SENTINELESE TRIBE

About:

• The Sentinelese is a negrito tribe who live on the North Sentinel Island of the Andamans.
  
  
• Demography and Lifestyle:
  • to various estimates, the Sentinelese presence on the islands varies from 2,000 years to 30,000 years ago.
    
    
  • Census 2001 counted 39 inhabitants.
    
    
  • The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers, likely using bows and arrows to hunt and more rudimentary methods to catch local seafood.
    
    
  • It is known that the Sentinelese speak their own language, the Sentinelese language.
    
    
  
  
  
• Contacts with other people: The Sentinelese have been fiercely hostile to outside contact. They have been mostly left alone even from colonial times, unlike other tribes such as the Onges, Jarawas and Great Andamanese, because the land they occupy has little commercial attraction.
  
  

Protection:

• Access to North Sentinel Island and its buffer zone is strictly restricted under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation), 1956 and Regulations under Indian Forest Act, 1927.
  
  
• Under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956,
  • traditional areas occupied by the tribes have been declared as reserves,
    
    
  • Entry of persons and Photographing the tribe members is prohibited except with authorisation.
    
    
  • Any passage within three miles of the coastline of Island is illegal, and is enforced by the Indian Navy.
    
    
  
  
  
• They are designated as a Scheduled Tribe.
  
  
• After the recent incidence, some international NGOs have criticised the Government of India for excluding the North Sentinel Island and 28 others in the UT from the Restricted Area Permit (RAP) regime so as to ensure the safety of the tribe and outsiders.