Imagine seeing simple machines for the first time.
November 22, 2018 10:50 PM   Subscribe

@RespectableLaw
There's been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They're probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So here's a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island.
Threadreader link
posted by chappell, ambrose (127 comments total) 50 users marked this as a favorite
 
I hadn't heard many of these things before, thanks.

Everyone's just been talking about how good it is to finally see some missionary colonist fool finally get their due in this day and age.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 10:57 PM on November 22, 2018 [15 favorites]


This story has been really bugging me all day. Where ELSE do we hear of this type of martyrdom? People like ISIS. Not a good look!
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:07 PM on November 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


And their aggressiveness is not the mark of savagery. It just that their conception of outsiders is mostly framed by some foot-faced English pervert who murdered some old people and did weird things to their kids. So let’s do them a favor and leave them alone.

Perfectly understandable, they killed the elders and molested the boys.

What bothers me is that this has gone viral, which means their isolation is almost certainly over. Some dipshit will see this and decide to visit. Whatever happens next, well, they were warned. I'm not getting whiplash reaching for the kleenex.
posted by adept256 at 11:23 PM on November 22, 2018 [9 favorites]


In the worst case that fucking missionary might have finished the job of exterminating the Sentinelese after all. Who knows what common diseases he or his body might have exposed them to that they have no immunity against. It is on par with or worse than the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, to my mind.
posted by tavegyl at 11:24 PM on November 22, 2018 [32 favorites]


His body and all his stuff is still on the island, contaminated with pathogens they have no antibodies for. It's still very dangerous. It's possible they're infected already. How would we know?
posted by adept256 at 11:28 PM on November 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


Just curious, but if Portman was there way back, wouldn't they have gotten exposure and built immunity?
posted by Meatbomb at 11:31 PM on November 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


I like these people. They seem able to act in a logical and unified way that escapes the rest of the human race. Good luck to them
posted by fshgrl at 11:47 PM on November 22, 2018 [40 favorites]


I think this has the right idea, but it’s worth critiquing the language a little. “Neolithic” and “iron-age” describe history, not people living in the world today. The Sentinelese would not have to “integrate into the modern world,” because they are already in it; they would be adapting to other ways of living.

Since the focus here is sympathetic, it’s doubly important to be aware of how framing can inadvertently reflect and amplify outdated views. The language used in this thread presents these as reasonable people stuck in amber, which is better than thinking they’re savages, but is still similar to that idea — the savage was someone from a past era of history, stuck in time, unchanged for millennia. That’s an idea from Portman’s time.

We don’t know very much about these people, but even if they live in isolation, no one exists outside history. They have their own history and society, flaws, charms, and other things that make humans humans. Let’s not fall into the trap of romanticizing them as relics.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:51 PM on November 22, 2018 [189 favorites]


I mean the minute you see the phrase "uncontacted tribe" in a headline you can stop reading because you know it's going to be bullshit colonialist framing.
posted by lollusc at 11:58 PM on November 22, 2018 [29 favorites]


I'm uncontacted. The North Sentinel Islanders have not contacted or discovered me. But you don't see anyone describing me that way in newspaper headlines because apparently they aren't the ones meant to be doing the contacting and discovering.
posted by lollusc at 12:00 AM on November 23, 2018 [107 favorites]


Yeah, Jesus, good one.

Also I need to go to bed, but there’s a whole lot to unpack around “imagine seeing modern machines for the first time.” Like, a whole lot. I don’t want to be too harsh on this because it’s at least making an effort, but the whole framing is not great. I feel like this could be a moment to reflect on how the way we view other people is STILL so totally shaped by the legacy of colonialism, even when the intention is to be sympathetic.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:04 AM on November 23, 2018 [23 favorites]


Just curious, but if Portman was there way back, wouldn't they have gotten exposure and built immunity?

Maybe, but probably not to all of them. Certainly not to constantly mutating flu or cold viruses. A widespread flu could probably temporarily wreck up subsistence hunting or fishing for a population that may be as small as 40 individuals. Potentially outright kill the elderly or infants and cause social disruption.
posted by Mister Cheese at 12:10 AM on November 23, 2018 [6 favorites]


Just curious, but if Portman was there way back, wouldn't they have gotten exposure and built immunity?

I’m not a biologist, epidemiologist, or any kind of medical professional - so hopefully someone with more knowledge will weigh in - but: I think that the pathogens were different in Portman’s time, so there’s still a considerable risk. Just like everybody gets “fresher’s flu” during the first weeks of university, because they’re all being exposed to slightly unfamiliar pathogens - or familiar pathogens that have been evolving in some slightly unfamiliar ways - imagine that, except all the other students had been living on another planet for a couple of centuries, so their germs are much less familiar, and potentially much more dangerous.

So it’s clear to me that the Sentinelese are at risk from outsiders. What interests me is whether crazy missionaries and fishermen and so on are at risk of disease from the Sentinelese, and whatever novel flu strains etc that they’ve been developing? (After all, presumably the smallpox blanket horror could have worked the other way around, when America was colonised? I presume that living in cramped conditions is a good laboratory for new pathogens, and so city-dwelling foreign conquistadores are more likely to give something fatal to native populations than vice versa, but there must be some sizeable risk in the other direction, too?)
posted by chappell, ambrose at 12:10 AM on November 23, 2018 [3 favorites]




Roadside Picnic right there.
posted by Leon at 12:19 AM on November 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


I didn't realize what should have been obvious if I'd thought about it. John Chau didn't speak the Sentinelese's language. He was telling them that his god loves them in a language they had no way of understanding. What a fool.
posted by rdr at 12:27 AM on November 23, 2018 [9 favorites]


That's... really not the greatest thread. For example, the Sentinelese were already cold forging iron into arrowheads when Portman visited the island. Ships have been wrecking on those reefs for a long, long time before the British ever got there. It's also kind of a strange take on Portman, who wasn't noticeably weirder than the average colonial administrator -- taking pictures of the "naked savages" for Science and Civilization was just how they thought things should go.

The intensity of recent hostility probably has more to do with the fact that for whatever goddamn reason the Indian government sold salvage rights to the Primrose, and the salvagers killed a bunch of Sentinelese. They have far more recent "outsiders are evil assholes" memories than relicts from the 19th century.
posted by tavella at 12:38 AM on November 23, 2018 [79 favorites]


There is no way they haven't already been exposed to missionaries at some time in their history. And they're not the only totally uncontacted/unconverted people on the planet - Papua New Guinea has areas unreached with language barriers. His whole "these people are the last group who have never heard of Jesus" thing is such hyperbole that he had either made himself believe as a heroic tale or been told, it's sad. It's not real, and it reduces the bitter complicated history of the Sentinelese and India and English-Colonialism to short narrative with a possible happy-ever-after-ending.

His family forgives the Sentinelese - are they asking forgiveness for what their son has done to them? And why he chose to follow this idiotic choice instead of going where there is a need for brave missionaries to do actual needed work in difficult situations without Instagram or heroics, in actual Christian communities desperately asking for help, not harassing people who repeatedly shout GO AWAY.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 12:49 AM on November 23, 2018 [10 favorites]


brave missionaries to do actual needed work

LOL does not compute... maybe there is a totally different type of missionary, that wants to go help Christians, but the only ones I have ever met have been sneaky liars who try to get their foot in the door with free English lessons, then once they "make friends" start to talk about Jesus.

The impression I get from the ones I have met, it is all about converting.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:05 AM on November 23, 2018 [48 favorites]


Reading about this man angers me greatly. Hounding for Jesus is not Christ like. From Mathew 10:14:
If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.
An arrow to your Bible is a sign of not being welcome. This mindset of missionary persistence is not following Jesus's teachings. Chau describes the island as, "Satan's last stronghold," but showed through his own actions that he was serving as a vanguard for evil. Pride in believing you're God's own prophet is no fruit of the Spirit. I'm not happy he's dead, but it's terrible the harm he could've caused and may yet cause.
posted by Mister Cheese at 1:16 AM on November 23, 2018 [55 favorites]


Tangentially, Martin Scorcese's most recent film Silence is a thought-provoking examination of Japan's successful rejection of Catholic missionaries (aka: colonial advance landing squads) in the 17th century.
posted by fairmettle at 1:32 AM on November 23, 2018 [9 favorites]


John Chau didn't speak the Sentinelese

Literally no-one speaks Sentinelese, except the inhabitants. None of the other nearby islands have any similar language and so no-one can translate.
posted by memebake at 1:35 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


LOL does not compute... maybe there is a totally different type of missionary, that wants to go help Christians, but the only ones I have ever met have been sneaky liars who try to get their foot in the door with free English lessons, then once they "make friends" start to talk about Jesus.

The impression I get from the ones I have met, it is all about converting.


This is offensively wrong. I'm sure there are a lot of fucking assholes, particularly from the states, but my dad was technically a missionary for many many years of his life, and all that involved was teaching theology at a Lutheran seminary. He converted nobody. He did not evangelise (I've been brought up to view evangelising as insulting and disrespectful). He just taught theology to people actively studying to become vicars.
posted by Dysk at 1:58 AM on November 23, 2018 [15 favorites]


Also I need to go to bed, but there’s a whole lot to unpack around “imagine seeing modern machines for the first time.”

Just to be clear, he wrote "simple machines", not "modern machines". It's a piece of jargon referring to the basic building blocks of mechanical advantage. Things like the wheels, levers, block and tackle, pulleys and screws. They're the basic building blocks that you need in order to accomplish anything that can't easily be done with human strength alone.

These kinds of things have nothing to do with "colonialism" or whatever, every society has them when they reach a certain point of development. The author was simply making the observation that seeing these things that could make so many things in your day to day less punishing must be quite the experience.
posted by gkhan at 2:10 AM on November 23, 2018 [20 favorites]


I was a missionary for ten years. Proselytizing really wasn’t my gig, either. I was mainly an invited linguistic consultant, initially in charge of coordinating sociolinguistic surveys to help national Christians plan language development projects for minority people groups that had no written language (and were thus disadvantaged in numerous ways). My last three years were spend directing those projects for a multinational group.

To my knowledge, I don’t think I ever “converted” a single person. But I do know that literally (heh) millions of people now have a written language, a corpus of literature, and greatly enhanced ethnic and sociopolitical vitality, due to those collaborative development projects.

That said, yes, I encountered some Type A assholes in the ministry, and I eventually got burned out by the the personnel management of those folks. But I also developed some wonderful relationships with some of the most intelligent, compassionate, dedicated and humble servants of humankind you can imagine, from dozens of different countries across the planet, whom I miss working with, greatly.

In conclusion, Christian ministry is a land of contrasts.
posted by darkstar at 2:14 AM on November 23, 2018 [50 favorites]


I don't blame John Chau. I blame whoever indoctrinated him.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:28 AM on November 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


Thanks for this post. I've been fascinated by the North Sentinelese for some years now and had never heard of Portman. I always had the idea however that the tribe's extreme hostility towards outsiders must have had its origins in previous traumatic incidents of attempted contact. And that they were saved because of the fact that they live in a small and resourceless island where the benefits of exploitation were negligible.
The existence of these people in their isolation somehow feels like some sort of comfort, it registers to me as a true pocket of diversity in a continuously homogenizing world.
Hopefully the Indian government will be doubly alert in enforcing the no-go zone around the island, because this recent suicidal idiocy is bound to attract other would - be "benefactors " of the North Sentinelese
posted by talos at 2:36 AM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


BTW, Portman's writings on the Andamans, including the Sentinelese in Vol. 2, are available in Google Books and the Internet Archive. You can read about visits, descriptions of the island, villages on it, and people. And also his musings on how North Sentinel would make a good coconut plantation, cause colonizers gotta colonize.

There's one part that particularly fascinates me; Portman hears word of a supposed Sentinelese living among the Öngé, for which he has two different stories: one that he just sailed over by canoe. Portman has a bit of a theory going in his book that that there was commerce/travel between Sentinel Island and the other islands of the Andamans, which would make logical sense except that the Sentinelese don't seem to have the concept of the paddle, the Onge are the only tribe of the Andamans with any open water boat travel and even they aren't that great, and most significantly, when he brings a bunch of Öngé to chase the Sentinelese around their island, they agree that yes, they must be Öngés, but they don't understand a single word they say, which suggests a separation of a good many hundred years at least. And then he says 'but actually, my Öngé language sucks, I probably misunderstood and in fact he likely was a child in a boat blown away from Sentinel in a storm and adopted by the Öngés'. And most unhelpfully doesn't explain the circumstances in which he thought he heard the two versions!

But the really fascinating part is that in case any successor wants to look the guy up for another try at 'civilizing' the Sentinelese, he provides the name and address, "whose name is Dāūwacho-chégálé-bāī, and who lives at Támbe-Ébui." And if the child version is the right one, maybe it's just an Öngé name they gave him, but it's also possible it's Sentinelese, and the one bit of the language that we know, and probably ever will know. A handful of ghost words, living in an old manuscript.
posted by tavella at 2:56 AM on November 23, 2018 [24 favorites]


Further to my previous comment, a psychologist made these two videos on YouTube—long ago, but I think they bear some relevance to the topic under discussion.

bending truth | how adults get indoctrinated

A reflection on the importance of acknowledging that we can all be manipulated.

grooming minds | the abuse of child indoctrination

An exploration of the abusive practice of child religious indoctrination.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:57 AM on November 23, 2018 [9 favorites]


Apparently Portman later realised that the natives were better left alone :
"In later years, Portman addressed a meeting of the Royal Geographic Society in London where he described his interactions with the Adamanese. He admitted that “their association with outsiders has brought them nothing but harm, and it is a matter of great regret to me that such a pleasant race are so rapidly becoming extinct. We could better spare many another.”
Taken from this fascinating timeline of North Sentinel related events.
posted by talos at 2:59 AM on November 23, 2018 [13 favorites]


I feel like this could be a moment to reflect on how the way we view other people is STILL so totally shaped by the legacy of colonialism, even when the intention is to be sympathetic.

A further point: many colonials' intentions were sympathetic (not all, but many). This missionary would have said his intentions were sympathetic. Being sympathetic may be beside the point.

Colonialism, though: that compulsion to compel, control and possess others is very much on point.
posted by rory at 3:27 AM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


I imagine they had the lever, although I'll allow the hinge and screw.
posted by thelonius at 4:17 AM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


I remember reading about this island in sailing guides, warning not to even anchor. It's a very small island off another distant restricted archipelago, the Andaman islands. Just very inconvenient to visit, until this year many restriction had been lifted to improve tourism.
posted by sammyo at 4:46 AM on November 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


not today, colonizer
posted by poffin boffin at 4:50 AM on November 23, 2018 [32 favorites]


This wouldn't be an issue in the States.
The Sentinalise just have a local stand your ground law.
Historically missionaries are rapidly followed by the guys with guns, whips and chains. A rapid takedown of smilers with big books is probably built into their laws.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:14 AM on November 23, 2018 [19 favorites]


With every passing year I become more convinced that agricultural civilization is the oppressive ideology that transcends all others in human history. Wherever people are found who don’t practice it, they must be converted, murdered, or enslaved. All will bend the knee, or die.

Ironically (?), civilization as it has been practiced for the last 10,000 years is probably not sustainable, and the people who had the knowledge of how to be a human on earth without poisoning the land and water? Whoopsie! They’ve been systemically displaced and their cultural practices outlawed or made impossible.

We took poison and shot the people who knew how to make the antidote.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 5:25 AM on November 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


re disease transfer:

Most infectious diseases are zoonotic in nature and come from domesticated animals. Societies with few or no domesticated animals have very few infectious diseases. As well, larger societies have more opportunities for mutations.

The transfer would never have gone the other way, from the Americas to the Old World, because the Americas had very few infectious diseases in comparison. Those people who did travel to the Old World tended to die there of disease, not introduce new ones.

(I'm saying Old World consciously - as far as disease was concerned, Europe, Asia and Africa were one large sloshing pot. There were some regional diseases but they tended to be the ones which didn't transfer human-to-human but we're mosquito borne, etc).
posted by jb at 5:38 AM on November 23, 2018 [15 favorites]


There's been a lot more contact with the Sentinelese than that, according to the book Land of the Naked People.
posted by clawsoon at 6:02 AM on November 23, 2018


my dad was technically a missionary for many many years of his life, and all that involved was teaching theology at a Lutheran seminary ... He did not evangelise ... He just taught theology to people actively studying to become vicars.

Honest question: in what sense, then, was your father a missionary? I've always understood the word "missionary" to mean, by definition, "someone who proselytizes". dictionary.com agrees with this understanding – but I'm certainly willing to be corrected.

I was a missionary for ten years. Proselytizing really wasn’t my gig, either. I was mainly an invited linguistic consultant, initially in charge of coordinating sociolinguistic surveys to help national Christians plan language development projects for minority people groups that had no written language ...

I mean, just because you personally didn't evangelize doesn't mean that your actions weren't ultimately in service of evangelism. Someone could spend ten years working in the mail room or the cafeteria at a pencil factory, and say "look, I spent ten years working at that factory, and I never manufactured one pencil; that's just a stereotype".
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:07 AM on November 23, 2018 [45 favorites]


His family forgives the Sentinelese - are they asking forgiveness for what their son has done to them?

His family may have been announcing their forgiveness to protect the Sentinelese. As in: "we forgive them, so nobody needs to go airlift troops in to gun them down or anything, we're cool, please don't use us as an excuse to do that."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:19 AM on November 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


With every passing year I become more convinced that agricultural civilization is the oppressive ideology that transcends all others in human history [...] Ironically (?), civilization as it has been practiced for the last 10,000 years is probably not sustainable

Unlike the preceding hunter-gatherer societies that hunted all the megafauna to extinction, even the funky marsupial ones in Australia? There used to be a third major group of elephant-like species in the Americas too.

This is the point in the discussion where Douglas Adams would say, “We never should have come down from the trees!”
posted by XMLicious at 6:25 AM on November 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


Rather striking portrait by Portman of a Sentinelese man.

I heard a story once, relative of a friend I think, of an ancestor who had been a Christian missionary to China. He and his family lived for many years in some remote village and when it finally came time for them to return to America, the locals, in a gesture of affection, presented them with a keepsake.

A small statue of the Buddha.
posted by BWA at 6:29 AM on November 23, 2018 [38 favorites]


the people who had the knowledge of how to be a human on earth without poisoning the land and water?

... as long as you were born physically able to do so, and if not, well, shrug, you’ll probably die young enough not to matter.
posted by Etrigan at 6:47 AM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't blame John Chau. I blame whoever indoctrinated him.

Mm, modern American Christians love to toss the term "personal responsibility" around, so.
posted by tzikeh at 6:59 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


With rare display of intelligence and sensitivity, the first thing the Indian police have done is go straight to teh anthropology department to get a couple of experts in to help them understand the people and the context before making any move beyond circling the island at a distance of around 700m.

Pathak said contacts have been established with experts of Anthropological Survey of India, forest department, academicians and also of state tribal welfare department to prepare a strategy to reach to the place of incident and also search the body. "Some success has been achieved in this direction so far," he said but refused to give details.

The access to North Sentinel Island and its buffer zone is strictly restricted under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation), 1956 and Regulations under Indian Forest Act, 1927

posted by infini at 7:00 AM on November 23, 2018 [12 favorites]


In the journal penned by Chau, he gave an account of his venture to the prohibited island thanking his mother and god for helping him hide from coast guard and navy patrols. "The mother and god himself helped shielding us from coast guard and navy patrols,"

The Indian authorities are *not* thrilled.

Coconuts, bits of iron, and plenty of caution is what anthropologist T N Pandit suggests as a means to recover the body of 27-year-old American tourist John Allen Chau who was allegedly killed by members of the Sentinelese tribe when he tried to approach them on the restricted island of North Sentinel in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. And Pandit should know.

Between 1966 and 1991, Pandit, 83, made several trips as part of the Anthropological Survey of India’s expeditions to remote islands in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and was the first anthropologist to land on the island and interact with members of the tribe. “If a small party goes in the afternoon or evening, when the tribesmen are known to not venture out on the shore, carries coconuts and iron as gifts, and stops the boat beyond the shooting range of arrows, it is possible that they will allow us to take the body. The help of local fisherman should also be sought,” he said.

[...]
“Many people have called these tribes hostile. That is the incorrect way to look at it. We are the aggressors here. We are the ones trying to enter their territory. What has happened is very unfortunate but I believe the tribesmen were trying to protect themselves. From what I have read, the tribesmen shot arrows at him the first time he reached out. He should have been cautious and patient,” said Pandit.

According to officials at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Chau did not inform the local police nor did he take any permission from the forest department or local administration before setting out to the North Sentinel Island. Between 1966 and 1991 – which was Pandit’s most successful outreach – parties of seven to eight people visited the North Sentinel Island regularly

posted by infini at 7:08 AM on November 23, 2018 [16 favorites]


Local headlines include Intruding American tourist killed by protected Sentinelese
posted by infini at 7:10 AM on November 23, 2018 [9 favorites]


lol it's not like the passage of two thousand years or more is going to have any kind of effect on the neverending arrogance of christian hegemony
posted by poffin boffin at 7:35 AM on November 23, 2018 [22 favorites]


...perhaps pope francis can tone it down to a hegemini
posted by fairmettle at 7:42 AM on November 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


This does raise a pretty interesting question: What is the the proper scientific and progressive attitude towards isolated people like this going into the future? I mean, I think we can all agree that they should be afforded their isolation, but (for instance) what if some accident or emergency lead to such a population being exposed to foreign diseases or an aggressively invasive species? [You know: a non-human one] Are there actually some best practices for preserving the culture or otherwise engaging with it?

Balking at terminology like 'neolithic' and 'uncontacted' is understandable, but populations like this absolutely have value to our understanding of anthropology, especially as we understand ancient or prehistorical people. In the event that the population did begin to dwindle, it would be hugely beneficial to attempt contact. Would it be ethical? Under what conditions?

I'm also wondering what ethical guidelines are currently held in schools anthropology for chance encounters. How are they informed by our understanding of biological dangers? Certainly colonial history had the then-modern world simply bumbling into these meetings and effecting some combination of study and indoctrination. What do we do now? Anyone in the field out there in mefi world?
posted by es_de_bah at 7:49 AM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


like first of all monotheism was a mistake but everyone was too stupid to learn from akhenaten's failure
posted by poffin boffin at 7:52 AM on November 23, 2018 [21 favorites]


He went to some Proselytize The Jews trip to Israel, which wrote a super gross eulogy for him as a martyr.
Even when the island was devastated by an earthquake and a tsunami, the Sentinelese shot arrows at helicopters and boats bringing humanitarian relief. In its effort to preserve the distinctness of the indigenous Sentinelese, the Indian government has granted extreme autonomy - even to the point of allowing the senseless murder of outsiders.
[...]
“This is not right,” said Staver [the founder of Covenant Journey]. “His family deserves to bring John’s body back home where he can be buried. Human life is a universal inalienable right. John was seeking to bring them peace and the Prince of Peace. May his sacrifice bring about change and new life to many in North Sentinel and around the world,” said Staver.
[...]
In their efforts to “protect” the Sentinelese from outside visitors, the Indian government has essentially treated North Sentinel as a sovereign island.
posted by jeather at 7:57 AM on November 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


I'm getting very annoyed at reading him being called a "martyr". He's no martyr by any sense of the word, even if you're sympathetic to his cause. A martyr suffers or is killed because of their beliefs, whereas this fellow was killed because he was intruding. Faith had nothing to do with it.

Gah, the evangelical persecution complex makes me grind my teeth sometimes.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 8:10 AM on November 23, 2018 [30 favorites]


The thing is, from Chau's perspective he is literally the only person willing to go out and try to save the Sentinelese from an eternity of infinite pain. Depending on your tradition (and from what I've read it was extremely similar to the one I grew up in), we're talking literally the worst torture possible, forever, and you can never get used to it or dull it with time. If you are a true believer from that tradition, not dropping your entire life to go out and reach as many people as possible for Christ is ethically worse than active, deliberate participation in genocide. Yes, really. If you've truly internalized that belief system, the stakes are literally *far* more important than life itself. Every person you fail to save is a person locked into an eternity of torture that makes a CIA blacksite look like a spa day.

It's a deeply insane worldview.

I don't have a problem with Chau personally, and I don't think he's a bad person. I think he's another victim of a poisonous and wildly unethical religious tradition that has been used to rationalize genocide and slavery throughout the colonial era and beyond. Specifically because I came up within Evangelical fundamentalism + Biblical literalism I prefer to avoid words like "evil" or "sin", but it's tough to fully communicate how much I abhor this shit without them.

The actual monsters, in my view, are the people who genuinely believe and yet still fill the pews of your local church every Sunday. Because they believe as he does - or claim to - and do nothing, and somehow still look themselves in the eye after every morning shower. I maintain that Evangelical fundamentalist churches should always be empty: either you don't really believe what's being said, or you're out in the field acting on it, but no matter which is the case you have no business sitting on padded pews on a Sunday at what amounts to a shared-delusion social club.

(It is...extremely awkward each Christmas to interact with the half of my family that isn't actively working as overseas missionaries at any given moment. I'm constantly thinking "what the fuck are you people doing here? What the hell is wrong with you?")

I really wish I had a better answer than "your religion is wrong," because that feels like bigotry, but when your religion makes evangelism a life-overriding moral imperative and frequently leads to mass murder, enslavement, and the rise of modern "nationalist" conservatism I'm not sure what else can be said. I also wish that religions like Evangelical fundamentalism did not appear to be inevitable from a sort of Darwinian/survival of the fittest perspective: within a sufficiently large population the belief systems that inspire the most fervent evangelistic behavior will inevitably consume some of those less likely to inspire that level of passion. I don't how or whether that can be solved in a permanent way without equally terrible human rights violations. Even better public education isn't going to cut it, and it's a big piece of why I don't hold out much hope for our species learning to collectively act in a somewhat rational manner.

(I really shouldn't have to caveat that I'm both an atheist and a serious non-compatible hard determinist who is deeply committed to not evangelizing, or that adopting those beliefs meant permanent pariah status with every person I knew before I turned 18, but for the record: I am and they did)
posted by Ryvar at 8:24 AM on November 23, 2018 [26 favorites]


[disclaimer: I'm an Indian passport holder, born Hindu, and have strongly repelled missionaries of all stripes and polka dots]

ah fuck, there's nothing I can put down in writing here that won't trample on y'all's sensibilities, sigh, but he won't get much sympathy from peoples who have had to deal with centuries of this bullshit whilst possessing a perfectly serviceable and ancient philosophy and functional religion/s of their own. I'm sorry

posted by infini at 8:36 AM on November 23, 2018 [62 favorites]


Balking at terminology like 'neolithic' and 'uncontacted' is understandable, but populations like this absolutely have value to our understanding of anthropology, especially as we understand ancient or prehistorical people. In the event that the population did begin to dwindle, it would be hugely beneficial to attempt contact. Would it be ethical? Under what conditions?

Anyone in the field out there in mefi world?


I have a degree in anthropology, and this is a very outdated and dangerous idea. What you’re describing is what used to be called “salvage ethnography,” and it’s basically how a lot of indigenous people in the Americas were studied: “they’re dying out, better study their culture while we can.”

There’s loads of problems with this approach. You cannot learn about the past by studying anyone today. You can learn about how these specific people live, but they do not reflect a universal human past. They reflect their specific ways of living.

The idea that the represent the human past was an idea that came from the 19th century, when evolution was applied to human society. In this view, all human societies went through stages of evolution: first they were savages, then barbarians, and then eventually they came to civilization. When Europeans and Americans encountered indigenous people in their colonial forays, they assessed them for which stage of human cultural evolution they were in. This was assessed by what kinds of technology they used, how they organized kinship structures, and things like that. Shockingly, this often corresponded with skin color, and was often determined by people who had never set foot in a place: “a gentleman who lives there has informed me that these people have not yet learned the art of fire...” It was part of the foundation for scientific racism.

Early anthropological museums were organized not by region or culture, but by technology: all the bows and arrows of the world together. The idea was that we could see all these “primitive” technologies and compare them to see how this technology advanced through time.

Around the turn of the century you had a change in attitudes that started emphasizing localized cultures, the famous cultural relativism and historical particularism. This was a different approach stating that people were influenced by things around them, and different cultures represented differences, not necessarily ancient history.

Some students of this school undertook studies of, for example, American Indians. The logic being that their indigenous cultures were being wiped out by outsiders, and it was important to learn what we can now about pre-contact life. In practice it was a joke; it presumed that Native cultures had remained unchaining for millennia until acted upon by an external force, as if Native people couldn’t have their own histories or changes. There were only two phases to Native history: pre and post contact.

It was also dangerous because anything that was deemed “not pure” culture was ignored. Anthropologists often assumed what was and was not an original, pre-contact practice, but they really had no idea. (Sound familiar? Think of the way this twitter thread talks about these “Stone Age” islanders using metal from the ship.)

The end result was hugely damanging for Native people, because huge swaths of them were determined to be culturally extinct, which came as news to them. It also meant they couldn’t get federal recognition when the time came — sorry, Ohlone folks, there are no more Ohlone.

For us today, we need to be very aware of this history that informs how we see other people. What seems obvious really has its roots in a very destructive way of seeing and interpreting the world. I’ve got to go get breakfast and go to work, but I’ll write more later.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:45 AM on November 23, 2018 [106 favorites]


"Where there is a need for brave missionaries" no need, no where, never.

"Ridiculuous sad waste, time before, time after." TS Eliot
posted by Oyéah at 8:48 AM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


there is literally no excuse, no reason, no possible justification for bringing christianity or any other religion to people who didn't specifically and without duress ask for the information. it is nothing more than arrogance and narrowmindedness, no matter how much people insist that it's "saving" someone.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:15 AM on November 23, 2018 [37 favorites]


Serious question, then: if you honestly believe without even the slightest doubt that failure to accept Christ results in infinite suffering for an infinite duration, always and without reprieve, what is the morally consistent position to take?

Because that's what you're dealing with, here. It is a horrifying belief system, and about as close to the consensus definition of "evil" as possible.
posted by Ryvar at 9:19 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Branching from @RespectableLaw's twitter thread is this one from Josh Shahryar, which is succinct in laying out some of the points covered by Mefites above. In particular he goes into the connotations of 'uncontacted' and also the evident and current fate of 'uncontacted' peoples worldwide.
posted by glasseyes at 9:25 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


To make it clear, I personally do not think this guy was a martyr, I think he was an idiot.

Serious question, then: if you honestly believe without even the slightest doubt that failure to accept Christ results in infinite suffering for an infinite duration, always and without reprieve, what is the morally consistent position to take?

What happens if you're the only barber in a town and you only shave people who don't shave themselves?
posted by jeather at 9:30 AM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


Ryvar, who cares though? The guy illegally trespassed. If he hadn't been killed I hope the law would have dealt with him. Some people fervently believe in FGM for reasons of faith. Some people believe their faith (religious or non religious) gives them carte blanche to harm others. I hope the law catches up with them too. There's nothing in the least rare in human terms about people following an ideology that puts them on the wrong side of the law. I'm not understanding this as a conundrum?

And even in Christian terms there is a definitive answer: render unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's and to God the things that are God's.
posted by glasseyes at 9:34 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


This makes me think their must be a great unwritten Iain M Banks book about an intergalactic civilization whose first contact is always a bit pervy.
posted by Damienmce at 9:37 AM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


glasseyes: you seem to be mistaking me with someone who is saying we should respect their beliefs when I am saying they were behaving consistent with beliefs no sane person can possibly respect. That doesn't make what they did or others are doing ethical behavior. It makes it ethically *consistent* behavior, and that is not some trivial nuance: it's the difference between "they were a terrible person" and "they were a good person enslaved by terrible beliefs."

That's what makes this whole thing a tragedy: most of the people who believe sincerely enough to throw their entire lives away on it are doing so in a morally consistent fashion. It's why having a two-minute hate session over the individual and not the system is problematic.
posted by Ryvar at 9:44 AM on November 23, 2018 [6 favorites]


I read a thing that said that his social media postings depict him as a self-styled adventurer/explorer, and that the "missionary" idea comes from the fact that he was also posting about his Christian faith....in other words, he wasn't acting as a member of any actual church missionary organization, he went off the trail on his own.
posted by thelonius at 9:46 AM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well I guess I don't understand this as a new problem in any way. And since what he did was against the law, that's the applied contemporary solution.
posted by glasseyes at 9:53 AM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ryvar,

It makes it ethically *consistent* behavior, and that is not some trivial nuance: it's the difference between "they were a terrible person" and "they were a good person enslaved by terrible beliefs."


What you're asking us to consider with our rational thinking minds is the mindset than enslaved and colonized our ancestors. I can't speak for glasseyes but do try to understand why I am resisting your continued attempts to make him into a sympathetic character in my eyes when all I want to say is fuck off, fuckity off, fuckity fuckity off and take your embassy's unwanted power with you now that he's fucked it all up by getting himself killed on a protected island and created all this unwanted publicity because of his passport.
posted by infini at 9:55 AM on November 23, 2018 [28 favorites]


But wouldn't the most ethically consistent behavior be to convert the "low hanging fruit" i.e. people in your own country with whom you share a common language and custom? His efforts strike me as profoundly narcissistic and vainglorious.
posted by Hutch at 9:56 AM on November 23, 2018 [13 favorites]


It's why having a two-minute hate session over the individual and not the system is problematic.

Agreed. Its the system that is too busy waiting for Rapture to fix climate change and forest fires, while going around killing non believers halfway around the world in the hundreds of thousands. He is just one face of that system, and the tweetesident is the other.
posted by infini at 9:58 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


I like their interpretation of Stand Your Ground laws!
posted by geoff. at 10:06 AM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


To return to the question above:
After all, presumably the smallpox blanket horror could have worked the other way around, when America was colonised? I presume that living in cramped conditions is a good laboratory for new pathogens, and so city-dwelling foreign conquistadores are more likely to give something fatal to native populations than vice versa, but there must be some sizeable risk in the other direction, too?
I think this is a really interesting question, and from what I can gather the answer is no: the so-called Colombian "Exchange" was more or less a one-way deal. The only possible exception being Syphilis, which may have originated in the "New World".

The reasons for this - and I can't find the video that I learned it from - are to do with the dearth of domesticated animals in the Americas as mentioned by jb above. Nearly all diseases come from domesticated animals, and excepting Llamas, the Americas have no animals suitable for domestication. If I can find the video I'm thinking of I'll post it, but in the meantime there's a great summary from Crash Course World History.
posted by Acey at 10:09 AM on November 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


looking forward to more from shapes that haunt the dusk.

I certainly understand what you're saying. Science and especially social sciences have to be endlessly refined. But would you also say that we've gained no greater understanding of the ways language, religion, culture etc develop by trying to rigorously understand isolated peoples? Is it all garbage? Again, I'm genuinely interested.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:10 AM on November 23, 2018


metafilter: makes a CIA blacksite look like a spa day
posted by standardasparagus at 10:20 AM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


infini: I think you're right to feel that way? I can't even imagine the additional colonialist/blood-soaked history aspect, but your description sounds pretty close to how I felt about my family's non-stop attempts to reconvert me for a decade or so? Eventually I sort of got through to them with "guys, I used to do this, too. I used to say those exact words, there's nothing you're going to tell me that I haven't myself said." So it's just a single 1-3 hour throwdown per visit now, rather than the hidden or overt topic of every single conversation.

It would be super gross of me in addition to being deeply hypocritical to tell you how you should feel about any of this, so I'm expressly not doing that and I sincerely apologize if anything I said came off like tone policing. I'm simply stating that the broader belief system is the deserving target for that entirely justified anger. It doesn't even matter whether he really was an adventurer/explorer, or if that's just because (as is 100% mandatory with every mission org I'm aware of) his sponsor insisted he scrub his social media because he was going somewhere dangerous/illegal. What matters is the toxic and deeply dangerous worldview for which he was a particularly - even hilariously - ineffective pawn.
posted by Ryvar at 10:22 AM on November 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


I read a thing that said that his social media postings depict him as a self-styled adventurer/explorer, and that the "missionary" idea comes from the fact that he was also posting about his Christian faith

This is not an uncommon means of “establishing” cover by people who are Very Online these days. Attract friends and followers as an adventurer/explorer and then slowly expose them to how you also just happen to believe that sunsets are proof of God’s blessings and that you just happened to survive some adventure because of your belief in Christ, etc.
posted by Etrigan at 10:26 AM on November 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


It's why having a two-minute hate session over the individual and not the system is problematic.

It's not problematic, I have more than enough contempt for both.

But wouldn't the most ethically consistent behavior be to convert the "low hanging fruit" i.e. people in your own country with whom you share a common language and custom? His efforts strike me as profoundly narcissistic and vainglorious.

Exactly, it's Lisa Simpson making Marge take her to the oil spill because she wants to save a baby seal, but they wind up scrubbing rocks and Marge grumbles she has rocks that need washing at home. Prideful nonsense on Chau's part.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:27 AM on November 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


But wouldn't the most ethically consistent behavior be to convert the "low hanging fruit" i.e. people in your own country with whom you share a common language and custom? His efforts strike me as profoundly narcissistic and vainglorious.

I grew up in American fundamentalist/Evangelical Christianity. There's an extremely common toxic belief in that culture that I believe may have motivated Chau. The book of Revelation describes people from every nation, tribe, and tongue in heaven praising God at the end of the world. Many Evangelicals have concluded that this means the events in Revelation can only happen if Christianity is spread to every nation, tribe, and tongue, and that doing so is their most important duty. (See also: the "Great Commission" in Matthew 28:19-20.) That's why this strain of Evangelical Christianity has such an obsession with "unreached peoples." They're the only ones left on the checklist before we can all go to heaven with Jesus.
posted by skymt at 10:34 AM on November 23, 2018 [26 favorites]


Ryvar, I read your words and they make sense. Of course each individual Christian or American or White Supremacist is only the hapless product their collective system and conditioning, and it makes no sense to hate the individual when one can reject their entire collective system. Less effort expended.
posted by infini at 10:37 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Speaking of the uncivilized: This is the London tabloid Sun's headline take on this:
"TRIBAL INSTINCT
World’s most ruthless tribe that killed US tourist on their island ‘love having beach orgies’"
posted by talos at 10:44 AM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


The number-one takeaway from that thread was that most of @RespectableLaw's assumptions are actually wrong. Their heart is in the right place, but their understanding of the issue is based on a faulty foundation.

In the thread, India-based journalist Dhanya Rajendran noted that the photos @RespectableLaw posted showing Portman with islanders may actually be from Jarawa, not North Sentinel. Rajendran cites this book: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.24181/page/n229

Here's a screenshot of the exchange to provide more context, and here's where the exchange started.

Responding to this part of the thread, another commenter says "So... From what I gather your whole story is wrong and actually about a different tribe???"

@RespectableLaw appears to concur with this, yet taking a look at their Twitter profile, no correction or update has been made, and they certainly have not provided any recognition to Dhanya Rajendran.

This all bothers me: it's a viral Twitter feed that presents inaccurate information, and the educated input of somebody actually from India and who may also have some understanding of the issue has been basically ignored.

My main takeaway is that whenever we (I work in journalism about 50% of my day) research a topic, we need to check local sources, who likely already have deep insights. And we need to amplify these local sources.
posted by JamesBay at 11:00 AM on November 23, 2018 [30 favorites]


I am reminded of the fairy tales of early missionaries "speaking in tongues" to convert the heathens even when not speaking a language they understood, and wondering if Mr. Chau was expecting some sort of similar miracle to occur if he could just preach at them for a while. In reality, such conversions were more likely of a "accept a bit of water on the head, sip from the cup, and eat the wafer, or get a sword in the guts" type deal. After you see three or four refuseniks moaning in a pile off to the side conversion sounds like the easy option, even if you don't understand the words. That later you learn this foreign god owns your soul, will send you to eternal punishment if you don't do what the foreign priest says, and promises a whole lot of pie-in-the-sky by and by when you die just helps cement the deal in place permanently.

I remember watching one documentary on a remote tribe, but one that had been contacted. Pre-contact, they had a pretty much free-love type system of relationships -- one selling point (for the men, at least) had been that the missionary promised that under this new religion, each man would have exclusive sexual access to one woman. I also noted that in the documentary, when the camera crew showed up, the first thing the missionary did was gather the entire tribe into the chapel hut, close the doors, tell the camera crew to keep far away and not film the building, and have a long, private talk with the tribe. He was also the only translator available for interviewing the tribespeople, and given the length of the questions, the length of the translated version and the answer, and the length of the translated reply, it was pretty clear that there was a lot of creative rephrasing going on, possibly entirely so. Clearly said missionary was at least conscious of and protective of his position of power and influence, of which he had much more than he would have back home. Only men were interviewed, so the show was unable to get the opinions of what the women felt about the situation and their new subservient status.

I hope these islanders continue to be left alone, since that is what they justifiably appear to want, but it seems quite likely that instead they'll soon either be converted, killed, and/or turned into a tourist attraction.
posted by Blackanvil at 11:10 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


According to accounts, on the first day he went to the island, they fired an arrow at him. So he retreated to the boat but returned again the next day despite their initial clear indication that they did not want him there.

What kind of graceless hubris drives you to persist against the will of their clearly expressed preferences? What an abhorrent person.
posted by JackFlash at 11:13 AM on November 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


No evangelist is an island, the secular authorities should have the head of the sect that is he was associated travel to assume responsibility of the body. Then also assume the responsibility of the costs of rescue and any legal issues, upto and including serving any proscribed jail time.
posted by sammyo at 11:26 AM on November 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


What you're asking us to consider with our rational thinking minds is the mindset than enslaved and colonized our ancestors.

Disagree. This makes it seem like missionaries participated in the colonial conquest of the subcontinent and burned our civilization to ashes like Mayan codices.

I would argue that India is resilient - it absorbs and assimilates. Over 20 million students are enrolled in Christian affiliated schools and colleges. In mine, we recited the Lord's Prayer and sang hymns every single day although actual Christians were a tiny minority. We performed skits to celebrate all religious festivals from Id to Navroze. That is the great Indian experiment in secularism (stressed and dysfunctional as it is).

Cultural history is complex. The East India Company, practically synonymous with colonial pillage, commissioned Charles Wilkins to make the first standard typefaces for the Bengali and Devanagri scripts. Those printing presses churned out copies of the gospels (of course) but also textbooks for elementary vocabulary and grammar. Which in turn led to the vernacular press and once the editors started to feel seditious - the whole nationalist movement.

fond school memory: hoarse tuneless kids singing '...to be loved as to love with all my sohhh ohhh ole'
posted by tirutiru at 11:30 AM on November 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


With every passing year I become more convinced that agricultural civilization is the oppressive ideology that transcends all others in human history. Wherever people are found who don’t practice it, they must be converted, murdered, or enslaved. All will bend the knee, or die.
What I find extraordinary in the context of this thread's discussion is that the Book of Genesis is replete with attacks on agricultural civilization--attacks evidently composed by pastoralists. This is fairly obvious in the text itself, but I imagine that most missionaries don't think of themselves as representatives of what their own holy book considers a corrupt and evil socio-economic system. Cain, besides being the first murderer, was also the first farmer: And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground (Genesis 4:2).
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 11:55 AM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


I find myself just wondering about the venn diagram between "people who get super horny about home as castle, stand your ground, trespassers shot on sight" etc. and "let's gawk at this savage/isolationist tribe!"
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:10 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


overeducated_alligator: With every passing year I become more convinced that agricultural civilization is the oppressive ideology that transcends all others in human history.

If you havent already, check out Daniel Quinn (Ishmael, The Story of B, Beyond Civilization, et al). He has a lot to say on this subject, and I don't agree with all of it but Ishmael in particular is well worth a read - lots of philosophy packed into an amazing, melancholy story.
posted by memebake at 12:12 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


To put the spin on it that he was going there out of some misguided desire to save them from hellfire misunderstands how this works: you have to reject Christ to go through that. People who have never heard of him get judged under different rules. However, everyone has to have heard of him for the Second Coming, which is why he was out there.

Putting any sort of spin on this where it is not about religious narcissism and self glorification is bunk.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 12:27 PM on November 23, 2018 [15 favorites]


People who have never heard of him get judged under different rules.

Can you (or someone) tell me more about this? It was not something I heard growing up. My family’s Episcopal church was too kind to cover this topic, and the other, harder Christians I knew would probably have straight-up disagreed.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:36 PM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


lesbiassparrow: that is not the case in every single fundamentalist "non-denominational" church I've attended or am aware of. The most consistently held belief was that anybody who does not accept Christ - even if their culture never heard of him - is condemned to Hell, and the infinite pain of separation from God, forever. For most congregations the prevailing doctrine was that this applies to aborted fetuses as well, which explains a lot of evangelical voting patterns despite Trump being pretty much everything Christ railed against.

What you are saying is very much NOT the mainstream belief in my experience. Most missionary families need financial backing of anywhere between 15-40 churches secured before they can go out into the field, and my extended family includes three such families plus several individuals, so my sample size is pretty large.

If you're going to be angry at individuals - consider the people who truly believe the above, and yet are willing to shrug their shoulders and do nothing about it, because of skin color or because the unsaved are "savages" or whatever it is they do to just write off thousands of people as not worth the effort. For me, those are the people that leave my skin crawling, because there's something deeply messed up there and I feel like that's the sort of mindset that finds its ultimate expression in concentration camps. The annual "are you ready to return to God?" checkups from my family are extremely irritating for their condescension, but if they ever stopped completely I'd be even more upset because it would mean they value my soul at the level of an animal's.
posted by Ryvar at 12:49 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


In this case his diaries and journals as released mention preaching to them and the second coming and ask what if these were the last people who needed to hear before that, so I think it’s clear this wasn’t ever about these people and their perceived needs.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 12:50 PM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


The only thing I saw him worshipping on his Instagram profile was packages of Perky Jerky.
posted by JamesBay at 1:04 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


> > lol it's not like the passage of two thousand years or more is going to have any kind of effect on the neverending arrogance of christian hegemony

> ...perhaps pope francis can tone it down to a hegemini


Think what you will about evangelism and missionary work, but at LEAST can we get it straight that there are more flavors of Christianity than the Catholics?

Pope Francis isn't the head of the denomination this due followed. This dude wouldn't have given two shits what Pope Francis had to say even if Pope Francis did announce a cessation of all missionary work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:27 PM on November 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


If you're going to be angry at individuals - consider the people who truly believe the above, and yet are willing to shrug their shoulders and do nothing about it, because of skin color or because the unsaved are "savages" or whatever it is they do to just write off thousands of people as not worth the effort. For me, those are the people that leave my skin crawling, because there's something deeply messed up there and I feel like that's the sort of mindset that finds its ultimate expression in concentration camps. The annual "are you ready to return to God?" checkups from my family are extremely irritating for their condescension, but if they ever stopped completely I'd be even more upset because it would mean they value my soul at the level of an animal's.

Hang on, I'm supposed to be angrier at the people who don't bother me and intrude on my life? And asking about your soul isn't necessarily done out of love; it can be done out of wrath that you've escaped or out a desire to control you.

These are his quoted words from his diary: ""Lord, is this island Satan's last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?" He wanted to be that chance, not to save them but to be their saviour - and also hasten the goddam end of the world. Nothing about this man is about anything other than a self-centered adventure freak dragging Jesus into the mix so he can fancy up what was a selfish and self-absorbed act. It's so self-absorbed that even the American Conservative agrees with me, and that is not a sentence I thought I'd write.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 2:08 PM on November 23, 2018 [22 favorites]


the London tabloid Sun's headline
exterminate the brutes
posted by thelonius at 2:18 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't care how immaculate and unspoiled your culture is, slaughtering a man just for landing on your island is wrong.
posted by Flashman at 3:21 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


Is it less wrong than knowingly bringing the possibility of death to all those people by your mere presence? That's what we're arguing about. I'm gonna say that Chau has already received his consolation, and probably took pleasure even in his own death, because death was his food and drink from the time of his youth. He was raised in a death cult, and he intended to bring it to these people; it did not matter that actual, physical death could occur to him or to the Sentinelese, because he worshipped a Dying God. No, shooting folks out of hand is not my idea of a welcome, but I have an immune system and citizenship in a state to rely on. The Sentinelese have only themselves.

I'm sorry this happened. That's my go-to for deaths by misadventure of people that I don't care for: I'm sorry this happened. Not a word of a lie. A mother is weeping for her son somewhere, and poor fishermen are in jail for taking bait they could hardly afford to leave, and who knows what will happen to the islanders, if anything? I'm sorry this happened.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:32 PM on November 23, 2018 [17 favorites]


I don't care how immaculate and unspoiled your culture is, slaughtering a man just for landing on your island is wrong.

I can see your point. But suppose someone broke down the door to your home after illegally trespassing, and was carrying lethal pathogens that would kill your entire family and maybe even your race. Or at the very least, broke in and then started handing out Chick pamphlets after screaming at you in a foreign language? What would you do?
posted by nanook at 3:32 PM on November 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


people have a right to protect their way of life from people who's own way of life has involved the wholesale slaughter of millions of indigenous people in the name of their god.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:35 PM on November 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


incidentally, I've been listening to a lot of showtunes lately, and if Chau had only taken some time to listen to Book of Mormon, we all might have been spared this
posted by Countess Elena at 3:35 PM on November 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


IE this wasn't murder- it was self-defense
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:35 PM on November 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


He invaded their island, ignored their repeated warnings; the Sentinelese will use headless arrows when warning off visitors who linger excessively long near the beach, which probably what the first set of 'arrow wounds' was. He even ignored them destroying his kayak. They had literally no other way to make this dangerous invader leave than kill him. Did you expect them to build a prison for him or something?
posted by tavella at 3:42 PM on November 23, 2018 [14 favorites]


Black social media has been all over this. My favorite comment, from the Kinfolk Kollective thread: I guess a weapon forged against him did prosper.

I'm rooting for the Sentinelese to continue their way of life, unbothered.
posted by TwoStride at 3:55 PM on November 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


Not only might some/all of the Sentinelese get sick if Chau brought in pathogens, but whichever team is sent in to retrieve his body by the Indian government will also be risking their lives. (Unless Chau's body is a pathogen risk, I'd think it better to leave it where it's buried, but that's probably not politically viable.) Per Countess Elena's sentiments, I'm sorry this happened, but more than that I really hope this ends with only the one death.
posted by bettafish at 4:00 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Satan's last stronghold"?

Offering them a soccer ball?

"Why are they so aggressive"?

"My name is John and Jesus loves you"? In a language none of them spoke or understood?!

The Indian government said it's illegal to go there. The Indian government said it's illegal to transport anyone near there, or bribe people to take one there. The people themselves literally sent a shot across the bow to warn him away, but no! John Chau would be their saviour, whether they wanted it or not. And he'll put it all on social media to get his glorified likes, while he's at it? Nah, this willfully ignorant, presumptuous, vainglorious, arrogant clown got what he got.

I've been seeing the reaction to this on a couple of black social media outlets, and there's already a meme of Mo'Nique's face with the caption: "See, when you do colonialism, the colonials come back to bite!"
posted by droplet at 4:29 PM on November 23, 2018 [10 favorites]


I don't care how immaculate and unspoiled your culture is, slaughtering a man just for landing on your island is wrong.

It's actually pretty common for the military of a country to use force to repel an invader who crosses the border. Was the force disproportionate to the threat? That's for the lawyers to decide, but there is precedent. The rules of engagement observed by American forces for example typically allow the use of force to stop a perceived threat.

It's a mistake to view what happened as "isolated tribe versus missionary". They are a sovereign nation, and sovereign nations use force all the time to preserve their polity.
posted by JamesBay at 8:24 PM on November 23, 2018 [15 favorites]


If it had been a gun instead of a bow and arrow, we could ask if Chau was wearing a hoodie in the wrong backyard.
posted by infini at 10:34 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't care how immaculate and unspoiled your culture is, slaughtering a man just for landing on your island is wrong.

the world would now be a far better place if far more people had done so throughout history
posted by poffin boffin at 12:11 AM on November 24, 2018 [11 favorites]


that is not the case in every single fundamentalist "non-denominational" church I've attended or am aware of. The most consistently held belief was that anybody who does not accept Christ - even if their culture never heard of him - is condemned to Hell, and the infinite pain of separation from God, forever.

That doesn't actually mean their beliefs are internally consistent. The chief and most sophisticated collection of thinkers about a system in which hell is an eternity of torment and separation from God also (for the most part) came to the conclusion that those who have never had the opportunity to learn about Christ do not go to hell. It is really only the fundies who believe anything else. Ask the Catholics, the Anglicans, the Presbyterians (non-fundamentalist branches), etc.: while their answers about the soteriological status of the Sentinelese may vary, none of them will tell you that they are automatically bound for hell because they don't know about and so cannot choose to obey Christ in a literal sense. The fundies are just so intellectually hogtied as to be literally unable to imagine people who are in situations other than their own, and so they treat everyone's situations as morally equivalent to their own.

(Further, even if you believe that the Sentinelese are automatically damned unless they choose to follow Christ, that does not necessarily entail a moral obligation on the part of others to convert them on that basis. Not even if you adopt the grindingly moronic fundie position that salvation is as simple as an act of will and then you are saved forever, but more complicated notions of who is damned and who is saved will rule it right out. To a proper Calvinist, God made those decisions before the world was made, and no asshole on a boat can make a jot of difference.)
posted by praemunire at 12:36 AM on November 24, 2018 [7 favorites]


at LEAST can we get it straight that there are more flavors of Christianity than the Catholics?

No need to go all caps - twas just a bit of the ol' wordplay. My small tangential lark was not meant to sum up the totality of Christianity - just as a tossed off note of rather cynical optimism about one current aspect of it.
posted by fairmettle at 1:33 AM on November 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


My small tangential lark was not meant to sum up the totality of Christianity - just as a tossed off note of rather cynical optimism about one current aspect of it.

Your small tangential lark didn't need to invoke Pope Francis in order for it to work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:33 AM on November 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I read the links about Portman, and Respectable Lawyer's characterization of Portman is libelous. Nothing he cites remotely justifies calling him a "weirdo" or "creep" or sexual abuser of natives. I'm deeply unimpressed.
posted by Transl3y at 6:54 AM on November 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't care how immaculate and unspoiled your culture is, slaughtering a man just for landing on your island is wrong.
posted by Flashman


(squints suspiciously at handle)
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:24 AM on November 24, 2018 [10 favorites]


Acey: " Nearly all diseases come from domesticated animals, and excepting Llamas, the Americas have no animals suitable for domestication. "

Not to argue the origin of diseases but Llamas were not the only option; First Nations had domesticated dogs (most interestingly the Salish Wool dog1) , and reindeer have been domesticated though not IIRC in North America.

[1] Which is the animal we should be attempting to resurrect via cloning IMO.
posted by Mitheral at 12:18 PM on November 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


MetaFilter: I read your words and they make sense.
posted by homunculus at 12:50 PM on November 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


If you're going to be angry at individuals - consider the people who truly believe the above, and yet are willing to shrug their shoulders and do nothing about it

I don't know that I agree with this. That line of thinking supports extremism. Consider all those who believe climate change science yet don't go blockade oil drilling rigs. I can't disapprove of all those who don't subvert their civic loyalties and social ties to their beliefs. Especially when it comes to evangelical Christianity, there is something to be said for having a sliver of doubt that keeps a person from running off to convert unwilling islanders.
posted by salvia at 1:51 PM on November 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Madhumala Chattopadhyay: An Anthropologist’s Moment of Truth
By Sudipto Sengupta


This pretty fascinating account carries another cargo-hold of issues to unpack - regarding one of which: is its peculiar “man (woman)” formulation - so poignant in this very case - at all typical in some Indian academic contexts, or is it a quirk of the author?
posted by progosk at 5:03 PM on November 24, 2018


Honest question: in what sense, then, was your father a missionary? I've always understood the word "missionary" to mean, by definition, "someone who proselytizes". dictionary.com agrees with this understanding – but I'm certainly willing to be corrected.


Just noting that the dictionary.com definition of “missionary” you linked to provides several definitions. So it’s not quite as reductive as “someone who proselytizes”. Indeed, the top definition offered is “a person sent by a church into an area to carry on evangelism or other activities, as educational or hospital work.” (Emphasis mine.)

But yes, proselytizing is definitely the most visible and controversial form of missionary work, so it tends to get far more negative press (often warranted, as in the case with Chau). That’s not to say that educational, medical and other development modes of missionary work aren’t susceptible to cultural imperialism and colonialist overtones, and the problems that causes. But there’s also an incredible amount of faith-based humanitarian work going on in the world - at the invitation of nationals - that’s doing good for many, many people.

As I say: land of contrasts.
posted by darkstar at 6:57 PM on November 24, 2018


Honest question: in what sense, then, was your father a missionary?

He was employed by a mission company? To spread the word of God (by teaching theology at a seminary which counted among its pupils representatives from "developing churches" and Christian minority populations)?

A bunch of people employed by the same mission company didn't do the spread the word of God bit in as direct a fashion as that. Some did infrastructure work or charity work (usually working with local faith groups where they were based, and often those faith groups were non-Christian) simply being representatives of the mission company (and Christianity more broadly) doing good things (which is both a good Christian end unto itself, and a positive representation of everyday Christian faith).

If you go and read the New Testament, you'll see that there is more emphasis on doing good in the world than there is on converting people. There's some about spreading the word, for sure, but there's a lot about just being a good citizen and a good neighbour. That's mission work too, or can be if it's part of a mission program. You seem to be starting from a position of "mission work = converting heathens" which yeah, if you start from that position, a lot of the more uncontroversial mission work won't look like mission work to you.
posted by Dysk at 7:59 PM on November 24, 2018


Here's an update on the local authorities' plan. (The author, M. Safi, has clearly not been reading this thread.)
posted by progosk at 2:26 AM on November 25, 2018


If Covenant Journey has specifically called for his body back, then they will probably take it up as a Cause, a wedge to get more of their people in there.

great_radio, I really appreciate that link. At first I thought that her particular success no doubt hinged on her being a woman who talked to women, but I don't think I should view it in such a reductionist way. I bet it didn't hurt a bit though.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:14 AM on November 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


But would you also say that we've gained no greater understanding of the ways language, religion, culture etc develop by trying to rigorously understand isolated peoples? Is it all garbage?

I appreciate the interest! Sorry for late reply, it’s been a busy weekend.

It pretty much is garbage. Think of all the ways you can cook a chicken. Think of all the regional variations of the same chicken dish. No one way is representative.

For every problem there are many, many possible solutions, and many of them have been explored in various ways around the world. Humans are endlessly inventive, and there’s very little that guarantees anyone will come up with any given idea. Even the same people in the same environment could come up with radically different ideas if given the chance to do things again. To assume otherwise (that the same people in the same environment will always do the same thing) means taking a mechanistic view of people that overlooks the quirks and idiosyncrasies that make up our humanity.

Think of all the bows and arrows in the world. Some are long, some are short, some curve more than others. They’re made out of different materials, made to hunt different things. Sometimes they’re not the most efficient design, sometimes they seem perfect. When early anthropology museums placed the bows and arrows of the world together in a case, they presented these variations as the product of different stages of development, ignoring the environmental and social conditions that contributed to those variation.

So it’s very hard to extrapolate from what people in one place do, and draw conclusions from that about what ancestors elsewhere might have done. It would be like studying New York Jews to learn about how people cook chicken in China. Seeing isolated people as windows into cultural or technological development is deeply flawed because they aren’t anyone’s ancestor, and the ways they live don’t reflect some grand human history.

The way to learn about human history is through archaeology. The material traces ancient people left behind can say quite a lot about their cultures and ways of living. Most importantly, archaeology allows us to study the actual ancient people in question, instead of projecting ancient history onto modern people.

Someone who knows more about ancient archaeology could say much more about their methods, I’m sure.

This is a long comment and I’m tired, but I’m happy to write more later.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:10 PM on November 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


Did they recover the bodies of the fishermen killed back in the aughts?

I read one article in which it stated they were able to get one of the bodies by flying a helicopter over head and then flying to the other end of the island to distract the people guarding the body. Those people chased the helicopter, and it returned with only enough time to get one of the bodies. I read another article that stated that both bodies were retrieved. I read a third article that stated that none were retrieved. I'm sorry I don't have links to each article - I ended up reading a lot about this for some reason!

Something that was in all of the articles was that after burying the bodies for a week, they hung them from bamboo which made them easier to identify. They are thinking this might happen again. Apologies if this is gruesome.
posted by Toddles at 8:14 PM on November 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


the world would now be a far better place if far more people had done so throughout history

I assume you don't mean we should be doing the same to the refugees seeking asylum at the border right now, which is why I think that statement requires a few caveats (as to the power dynamics that make the two situations not analogous, the distinction between immigrants and colonizers, etc.).
posted by Backslash at 10:05 PM on November 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


it presumed that Native cultures had remained unchaining for millennia until acted upon by an external force, as if Native people couldn’t have their own histories or changes

Just want to highlight this here to say that this really stood out for me as a perfect shake-up of nearly EVERYTHING I was taught in U.S. public school re: any folks that weren't from Europe.
posted by knownassociate at 6:47 AM on November 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


So out of curiousity I went poking around in Google Maps, and it turns out that resolution is good enough that you can see several shelters, networks of foot paths, and even possibly a village (though I'm not too sure on the last one.)
posted by tavella at 8:39 PM on November 26, 2018


Calls to leave body of American killed by tribespeople.
By Survival International and a group of Indian anthropologists, authors and activists issued a similar statement on Monday.
posted by adamvasco at 4:14 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


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