Part Two: The Accidental Genocide of the Andaman Islands

In the last episode, we discussed talked mostly about the history of the Andaman islands in general, and not North Sentinel Island specifically. In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Andrew Ti (Yo Is This Racist) to discuss the Sentinel Island in detail.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the Bastards. Uh,
and I'm i mean the host of this show where
we talk about the very worst things that you didn't
know about, all the terrible people in history. I really
bought that introduction. Andrew t Save the Day here part
two about the Bastards of the Andaman Islands, telling the

(00:20):
story of this accidental genocide of an entire people. Hooray,
it's still fun. I'm jazzed up to get back. We
are pomped, all right. In our last episode, we talked
mostly about the history of the Andaman Islands in general
and not North Sentinel Island in specific, which is where
Jonathan Chow, the American missionary was shot to death with
arrows for trying to talk to people who did not

(00:42):
fucking want to talk. Uh. Now, for breaking many laws
to try to numerous law talk to to proselytize to people.
In paraphrase in the quote from the last episode, was
it the one of the devil's last strongholds. Yeah, one
of the Devil's last strongholds. Uh, something like that. Tried
to wave his bible a people who do not have
the written word. Yeah, you know the other thing about that, though,

(01:04):
is going back to last episode, is a lot of
I noticed the historical accounts of this do count on
one guy who just miraculously dodged a bunch of arrows
and or and it's you're like, so much of history
is just an accident. Yeah, all of it. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's it's just a total crap shoot. I mean,
there's that great story about that guy, which has been

(01:26):
confirmed by Hitler. But it started with like this British
soldier who when Hitler roast powers like, oh, he looks
like a young dude that I didn't shoot because I
thought he looked confused and the battle was mostly waning
and I didn't want to like kill another human being
that day. And then Hitler wrote about it later like yeah,
I saw a guy have a gun on me and
choose not to shoot. And it's like, oh, well, yeah,
that could have really changed some ship. Yeah, Hitler dock,

(01:53):
he dog, that's our new T shirt. Should have shot
Hitler duck. That's good merch Uh. This is a pro
shooting Hitler podcast, and ball of Hitler's decisions, the one
that I unequivocally agree with is his decision to shoot
Hitler Big Famine at moment hiring Hugo Bosses. That wasn't

(02:17):
a bad call. That wasn't a bad call either. So
now that we've joked a little bit about the Nazis,
let's talk about the slow Nazis, the British Empire. So
I would like to start today by talking about what
was going on on North Sentinel Island when the representatives
of the British Raj were busy infecting and fondling the
genitals of the rest of the anime and these people,

(02:37):
but not the people of the North Centel. Now, before
British arrival in the animals, there had likely been significant
trade between different islands. That's certainly the case with every
other island chain like this on record. We don't know
exactly how the people of North Centinel Island had interacted
with their neighbors prior to seventeen seventy one. It's possible
that the Centinels were always aggressive lowners for all of history,

(02:58):
but it seems likely the plagues which soon tore through
the islands prompted much of their centuries long isolation. And
then it was sort of a decision that came like, oh,
everyone's dying. We shouldn't let anyone else onto our island.
It seems like that ends badly, like an actual quarantine. Yeah,
it seems like we should quarantine ourselves because something terrible
is happening. Not wrong, not wrong. The next time North
Sentinel Island shows up on the historical record after the

(03:21):
initial contact in eighteen fifty eight is eighteen sixty seven,
when an Indian merchant ship called the ninevah Rex on
its coast during a monsoon. Eighty six passengers and twenty
crew make it to the shore. They spent two days
being basically camped out and waiting for rescue, and then
on the morning of the third day, the sent Least
tribe attacked them. Here's how the boat's captain described these people. Quote,

(03:42):
the savages were perfectly naked, with short hair and red
painted noses, and we're opening their mouth and making sounds
like pop. Their arrows appeared to be tipped with iron.
He escaped on the loan intact boat, abandoning his passengers
and crew to what he was sure would be a massacre. Great,
really good caf Really that is the absolute gem of

(04:04):
a loophole of the ship ship. I gotta go down
with the ship. Yeah, so sorry. The land turned out
to be the death place this time. You know the rules,
though loophole. He was eventually picked up by a British
Royal Navy vessel. When the Royal Navy got to North
Sentinel Island, they found that most of the party had
survived and had apparently fought off the tribe with sticks

(04:27):
and stones. Now, the next Brits to visit the Centinels
were led by our favorite anthropological pornographer, Maurice Vedale Portman.
A few months into the start of his job as
Officer in charge of the Anemonies, at age nineteen, he
led an expedition to the island. Now, even at that point,
the centinelis tribe was infamous for wanting to be left
the fuck alone. Portman landed with a large group of

(04:48):
heavily armed soldiers, along with some prisoners for labor and
a few trackers from local tribes that British had befriended.
So yeah, Portman had almost certainly photographed tho folks naked anyway,
Yeah yeah, British had be friended. Is like the biggest
asterisk of history. The survivors will be friended the survivors
of us. Yeah, here's another quote from that wonderful article,

(05:08):
The Last Island of the Savages. The explorers tramped through
the jungle, systematically, criss crossing the small island in search
of natives. They found a network of pathways and several
small villages that looked to have been freshly abandoned, and
the skeleton of an aborigine hidden between the buttress roots
of a large tree. Portman was impressed by the island's
fertile soil and its stately groves of tropical hardwoods, but
he did not encounter a single living soul. The centinels

(05:30):
simply melted into the forest when they heard the Europeans approach. Finally,
after days, Portman and his men managed to flush out
a few stragglers, an elderly couple and some children, and
the interest of science. The adults and four of the
children were brought aboard the exploring party schooner and taken
back to Port Blair for observation. Unfortunately, Portman later wrote
all the captured sentinelies quote sickened rapidly and the old

(05:52):
man and his wife died, So the four children were
sent back to their home with quantities at presence, they
remained in British hands long enough, however, for Portman, and
note their quote pecure clearly idiotic expression of countenance and
manner of behaving. So Portman abducts some old people and kids.
Old people die, kids get sick to he gives them gifts,
sends him back to the island. Probably kills a lot

(06:12):
of the North Sentinalies people. Yeah, probably reinforces their understanding
that we should just say the funk away from right. Like,
the absolute best case scenario is that the Sentinelies people
kill those kids before they get too close. That is
the best. The best He has locked them into a
situation with the best case scenario is child murder. Yeah yeah, yeah,

(06:34):
yeah cool. Good Now. It is worth noting that this
was young Maurice Portman. Over the decades he would spend
in the animals, he watched the Aboriginal population of the
island shrink and shrink. By the time he was an
old man, it looked very much like the whole people
were on their way to extinction. During a trip to
London at a meaning of the Royal Geographical Society, Portman
ended a speech with these words their association with outsiders

(06:56):
has brought them nothing but harm, and it is a
matter of great regret to me. That's such a pleasant
are so rapidly becoming extinct, we could better spare many another.
So he came around yeah, and was like, oh, this
is really fucked up. We really wipe these people out,
this bad Like that's like really deciding at the very
last day of the school year, like maybe maybe time

(07:19):
buck up. It's yeah, it's like studying for that trigonometry
exam the morning before. Yeah, you know what, now I
see there of my way. I yeah, Jesus. But it
is interesting that even a guy like Portman, whose whole
thing seems to have been fucking with Native people's, eventually

(07:40):
came around to the same opinion that the sentinelis Islanders
themselves old, which is ever we ought to just all
leave these people. Yeah, um yeah, No. Other British visits
were launched North Sentinel Island during the Empire, so that's good.
The Empire learned a lesson from this, Like things went
so bad in the rest of the islands, they were like,
you know what, maybe we just leave those people alone.

(08:02):
Maybe we just let them do their thing. We may
have fucked this up. I just go back to it
also had to be because they did the economic projections
and they were just like not worth it. Well, But
sometime during this time late when it switches over from
being the East India Company of the British Raj and
so at that point profit is less of a concern,

(08:22):
not a non factor. There may have been some genuine
humanitarian of like the people who came in after the
first couple of waves and we're like, oh boy, they
really fucked this up. Well, at least we cannot fund
this island. I still, I guess I would argue it's
still profit margin, just with slightly different values fed into
the front of the machine. I would agree. I think

(08:43):
it's possible that. I think it's it's likely that some
of why they were left alone it was legitimate humanitarian
impulse from people in the empire who were like, well,
this is fucked up. But if if they if they
had gold or diamonds there, they would have gotten there
were diamonds on that island, that would have been they
would have gotten over the humanitarian issues important. It's possible
as much damage as he did to them, he may
have saved the island by just walking around on it

(09:04):
for a couple of days and not finding diamonds, like
by saying like, it's just got decent soil, but there's
no I didn't see gold or whatever like. That's probably
part of why they didn't funk with it. More so, Yeah,
you know, unintended consequences, it says anyway. Um, So another
foreigner did make it ashore on North Sentinel Island in
eight This was an Indian convict who escape from the

(09:27):
penal colony on a raft. According to that wonderful American
Scholar article, a search party found his body there some
days later, pierced in several places by arrows with his
throat cut. No natives were cited. So that's what they do. Uh.
The island was left alone for like a century after
this point. So the British Empire, perhaps the world's greatest
proponents of fucking with people did not want to be
fucked with, decided that the sentinelis people had made their

(09:48):
desire for solitude so perfectly clear that it would be
kind of messed up to try to buck them. I
just state that because we're gonna get back to John
Chow at some point, And I want to note that
the British Empire of inventually learned the lesson famously, not
that they like learning. British Empire that invaded Afghanistan three

(10:09):
times learned this lesson. So on August fifteenth, ninety seven,
the British Empire made its largest step towards giving up
the empire bit and just being British. They released the
Indian subcontinent to independent nationhood. For the first few decades,
the new Indian government continued the British policy towards the Centinels.
They left them alone. In nineteen seventy the government sent

(10:31):
a surveying party to the island. They found an abandoned
native home and set up a stone tablet proclaiming the
island to be part of the Republic of India. The
party had no contact with the Centinels during this period,
and since the plaque contained writing and the sentinels don't writing,
is hard to imagine. We just wanted to another part
of India. Yeah, I just gotta stick this on the island.

(10:53):
I mean, yeah, it's pretty dumb. In nineteen seventy four,
the crew of the documentary Man in Search of Man
managed to talk or bribe their way into landing the
North Sentinel Island. They came with armed policemen and scientists
into Their stated goal was to quote win the natives
friendship by friendly gestures and plenty of gifts. Unfortunately, bribes

(11:13):
did not work as well in the Sentinels as they
do on most people. Uh, and the Sentinelies did what
they do open fire with arrows now. Next, several police
officers in padded armor went ashore and set out gifts
a plastic car, coconuts, a live pig, a doll, and
aluminum pots and pants. They then returned to the boat
where the film crew and scientists were waiting out of aeroshot. Now,

(11:34):
the Sentinels responded to these gifts by proving to the
foreigners that they were not, in fact out of aeroshot
and shooting the film's director in the thigh with an arrow.
The Centinales next killed the pig and the doll with
their spears, then buried them in the sand and took
the pots and pants and coconuts. Yeah, yeah, that's what
you do. Yeah. And it's also like the gift thing,

(11:54):
You're like, right, the gifts have never been good. It's
just great that some native people finally figure it out
that these gifts are never Yeah, they're always garbage that
will kill your your family. Well, and the only read
they took the coconut. There's coconuts don't grow in or
sent in a while, but they wash up there so
they know what is And they only took the pots

(12:15):
and pans because iron has been washing up on the
shore for a long time, making it in the arrowheads.
And so they're making these gifts into more arrows to
shoot than any other fucking people to come to their eye.
Feels like some kind of justice, right, it's nice. Yeah,
that would be one of the only thing we could
give them they can want. Here's more arrows to shoot
at people with if they come on board. I mean,

(12:37):
it does feel like a little bit like just just
give him a couple of guns, give him some give
him a rifle and a diagram. Yeah, this will be yeah. Uh.
In nine, King Bowdwin of Belgium, grandson of our buddy
Leopold the Second, Yeah, grandson of Oh boy Bowdwin of Belgium,

(12:58):
went on a cruise of the Andaman Islands. He spent
a night off the coast of North Centinel Island. Local
officials trying to impress. The King let him drive in
close to the shore so he could see a Sentineli's
warrior aim his bow at the boat. The king was
reportedly delighted by this. It's pretty cross cool to see
that runs in the family. Cool to see that runs

(13:18):
in the family. In one a Panamanian freighter named the
Primrose crashed on the rocks near North Centinel Island. The
crew survived. Here's how the official website for North Centinel
Island describes what happens next. Quote relieved to see land
in the morning, the cruise relief turned to apprehension when
they saw a group of natives waving weapons at the boat.
An urgent distress signal was sent out. Wildman estimate more

(13:41):
than fifty carrying various homemade weapons are making two or
three wooden boats, with the dispatch worrying they will board
us at sunset. All crew members live is not guaranteed.
For nearly a week, the crew of the Primrose, armed
with only flare guns and a few axes, fended off
an attack before they were rescued by an Indian Navy
tugboat and helicopters. The freighter, which I believe carried cat
food was left off the coast of North Centinel Island.

(14:02):
Salvagers began sailing in too loot the boat, and according
to the Telegraph quote, many Sentinels were killed in battles
with these Jesus. Can I ask you a question going
back a little bit, Yeah, how did the Aimate Islands
weather World War two? And it was pretty much fine?
I mean, it's Indian. I don't think anything really happened
there in World War two. I'm not aware of it.

(14:23):
I certainly think the Sentinelees didn't notice. They probably saw
some fucking planes flying. Yeah, like what the ship. Yeah,
but they've been doing that for a while. I guess
that's true. Yeah. They probably just figure there's monsters in
this guy. Fuck that thing. Yeah, that's not that's a
that's a yeah, funk that thing. Look that No, thank you?
Pretty actually now, Perhaps sparked by these deaths, the Indian

(14:45):
government sent out its first expedition with the express goal
of contacting the Centinelies people. They sent a team of
scientists led by a dude named Pandit, and gave him
the Governor's yacht as an expedition vessel. Unlike literally every
prior visit, these trips were conducted by scientific experts who
went out of their way to be careful and respectful.
They made many trips and started out just landing on
empty sections of beach far out of arrow range and

(15:07):
setting out gifts coconuts, bananas, and pieces of iron. Gradually
the researchers built up a reputation with the sentinel leaves.
They started coming in closer and having more fruitful contact
with these people. It was not a simple process, as
this excerpt from the American Scholar article shows quote. Sometimes
the sentinel leaves would make gestures that appeared friendly, waving
their hands as the dinghies chugged along the lagoon. Sometimes
they would make gestures that were probably hostile, turning their

(15:30):
backs towards the visitors on moss and sitting on their
haunches as if to defecate. It was not out of
character for them to rush out of the jungle and
grab gifts, then shower their retreating benefactors with arrows. So
there's a lot of patients. It's careful, and these guys
clearly care about trying to make contact in the bet
like this is almost like a star trek sort of situation.
We've got very decent advanced scientists and who care truly

(15:52):
trying to do this in the best way of seeing
is there an ethical way to make contact with the
people like this, so that they're trying to figure that out,
and it seems to be a pretty laudable effort. They
went through this for like a decade or so, like
more than ten years of visits like this, very gradual uh.
And during this period of time, Pendite continued to lead
expeditions to the island with the gradual goal of opening
up communications with the Centinelies people and letting them know

(16:14):
there was a world out there with indoor plumbing and
antibiotics if they wanted any of that stuff. The Sentinels
continued to shoot teams they got too close, but one
time when an expedition boat overturned, they didn't murder the
crew as the crew struggled to get back on board
the boat. So it was scene as like a good sign.
They could have killed everybody there, but they let us
get back on our boat, and that's that's that's a step,
that's a step, that's a step to trust. So things

(16:36):
got better and some sort of trust developed, but the
Sentinelies never quite took up there would be friends on
the opportunity to join the world or have any kind
of direct contact at all. On January four, n it
seemed like all that was about to change. This article
ran in a Port Blair newspaper several days later, first
friendly contact with centinels. Four days earlier, a government contact

(16:56):
team had paid a visit to North Sentinel, the first
such expedition in more than a year. At first, as
the anthropologist, constables, and officials approached the beach and the
motorized dinghy, they could see no one on shore. Then
finally a few sentinels stepped out from behind some bushes
and started to gesture at the explorers, seemingly trying to
indicate that they wanted gifts. As usual, the dinghy moved
down the beach to a safe spot, and a crewman

(17:17):
jumped out to drop off a bag of coconuts. As usual,
the sentinels rushed down to grab it, but for the
first time ever, the Aborigines brought no weapons with them
when they approached the water's edge. On the mesh baskets
and the iron tipped wooden adds as they sometimes used
to chop apart the coconuts. There's actually video of this
contact or the contact right after it, and while the
audio isn't super interesting, so I don't think we'll play
the audio during the podcast. I want to show you

(17:38):
because after all this, you should see these people and
what this actually looked like. It's it's pretty interesting. I
would recommend everyone at home watch it as well. You
can find the video on Behind the Bastards dot com.
Will include a link to it. It's really worth seeing. So, uh,
andrew T before we break for ads, you want to
tell me what you saw on that video, Like what
you think she thought about that? I don't know. I

(17:59):
mean it was interesting, which the impression of these people
just by looking at them there, because that's the only
look anybody really gets up. Yeah, they just seem pretty
I mean there, it's like wary right there, Like it's
very clear they're just like, what's happening here? Are we safe?
One of the most interesting parts is like clearly one

(18:20):
dude is either braver or more curious and gets pulled back. Yeah,
she pulls him back. It's like, yeah, it really is.
It's just like how and and you know it's neither
side knows what the funk to expect exactly exactly, but
it's also it's so one of the things that's really
clear to me is like they all look pretty healthy.

(18:40):
And I mean, I guess those are the younger people,
but like they seem to be doing all right, Like
they don't seem to be malnourished. Ye. Well, and also
at this point you're like they've lived through a couple
of plagues essentially, or their their ancestors have lived through
a couple of plagues. And so there is also the
thing of you know, we we say like stone age

(19:02):
immune systems, but that's not strictly true. That's not strictly
true with these guys because they have been exposed to something, um,
you know, both from their fights with the salvagers and
from the and their numbers are probably lower, yeah of course,
but yeah yeah yeah yeah, really interesting video. I recommend
you watch it, and I recommend that you buy the
products and services that we are advertising. Now we're back,

(19:32):
We're back. We're back from a great ad break that
I hope was as thrilling and delightful to you as
first contact with the sitting At least people would have
been to a scientist like Pandie, although he was not
there for the very first time that they did this.
You can't be on every you can't be on every
trip long research project. It's kind of a big thing.

(19:53):
So first contact was officially made by the Director for
Tribal Welfare for the Andaman Islands, and he observed a
number of things because he came back after the video
was taken and got actually closer to them and was
able to actually get out into the water and be
very near them. He reported a young man with a
bow and arrow who aimed his bow at them from
close range, but then a woman pushed the arrow down

(20:13):
and another man buried the weapons in the sand. Uh.
And again it's I hate to try to generalize about
a whole tribe from this. One of the things that
says to me is there's a lot of speculation of
like what if it's like one asshole man in charge,
like forcing everyone to do his bidding and like genitally
mutilating the women and stuff like well, the fact that
at least in one observation a man was observed being

(20:34):
told not to do something a woman and like that
that's not a bad it's a sign that this may
be one of the more egalitarian kinds of hunter gatherer tribes,
which is not uncommon among those sorts of people. So
I think that's interesting. It was the closest anyone had
gotten to a Sentinel Leaves without dying, possibly in all
of history, um anyone from outside the animals at least.
Pandite came back a few days later with another group,

(20:55):
and in February he made friendly contact again. Several Aborigines
actually reached into his canoe for coconuts, which is a
big deal. Near the end of the visit, Pandite went
up closer to the Centinelies than his own men, and
things rather suddenly turned ugly. One of the tribesmen pulled
out a knife and threatened him. Pandite recalls he looked,
quote like he was going to cut out my heart.
Maybe he thought I was planning to stay on the island.

(21:16):
But Pandit knocked away and it was fine now. In
an interview in two thousand eight with the author of
that American Scholar article, Pandite recalled that they voluntarily came
forward to meet us. It was unbelievable. They must have
come to a decision that the time had come. It
could not have happened on the spur of the moment,
but there was this feeling of sadness also. I did
feel it, and there was this feeling that a larger
scale of human history, these people who were holding back,

(21:37):
holding on, ultimately had to yield. It's like an era
in history gone by. So Pandite retired in nineteen ninety
two and the Indian government pursued further meeting with the
Sentinelese for a while, but it turned out that this
much vaunted first friendly contact with something of a false start.
The long era of Sentinelies isolation was not over yet.
In the Indian government finally took the hint and put

(21:58):
an end to all further attempts to come intact the
people of North Sentinel Island. The Indian Navy placed a
three mile exclusion zone around the island, and for more
than twenty years, the Centinales people were allowed to fade
from most of the world's memory. They made the news
briefly in two thousand and six when a fishing boat
with two men crashed on their shore. The men aboard
had been anchored nearby for the night and likely gotten
incredibly drunk. The air anchor had broken and they drifted

(22:20):
to shore. Other fishermen had tried to warn them as
they floated closer and closer, but they were apparently too
wasted to really notice. When they landed on shore, the
Sentinels murdered them and buried them in sand. Fair enough,
fair enough, uh And all the time since the establishment
of the exclusion zone, the only contact the Sentinelies have
had with the outside world has been occasional skirmishes with
scrappers and too close in flights by helicopters. The first

(22:42):
was in the wake of those two fishermen's murder. The
second came in two thousand eight, after a horrible tsunami
at the Andaman Islands. The Indian government sent a shopper
in to look for survivors, and predictably, the Sentinales shot
at it with arrows. Yeah. Now, at every single stage
of the history we've talked about in these podcasts, centuries
worth of time, the Sentinelies will have been very very
very very very crystal goddamn clear that they do not

(23:04):
want to know the rest of the world. Aside from
a few handfuls of coconuts, most of their close contact
with the outside has involved violent murder, abduction, and disease.
We've learned more about the Sentinels in the years since
the Indian government set up their exclusion zone, but most
of it is just scientific information about the time of
their migration to the islands. Scientists now think that the
ancestors of the tribe first arrived on North Centinel Island

(23:25):
as far back as sixty five thousand years ago. You'll
hear anywhere from like fifty five to sixty five thousand years,
So this is an unbroken chain of people from roughly
five times as long as human civilization has existed, since
we've been building cities thirty thousand years before dogs were domesticated.
These people land in the North Centinel Island. That's the

(23:47):
length of time we're talking about with his culture. Given
the rich, bountiful nature of the islands ecology and the
warm climate, it's possible that the only substantial innovations they've
needed to make in that time involved learning how to
make arrows and knives out of the iron that washes
up on their shore, and learning that instant violence was
the safest way to handle contact with the outside world. Yeah,
two lessons to important. Yeah, really got those down. Yeah, now.

(24:09):
John Chow, the young American missionary who died on North
Sentinel Island in November of two eighteen, knew all this.
One thing every interview with his friends, family, and fellow
missionaries has made very clear is that the Centinelies people
were John's obsession. November eighteen, Christianity Today published an article
titled what John Allen Chow's mission agency wants you to know.
The agency that sent him, All Nations has a stated

(24:31):
mission to quote, make disciples and train leaders to ignite
church planting movements among the neglected peoples of the earth.
I wouldn't call the Centinelies neglected. Yeah, when they murder
everyone who tries to talk, they're not neglected. They want
to be left alone. I also did not realize he
was sent by an organization. It seems like it was
like almost the venture capital version of a mission thing

(24:53):
where he went to them saying I have this goal
and they helped him. Those people are accessories to a murder. Yeah,
it seems like it, right, seems like that would be fair. Yeah,
it seems like you could charge some of these people
in a court of law. What the fuck make him
accessories to genocide? Maybe Anyway, they sent their representative Mary
home to talk about John Chow. She called him a
very interesting young man and very focused. Quote. Since he

(25:15):
was about eighteen years old, I believe he took a
mission trip, and on that mission trip he really felt
a call to be a missionary. Around that time, he
started researching all the different people groups and he came
across the North Cineales people. She says that Chow really
felt that quote, his life's call was to take the
love and goodness of Jesus Christ to the North Cineales.
Since then, every decision he has made has been to
prepare himself for his life's call. God. Yeah, I'm not

(25:40):
a religious man. My cousin and godmother is a is
a pastor and I respect her greatly. I have no
problem with belief. I am a problem with this, Yeah,
I I will just say it's like this has the
like it's the practical problem with belief as opposed to

(26:02):
the theoretical I guess I have no problem with the
theoretical problem of the theoretical issue of you know, religious belief,
but like, what is the actual good that he honestly thinks?
Because if if you take the idea that souls in
hell are not like you believe in it? Fine, but
not everyone does. Like, what are you doing? Like, okay,

(26:25):
if you're if you're a Christian, I'm going to try
to look at this from the perspective of a a
person who believes in a higher power and believes that
higher power communicates with the world and something isn't. One
of the first things that happened, he tried to get
onto the island a couple of times, and the day
before he was killed, he failed to get onto the
island and they shot at him. He was holding his
Bible up above his head and hollering, by his own description,

(26:47):
at them, and they shot an arrow through his bible.
Were I a Christian, that would be my message from
God to leave oh arrow through the Bible. Oh maybe
they don't, Maybe they don't need this. Wow, Maybe maybe
I'm doing the wrong thing here. I guess I would argue,
that's how you doubled out on your belief that this
is where Satan lives, and that's clearly that's clearly what

(27:09):
he took out. Yeah, but yeah, okay, I would take
that as a message. Yeah, Like the basic level of
this stuff, right, It's like Okay, so God has a
plan for everyone. God loves everyone, but he doesn't love
these people because he thinks they're going to go to hell.
He loves these people, but he just needs me to
talk to Yeah, exactly, you're the instrument of God. But
why are you the instrument of God? Like you were

(27:30):
just born into presumably America. I'm going to say, like
by accident, Like why are you a different instrument than
these people? What is so fundamentally wrong with every person
who died on that island before you got there? I
don't want to it's it's it's it's managed to get
into whether or not it was a sign from God

(27:50):
when the Bible get shot, I'm pretty sure it was
a sign from whoever shot at it. Where they were saying,
we don't want to kill you, We want you to leave,
please don't try again. Look check this shout out, now,
watch this drive. We're very good with these. Yeah, we
really know how to shoot arrows. I mean. Also, you're
giving him probably one of the first like ninety degree
targets he's seen in a while. Nails it. Yeah. Now

(28:15):
insisted as well that Chow had been fully vaccinated before
he arrived on the island that he had had some
sort of quarantine conducted. And I had to read into
this a little bit because they just say he went
through a quarantine. From what I've been able to determine,
he carried out the quarantine on himself without help. And
again I have a lot of respect for E M
T s, but the E M T B license does

(28:37):
not include quarantining yourself and even qualified to do this,
even if you know the theory right, it's all he
has a clean room that he went through. He still
quarantined himself, presumably with the ship that is available to
a first century person for not that much money. And
then he traveled to India, probably landed in New Delhi,
took another flight to the Andaman Islands, hung out with

(28:59):
a bunch of his friends in the Andaman Islands, and
then got on the boat with a local Indian sailor
and sailed there. And I am going to assume none
of them went through. Yeah, and and yeah, unless you
had a goddamn like bubble somewhere that that took you
from your clean room to the to the centinel island
Na Na Na Bro Na Bro. Now. A few days

(29:20):
before I recorded this podcast, wrote this podcast. At least
the Washington Post allowed a guy named Ed Stetzer to
publish an opinion column about Chow's death. Ed's job is
training missionaries to go do exactly what Chow was trying
to do. Stetzer's column was titled Slain Missionary, John Chow
prepared much more than we thought, but our missionaries still fools.
The article is meant to leave one with the distinct

(29:40):
impression that, no, they are not, That John Chow was
an expert on the North Centinelies, that he was well
qualified for the mission he undertook, that he intended to
stay there for years, and that what he did was
a profound act of love, undertaken with every possible thought
to the safety of the Centinalies people. Here's the thing.
If John Chow had spent most of his life fascinated
by these people and by North Centinel Island, if he
really did prepare for this as hard as other missionaries

(30:01):
claim he did, then I have to assume he did
at least as much research as I didn't this podcast,
which means that if he wasn't a complete reckless hack,
he read the single best article ever written about the
Sentinels people The Last Island of the Savages, published by
Adam Goodhart in two thousand, nearly twenty years before Chow's
own journey. And if he read that fantastic article, he
knows not just most of the history that I've talked

(30:21):
about outside of Portman's Poto graphic pictures. I mean, I
guess maybe he wasn't reading about that stuff. I mean
he might have. He might have. If you allegedly are
supposed to be interacting with the world, if you study
good Christian whatever like, surely you have to have that
knowledge of how innocent are you supposed to be? Exactly,
so he would have been aware of a lot of this.

(30:42):
And if he had read that fantastic article that I
keep talking about, then he would have read the part
where it talks about the Jarawa tribe. Now, the Jarawa
are another native anemones tribe in the Islands, and until
the early nineteen seventies they were in the same boat
as the sentinel Es, isolated, refusing all contact and murdering
anyone who strayed into their territory. Unlike the Sentinelias, the

(31:04):
Gerrawa responded to the Indian government's peaceful overtures also conducted
by Pandite. Eventually they gave up their centuries long defense
and started taking trips into modern villages. This really started
to happen in Earnest in the late nineteen nineties. Quote.
As they grew bolder, they became more of a nuisance,
stealing things from villagers, sleeping in bush police stations, even
recently boarding public buses, much to the other passengers alarm.

(31:25):
Not long ago, several were found to have chest infections
that appeared to be viral pneumonia. The Endiman administration was
at a loss over what to do. As long as
it had been the civilized people who were sending contact
parties to the Garrawa, everything had been simple enough. Now
that the Girawa themselves were sending contact parties into civilization,
matters had taken a most unpleasant term. Now Westerners started
traveling to the Endemans to see the Garrawa, because now

(31:48):
this uncontacted tribe in nineties is working up. Suddenly it's
turns attraction. See, you can see some savages for yourself.
We're over racism, so we won't call them savages. We'll
call them natives or whatever. But you're doing this same
thing as Portman was doing. You're augling these people's naked flesh.
In some German backpackers were caught trying to pay to
have sex with what they believe was a young Girawa girl.

(32:09):
Thankfully she was well I thankfully she was an half
and Amnese prostitute. Her pimp was a con man. But
that goes to show you there were probably some people
who managed to actually, yeah, yeah, probably some trafficking and stuff.
Hard to imagine it not having anyway, as you might guess,
the Jarrawa's first contact with world civilization was not filled
with positive benefits for them. John Cho would have known

(32:31):
this if he did his homework, he would have found
a Guardian article written by Gethen Chamberlain in two thousand twelve.
It included a video titled Andaman Islanders forced to dance
for tourists. I'm going to read a quote from that article.
The Garrawa tribe have lived in peace in the Andaman
Islands for thousands of years. Now to our companies run
safaris through their jungle every day, and wealthy tourists pay
police to make the women, usually naked, dance for their amusement.

(32:54):
This footage filmed by a tourist shows Garrawa women being
told to dance by an off camera police officer. So
we're to watch this next. Uh, and I'm going to
read the English or actually, Andrew, why don't you read
in English which tour guys are telling the Drawa because
you're on the other side of the table for me.
Oh sure, alry to work out? All right, where's the food? Okay,

(33:21):
I've given it to you. You eat it. I've given
your food, You eat it. You should eat it. Share
it with everyone. You eat what I've given to you.
The vehicle that will come behind us will give you more.

(33:43):
Share it amongst yourselves, turn around to share it with everyone.
What's your name? So that's that's what contact has meant

(34:07):
for the Jarrawa is now rich. I'm gonna guess mostly
European and American are making them dance for food. Yeah yeah,
pretty gross. Uh. Survival International, an organization that deals with
trying to protect groups like this, notes that the outrage
over this video caused a seven week travel ban on
tourist use of the highway that runs through Jarrawa territory,

(34:29):
but the organization claims that demand was just too high
In essence for the local authorities to not want tourists
traveling through the area. They note that measles has ravaged
the Jarawa tribe in two major waves, and that they
are down to just a few hundred survivors. On many days,
the tourists traveling through Jarrawa territory outnumber the tribe itself.
The Darrawa are doing better than many of the tribes

(34:49):
that decided to enter the modern world earlier. The Bow
were once one of the Great Anemones, a group of
ten tribes who numbered five thousand and eighteen fifty eight
when the British first welcomed them into the Empire. Today
ft two total Great and Amines tribes people remain. The
last member of the Bow tribe, who are believed to
have lived in the Animate islands for over sixty five years,
died in two thousand ten. We don't know how many

(35:10):
sentinelies remain. Low estimates say barely more than a dozen,
but their island is so dense and so little is
known about its interior that as many as four or
five people may still remain. The current reaction of the
evangelical community suggests that John Chow is being portrayed by
many as a martyr and a hero someone to emulate.
If that is the case, he will not be the
last Westerners to try to preach the Gospel to the
Sentinelies people at the risk of committing that classic Polonizer

(35:32):
mistake and thinking I know the thoughts of an entire
group of people. I do want to try to speak
for the Sentinels on one matter, because I think that
they've been very clear about this about what they would
say if they could speak to the entire world. Leave
us the fuck alone, that's fair. I mean the thing
with missionaries too, it's just like like, oh, we don't

(35:54):
need to keep Harvard on this, but it's like the yeah,
the absolute wrong message will be received, and they're like, yeah,
we have to save these people. Yeah, no, they're fine,
And even if they're not, they've made their choice and
it's shoot anyone who comes close for them. I guess,
treat them like you do the yard of a person
who lives in rural Oklahoma, and stay the funk away

(36:17):
because they'll murder you if you pick into their land. Ye, Like,
it's very easy. We do it in the South all
the time. I grew up understanding that if I broke
into the wrong person's house and shoot me if I
broke into their land or whatever, like we get it.
Treat the sentineleas like a random homeowner in Texas. Yeah,
don't exercise Second Amendment. Right yeah, so fuck yeah. As

(36:43):
as usual with the behind the Bastards recording, my main
reaction is fuck. I mean, this one's like, I guess
a little because it is like so much born of
sort of ignorance you can't argue about, like there is
just like how could you possibly stop this without having

(37:06):
people like question the very underpinning of their beliefs that
you're like the fun you're going to do? Oh, I don't.
I don't know what we can do other than try
to educate other people that maybe understand that, Like these
people have made their desire clear. I guess send them
more iron, Yeah, give more. Maybe send them nice arrows.
We make great arrows in the future. You might as

(37:28):
well drop some out. They'll figure it out. They'll know
what an arrow, right, like a good as arrow, A
couple of compound bows. Why don't like it's really a
matter of time before we just are sending drones into
places like that, right, I mean honestly, if you're going
to contact them, that seems more ethical than people disease standpoint.
You can make a drone clean pretty yeah whatever. They
might destroy the drones somehow. If it looks like a

(37:51):
bird and just stay high up in the air, yeah,
they'll assume it's an animal. I assume anyway. I feel like, yeah,
we're more ethical with these people than like when they
film like a planet Earth at yeah yeah, or less ethical.
Yeah yeah, we're less ethical. Yeah. Just leave him alone.
Just leave them alone. And if you really have to
study them, do it with like, you know, a fucking

(38:11):
forty six x lens from a plane. And I fully
support that because it's cool as hell. I understand the
intrigue someone who has spent a lot of his life
exploring and going to places and wanting to see different cultures.
I get the desire to want to know what's it
like on that, what are their lives like, what is
their culture? Like? Totally understand, totally feel that curiosity myself.

(38:33):
Don't go to their island. Yeah yeah, and you're not
saving anyone. You're not saving anyone, yeah, for Christ's sake. Yeah,
So yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep, pretty good, pretty good.
I mean the Guardian video is so disgusting. We're like,
O course, yeah, this is like what it's like when civilization,

(38:59):
you know, And and it's a little fascinated to see
because clearly that means there's a market for still treating
people as subhuman. Oh yeah, there's never not a market
for that Amazon. Yeah, but like it's it is several
veneers of propriety removed from like it's they're not even

(39:21):
trying to hide it. Yeah, and it's it's so it's
like discussing in a way that you're like, right, our
basis instincts will be with us forever. And I have
to hope that most of the people on a journey
like that. I know it's probably not the case, but
most of them, you hope most of them would be horrified,
would be like, oh, I didn't think it was going
to be like this. I thought we'd just get to
like walk through a village and see how they lived
or something. It maybe maybe people dancing for food, Yeah,

(39:46):
you're the bad guy if you're part of a thing
that makes people dance for food and it's not like
a ballet where that's it's not that direct. Yeah, you're
not throwing bread on the stage. Yeah, yeah, and you
want to plug some plugable I mean just not that.
This is much more sunnier, much more sunny. Uh yo,

(40:08):
is this racist? Is my podcast? And yeah, if you're
in San Francisco, we will be at San Francisco Sketch
Fest in January of two thousand nineteen, assuming we in
any way you like to define it still around then yeah,
and you never know, you know, dissolution to the United States.
Anything could happen. Anything could happen. So listen to Andrew's podcast.

(40:31):
Listen to more of my podcast. If you're listening to
this from the Andaman Islands, reach out to us on Twitter.
I meant, I write, Okay, if enough of you do something,
I can probably con My boss isn't just sending me
out there for a live show. We got to show.
If you're on North Sentinel Island and have Twitter somehow, yeah,

(40:52):
well they are on Twitter there, They're on Twitter of course. Yea. Now, uh,
I'm Robert. This has been behind the Bastard. You find
us online behind the Bad dot com. Find us on
social media at at Bastard's pod. You can find t shirts,
phone cases, insulin needles. Do we sell insulin needles? We
do not. What other kind of needles do we sell?

(41:12):
Heroin needles, heroin needles, all sorts of great branded content
on te public behind the bastard's key public check us out.
We get some of the money from stuff like that,
which I will use to buy narcotics. I love about you.