In November 2018, a young American missionary kayaked onto a remote beach in the Indian Ocean and was killed by Indigenous islanders wielding bows and arrows. News of that fatal encounter on North Sentinel Island—a small patch of land in the Andaman archipelago—fascinated people around the world. Most were unaware such a place existed in our time: an island whose hunter-gatherer inhabitants still live in near-total isolation.
Author and historian Adam Goodheart has also traveled to the waters off North Sentinel. In a presentation that combines history and travelogue, he tells the stories of others drawn to the island and its surrounding archipelago through the centuries, from imperial adventurers to an eccentric Victorian photographer to modern-day anthropologists. He also discusses other Andaman tribes’ encounters with the outside world and how the modern age is drawing closer to North Sentinel’s shores.
Goodheart’s book, The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth (Godine), is available for purchase.
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