John Chau considered himself to be an adventurer.
The 27-year-old had traveled around the world and prided himself on going off the beaten track.
“I love to explore,” he told the Outbound Collective four years ago.
“So whether it’s trekking through dense old growth forests near the Chilliwack River [on the US-Canada border], finding a rumoured waterfall in the jungles of the Andamans, or just wandering around a city to get a feel for the vibes, I’m an explorer at heart.”
The Alabaman man was fascinated by a remote tribe who have lived in isolation for 60,000 years on North Sentinel Island, one of India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands.
According to the BBC, the Sentinelese tribal people have had no contact with other humans and have no immunity to common illnesses such as the flu and measles.
It’s believed there are only 50-150 members of the remote tribe left and they are considered to be endangered. They fiercely protect their island from outsiders.
After the 2004 tsunami, a member of the tribe was filmed firing arrows at a helicopter assessing the extent of the damage to the area. In 2006, the tribe killed two Indian fisherman who were illegally poaching turtles and lobsters off the shore of the island.
Contact with the endangered Andaman tribes is illegal and tourists are forbidden from traveling to the remote island.
On November 16, 2018, Chau paid seven Indian fisherman to illegally ferry him to the island. They took the young traveler close enough to the island for him to canoe the rest of the way.
Top Comments
The laws are obviously there to protect people from getting killed like this. Maybe he thought God wanted him to go there due to a mental health condition?
It was a stupid, selfish thing to do, done with the brainless arrogance of religion. Hopefully this will be a lesson to anyone else thinking that "converting the natives" is a good idea... leave these people alone and keep your superstitions to yourself.
They must have heard about what happened to every other culture who had a friendly white guy show up with a bible and good intentions.
It improved by every metric?
Actually they had some of their tribe kidnapped by the British as part of an experiment and they died. The children of the dead tribe members were returned and they have been highly suspicious since
There's 100 or so of them, they wouldn't survive our contact to be to enjoy the benefits of vaccines for diseases they don't have anyway and social media.