The Possibility of an Island: Reflections on the Case of John Allen Chau and the Sentinelese

There exists in the midst of time

The possibility of an island

The recent case of the American missionary John Allen Chau, killed by members of an isolated tribe, the Sentinelese, for encroaching in the name of Love on their remote island home, raises many fascinating and ethically-complex questions:

What is our duty - if any - towards these people? Should we leave them to continue living as they have always lived; or should we assimilate them into our world? Should we try to protect them as if some kind of endangered species; or should we exterminate them?

It seems to me, that since there are so few of them - probably no more than a 100 - and since they present no real threat (unless provoked), then we should let them be; particularly as they have made it very clear that they don't want anything to do with us.

Like it or not, these men and women are not as we are: they are literally savages - a word that, as Lawrence says, is not merely a term of racist reproach. For the Sentinelese are "savage with [their] own peculiar consciousness, [their] own peculiar customs and observances" and we should neither idealise them nor deny their radical alterity.      

One would hope that even those who preach globalism and universal humanism (or, indeed, subscribe to a fanatic monotheism), might allow la possibilité d'une île and leave the remnants of an older, savage mankind "to live their own life, fulfil their own ends in their own way".

For I think Lawrence is right: to be confronted with an aboriginal people such as the Sentinelese is a kind of test upon us; for they are so absolutely in our power at last. If we can't let them be and abstain from interfering in their lives, then we may as well round 'em up and put them in a zoo, or simply shoot them now ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'O! Americans!', The Poems, Vol. III, ed. by Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1563-67.