>>2463973Yeah that’s pretty much true. Before British conquest, Andaman natives numbered in the thousands. “Breaking them out” of what? It’s not a prison. They made the choice to live that way. And compared to other Andaman tribes, some of which are definitely going to go extinct in our lifetime, that strategy has worked out for them. The North Sentinalese want to live this way and its working out for them. The Jarawa were very aggressive and isolationist but breaking isolation had harmful effects on them.
This strategy of “fleeing from modernity” isn’t unusual. Millions of people do it. Many communities throughout Asia choose to avoid the state or keep away from outsiders to maintain their lifestyles. It’s pretty common in the highlands of Burma, Vietnam, and Laos, as well as Afghanistan, North Western Pakistan, Tibet, and Iran’s Baluchistan region. The North Sentinelese are an extreme case because they are on a remote island surrounded by water that nobody really needed to visit and they had no reason to leave. J. C. Scott wrote a book on this called The Art of Not Being Governed.
>>2446626North Sentinelese are foragers, which mean they spend their day doing mostly nothing until they want something to eat or have some task to do. The islands have enough food and water to sustain them. They probably fish, hunt, forage, which means they are active. Their dietary needs probably aren’t lacking, there’s plenty of fish, nuts, fruit, meat, and vegetables. They are probably healthier than the average person ITT and have more free time than all of us.