North Sentinel Island is an island de-jure owned by India but is de-facto self-governing. It is illegal to visit the island due to how dangerous it is, along with the risk of spreading diseases that the inhabitants do not have any resistance to.
The island is inhabitated by around 50-500 (true number unknown) indigenous people who have inhabited the island for over 60,000 years. The Sentinelese people are well-known to attack most outsiders who dare to come visit the island. Apparently, one major catalyst was when a British man kidnapped an elderly couple and four children. The couple died and the children were returned but had serious diseases which may have spread to the rest of the islanders.
In 2018, an American tourist illegally visited the island in order to attempt to convert them to Christianity. He was later killed by the Sentinelese.
I don't why, but for some reason, this island is quite fascinating. There is so little known about it. The very concept of an isolated society that wants to be left alone is something that I find interesting.
Have any two cents to give?
I think we should NEVER force contact with them. We can kinda initiate it, but the decision to make contact should come from them. If they want to live like that, let them be. I don't think there's anything wrong with their lifestyle since they chose to keep it. Don't force people to have a modern lifestyle if they don't want it.
But it's weird that India claims the island, even though they don't own it.
That does "give them access" to the resource in a 200 nautical miles radius from it, so even if they don't get too close to the island they can still extract resources farther out around it or they just claim it to avoid others from using it as a base against India.
...India does own it
When you can't enter the island, you technically don't own the island
oh my bad I thought you meant the Andamanese in general. Yea technically they don't own Sentinel.