I also like this reply by John Potter as well:
This answer is not meant to trigger anyone, but I have little doubt that it will. I apologize in advance, but I feel the need to express how I really feel about this event.
duck him.
This wasn't about the Sentinelese people. This was all about John Allen Chau and what he believed was his destiny. Don't believe me, read his diary.
Did he care about them? No. Only insofar as they were willing to be props in his "Christian savior" delusion.
Did he care about their unique culture, and the fact that they are one of the few uncontacted indigenous tribes in the world? No. In fact, he had utter contempt for what they ARE and only cared about what he could make them into.
Did he care about the Laws of Man, in this case the Indian government? Haha, no way. He bribed a number of fishermen to take him to the place he was not allowed to go, and in so doing made them accomplices to his crime. They are all now under arrest.
Let's be clear. History tells us what would happen to this tribe if they allowed outsiders to make contact with them. When Europeans reached the Americas, they encountered an indigenous population in the tens of millions that had no knowledge of or immunity to European diseases. In a generation, almost 90% of those indigenous people had died of them. 90 percent, in many places.
In other words, for the Sentinelese people to open themselves up to the "word of God," would come at an apocalyptic price. That's not a risk. That's a certainty.
John Allen Chau thought he was going to North Sentinel Island to save the people there from an eternity in Hell. What he was actually doing was that he was going to kill them. Not all of them, probably. But most of them, absolutely, Either he did not know this, although I doubt it, from the degree to which he appeared to know about them. Most likely, he did not care. Introducing pathogens that would kill 50 to 400 of them was an acceptable loss, in his mind, if he could convert the ones that survived.
The arrogance and superiority complex staggers the mind.
And let's not forget, these people speak a completely unknown language. Even if they did not kill him on sight (which they did, and for good reason), how was he going to convert them? Teach them all English? Teach them all to read the Bible? The 10 or 20 who lived, anyway.
And don't even get me started on the theology. What do these people need the Christian God for anyway? They've lived the same way for literally thousands of years. They're not cannibals, or thieves, or sex predators. They do kill, as Chau discovered, but only if you go out of your way to force them to.
Because of salvation? Really? Even if that salvation comes at the guaranteed price of up to 90% of their lives?!? And they're also damned to spend eternity in Hell because a "loving" God who created them in His image deposited them on this island with no access to the tools for His very specific conditions of salvation?
If that's the Christian God, and that is the price he demands for salvation, then he is not merciful or loving. He is a ****.
How do I feel about this? I feel satisfied that a unique people who can never be replaced saw this fool for what he was, and did what they had to do to protect themselves. No one made him undertake this monumental idiocy.