Chau went to "civilize the savages" by dumping Bibles into their midst. Instead, he became chow. Sad, NOT! Good riddance to arrogant evangelical trash!

The sentinelese don't have access to the internet, and a wealth of counterarguments to evangelical sales pitches. The presumably haven't had the choice of whether to convert or not, nevermimd their hatred of outsiders, so he probably saw this as a chance to correct one of god's horrible mistakes, err... oversights of not evenly distributing the opportunity of salvation.

But really, it's just that he saw the Sentinelese as mooks, whether he realizes it or not.

Satisfaction is the matter's heart, CM. And satisfaction is atonement, no? Curious.

Fucker started a genocide.

1- If it weren't for the typo I'd say you win the internet today.

Dude could have kayaked from land to Squaxin Island (banned to non-tribal members) and crashed a boyscout campout. Not enough for his ego I guess.

Dude's family is making a show of being magnanimous in not wanting the fishermen who brought him to the Sentinelese prosecuted. Dude's family is missing the point that their main offense is bringing a biohazard (Dude's carcass) to a vulnerable population and dumping it.

" The American brought a football with him."

I am pretty sure it was a soccer ball and it was not translated back for US consumption from the international reports.

He paddled himself from the boat to the island. There are areas not too far from the island that are legal to fish and visit- I wonder if he bribed fishermen to take him somewhere that no one was allowed to go or if he bribed them to let him come along to a place where they were permitted but he was not. Has anyone read the details?

It also makes me wonder if this sort of exploitation goes down from time to time. It would not at all surprise me to find out that there is an illegal tourist industry that takes folks out there to "gawk at the natives" from the safety of the boat. I wonder how hard it is to bribe the coast guard or to elude them? Some of the stories have said that the government has recently eased restrictions on fishing and tourism near the island.

In any case, I agree that the fishermen are also victims to this guy's megalomania. They asked him not to approach, but he went back even after they attacked him with arrows. They watched him die and reported it and are now in custody for it- they could face accessory to murder. And it's a lot of them for only 400 dollars- makes me wonder how many of them were the employees of the others or if they were just very poor. In any case, this man certainly did not give a single shit how many lives he destroyed.

As for the pathogens, yes this asshole risked their lives and the existence of their tribe- and although it's possible he's had some creationist antiscience church education and doesnt know anything about germ theory, my bet is that he honestly thought that it's preferable to kill someone who goes to heaven then let someone live who will go to hell. Talk about a god complex. But he is not starting a genocide - that began a long time ago and the people on the island now are survivors already. The first outsiders to kill some members with pathogens were in the 1800s, and they've had some contact with outsiders and outsider cargo off and on over the years since then. They've killed people before and had their bodies recovered as well, and for a time they took gifts left on the beach and came into close contact with government officials and anthropologists and film crews, so this missionary is not the first person from the outside to be near them. We don't know the story from their point of view- maybe members of their tribe have died after each contact and that is part of cause of their hostility. But maybe also they will have some limited immunity now?

The real assholes are the people who are commenting.

@12

Yes, I agree, genocide started long ago. Thanks for the correction. What I meant is that this asshole may well have doomed this tribe. How many other missionaries are going to try going there now, with all the publicity is getting?

IDK. One deluded and very naive guy makes a catastrophically bad decision. I'm not sure how generally one can apply that lesson.

@6 - You are probably right.
@14 - Exactly. And/or some American state or Christian group response that involves invading the island to "recover the body".
@15 - Easy: Don't try to talk to people who clearly don't want to talk to you.
Shorter: Don't violate someone's consent. Unsure about consent? Ask them (without coercion).
Consent is about honoring another person's autonomy. It's about actual, mutual respect. Entitled assholes like John Chau think they can disrespect other people and ignore their autonomy, and instead exert -their- will over the will of another. Missionaries are classic examples of non-consensual behavior. "Pick Up Artists" (PUA) are modern examples of entitled persons ignoring another's consent (or non-consent, as the case may be).

I wouldn't think the real risk is from missionaries. I'm not trying to let missionaries off the hook here either and I'm frequently annoyed with them. Especially as a colonizing force and also especially on the subcontinent where they are actively working to convert in communities that have unique ancient traditions. But setting that aside, I doubt there are any missionaries who would celebrate what this guy did. As far as I know, missionaries don't normally go it alone or do it off the cuff- it's usually an organized thing and not just straight out boldly illegal, right?

I think the bigger risks are the ones that have always been there: Western fascination with uncontacted peoples, which brings in adventure tourists and film crews, combined with capitalism, which brings in resource depletion and destruction of habitats and cultures. -All of which the several other tribes residing in the Adaman & Nikobars are suffering from. It's just the modern version of colonialism, somewhat less cruel I think but still an injustice and also sadly inevitable for the near future. The god complex exploitation of missionaries is despicable for sure but it's just a symptom of this bigger issue, not a cause.

A 26yo trying to impose his beliefs upon a civilization that by accounts has survived for over a thousand years? I would say that I extend "prayers, etc. " to his family, which I do, but this was a privileged person trespassing and seeking to disrupt to entire nature of a society. There are also the likely biological effects of introducing new microbes to the ecosystem. How do you think this young man would have received an outsider coming into Vancouver, WA telling him that "your religion is a false one, you are damned to burn in eternity, and the only one who can save you is a guy that might be part of a god, died two thousand years ago, and by the way even our descriptions of his life are inconsistent"? Seems like a stretch when you look at it on face value. There are very few indigenous peoples left on the planet, please don't accelerate their demise. Open your mind and shut your fucking mouth.

Wonder if he voted for Trump who has told our troops at the southern border to use lethal force against "the invaders."

@17 Agree that missionaries today are generally more enlightened and respectful; however, they do break laws. For example, there was a U.S. group smuggling (which is illegal) bibles into China when bibles were not allowed. Based on that information, I'm guessing they do a whole lot more (than mere book smuggling) to aide and abet in disrupting governments and societies they don't agree with. Which is par for the course called U.S.& CIA Manifest Destiny. And it doesn't work both ways ... a lot of these individuals might support aggressive defense against, for example, migrants crossing our borders ... or other nations interfering with our elections (while our government interferes with other nations') .. or be completely appalled by cases of privileged white foreigners entering countries with aggressive drug enforcement, easily breaking those laws by purchasing and attempting to smuggle drugs - and then, if caught, getting very stiff treatment in horrific prisons, if not death penalties, too.

Sad this happened to this young man, in spite of his obvious western civilization issues, but it's really not the first time, either.And since this is also a rare society with protected status, I personally wouldn't push further interference in order to get back his (now deceased) body.

@12 From their point of view, too, he could well be seen as someone coming to destroy their way of life (apart from pathogens). Which is a completely realistic assessment given the destruction of indigenous populations and cultures across the centuries. If the North and South American indigenous populations had treated early Christian European explorers and settlers with similarly aggressive decisiveness - perhaps a whole lot of other stuff wouldn't have happened. But they were friendly and welcoming to the European Christians, and they were massacred, instead.

The NYT article about the letter he wrote to his family before he was killed but after his first efforts were rebuffed makes for interesting reading. He tried to talk to them using a few words in Xhosa he had learned. This island was separated by 5000 miles, and more important, effectively by 5000 years from the Xhosa, but hey, they both have dark skin, so why not give it a shot?
He couldn't understand why they were being so aggressive. He had no sense of history being a real thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/world/asia/andaman-missionary-john-chau.html

Not sure how to react to this. On the one hand, he was a foreign body injecting himself into a closed natural system. Its immune response rendered him inactive.

On the other hand, I don't want our idiot white supremacist xenophobes to get any ideas.

It's unconscionable that he went back to force himself on these people after they had clearly rejected his presence the previous time! I supposed he believed he was entitled to do whatever he wanted, because Christ! Just appalling, the egoism of evangelicals! I hope the Indian government refuse to allow any attempt to recover the body.

Thing is, as I tried to say above, this tribe isnt really uncontacted. There's been a bit of contact for decades, and even in recent history the Indian government has been in the position of having to figure out what to do with bodies of people they killed. What's going to cause this situation to escalate this time is the Western obsession with the situation. It's hard to tell what's going to happen, but I fear it's going to end up like a restricted tourist area- no one allowed in close, but rich people able to go gawk at all the natives. It's not a sustainable situation, and even if you go back to just leaving them alone, something like this (though usually not as violent) happens every few years. And this has been the case since mid century at least.

I do not believe that Mr. Chau was motivated by any degree of personal selfishness by trying to contact the tribe but rather was motivated by misguided religionism. I also doubt that the island and it's people will become any sort of tourist attraction for the idle rich. It is a sad fact that with such a small population the tribe will die out fairly soon; I say, let them be-leave them alone. When they are all gone leave the island as it is.

Normally a beam of light shines downeth from the heavens uponeth the body to be retrieved in these-eth situations.

Perhaps he was mentally ill.

I'd rather save my anger for organized missionary activity, such as the Christians in Taiwan who vastly outspent LGBT activists and defeated marriage equality on Saturday.

I'd like to hire the Sentinelese to answer my door the next time a missionary rings the bell.

It's OK. God isn't real, so it doesn't matter if his body rots in the sun and is eaten by birds, or is taken by the surf and deteriorates into the ocean, or if the Sentinelese are cannibals and eat him. It will be sad for his family that he can't have a proper Christian burial, but they don't have much choice.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=north+sentinel+island&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU811AU811&oq=north+sentinel+island&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l3j0l2.2088j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x30863a35c7c1b4e1:0x22f2e4fd1e2aa9c5,1,,,

North Sentinel Island currently has a lot of 5 star reviews on Google as a vacation destination.

Which is odd, because North Sentinel is kind of how I imagine the UK post-Brexit. Stone Age technology and murderous xenophobia. However, the food is most likely better than it is in the UK, so there's that.

I give North Sentinel island 5 out of 5 stars as the ideal holiday getaway. It has everything you could hope for- friendly locals, a long tradition of highly skilled archery that makes for a most impressive display, and a climate perfectly suited to rapid decomposition.

Honestly, who wouldn't be charmed by the Indian Navy posting massive "Stay the F*** Away" signs in every language in the waters surrounding his place? If visiting Gruinard island gave you the itch, and you thought Pripyat was a huge blast, assume the missionary position and thrust your spear into the sands of North Sentinel Island.

Vancouver Christian has announced it is entering into partnership with Chau's alma mater, renaming itself Anal Roberts University.

@27 I agree that his family should absolutely be apologizing but they are going out of their way to be forgiving of both the sentinelese and the fishermen who toted the biohazard (their son) to their island. They don't understand, just like he didn't.