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Tea Leaves

Hard choices in the Andaman Islands

The world should reconsider forced assimilation of isolated communities

In late November, an American missionary attempted to bring Christianity to the Sentinelese people, a remote community in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal. Circumventing Indian authorities, John Allen Chau paddled a kayak to North Sentinel, the community's island home. The Sentinelese killed him.

The Sentinelese are one of the last isolated ethnic minorities in Asia. There are also some hold-outs in West Papua, Indonesia, and in South America, where a handful of tribal communities in the Amazon basin have shunned contact with the world. All face a deeply uncertain future as the modern world collides with their ancient traditional cultures.

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