India should do this. I’m saying it’s viable.
After many years of contact and language acquisition, perhaps some day we can explain to the Sentinelese the wisdom of their initial hostility to outsiders. Education is a wonderful thing.
He did essentially kidnap a few children and an old couple. Old couple died along with some kids. Returned the surviving kids to the island, with gifts…
I see what John Allen Chau did as a crime akin to drunk driving. A drunk driver isn’t looking to get into a car crash and kill someone, but it’s very likely they’ll do exactly that. Chau wasn’t intending to get people sick but it was very likely to happen, despite his mere thirteen vaccinations… and of course, had he been successful, he would have destroyed a culture and religion.
I doubt they were were exposed to all the diseases all at once, considering they weren’t colonized. Even if they don’t understand the Germ Theory, they still want to be isolated for other reasons, and the disease issue is just one more reason to isolate them.
GQ question: If a Sentinelese person had to be brought into modernized society for some reason, how might he/she get their immunity up to speed ASAP? Maybe quarantine them in a lab room for a month while pumping a hundred different vaccines and antibiotics into them?
They wouldn’t need antibiotics unless they were actually sick.
And locking them in a room isn’t necessary - you could park them some place with some but controlled human contact.
Vaccines would be a necessity, plus a few weeks to make sure the immune response is fully working.
They’d still be more vulnerable than average to things like the common cold, but you’d keep an eye on them and start medical treatment if necessary.