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by skepicurean 3686 days ago
It appears you didn't closely read the article because it documents two separate events:

1. The author's meeting with the Sentinelese.

2. The author's meeting with the Jarawa.

You are correct that most of the photos are from the meeting with the Jarawa and that much of the article describes the author's time with the Jarawa but there is a segment which explicitly describes the meeting with the Sentinelese, separate from the Jarawa meetings.

1 comments

I am saying that the author is using Sentinelese interchangeably with Jarawa/Andaman incorrectly.

The only reference I can find for such contact is a blog post and a 1993 news article that appears anecdotal. I'd like to see the journal article written about this contact by the Anthropological Survey of India which funded the contact with the Andaman Islanders, but I can't find a source, leading me to believe it didn't happen as described.

According to Wikipedia, Sentinelese is apparently (based on other encounters) ,not mutually intelligible with Onge, which does seem to be an inconsistency in the idea that she heard them asking for coconuts in Onge.
Wikipedia references the same anecdotal source material and not anything from an authentic source.
I think I misplaced this comment, sorry!
You didn't read the article. She landed on North Sentinel island and interacted with the Sentinelese. Then, later in the article it focuses on Jarawa.
I did read it. I just don't trust the veracity of the claims.

The best I can find is this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=-4PDCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA140&lpg=...

This text claims to have made friendly contact in 1986, and says 1994 had contact on the eastern coast.

These dates don't line up with the story, and I can't find any official source information about the contact, so the inconsistency is a red flag.

She apparently wrote a book 15 years ago: http://www.amazon.in/Tribes-Car-Nicobar-Madhumala-Chattopadh...

I don't know how one would go about researching Indian anthropological expeditions to find the officially-documented connection to reality, but presumably that's where you'd start, if you wanted to verify the story.