American YouTuber Is Arrested for Trying to Film Uncontacted Tribe and Offering Them Diet Coke
An American YouTuber has been arrested for attempting to make contact with the isolated Sentinelese tribe for a video, filming his visit and leaving a can of Diet Coke on the shore for them.
24-year-old Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested on March 31 by Indian police for attempting to make contact with the uncontacted Sentinelese tribe.
The Sentinelese have lived in complete isolation on the remote North Sentinel Island — part of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands — for possibly over 50,0000 years.
It is illegal for foreigners or Indians to travel within three miles of the islands to protect the Sentinelese and keep outsiders safe from the tribe who have been known to attack intruders who land on their beaches.
According to Indian police, YouTuber Polyakov allegedly landed on North Sentinel Island at 10 a.m. on March 29 and brought a GoPro camera in hopes of filming his encounter with the tribe.
A review of his GoPro camera footage revealed that Polyakov scanned the land with binoculars for about five minutes but saw no one.
Polyakov then climbed ashore onto the island and continued filming. The YouTuber then left a can of Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering to the reclusive Sentinelese tribe. He also took sand samples from the northeastern shore of the island.
Polyakov was arrested two days later when he returned to Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago more than 800 miles east of India’s mainland.
According to police, Mr Polyakov has visited North Sentinel Island twice before — including using an inflatable kayak in October last year before he was stopped by hotel staff. This time, he had allegedly planned his journey “meticulously,” studying sea conditions, tides, and accessibility to the island from Khurmadera Beach.
Polyakov is currently being held on charges that include violating a law protecting aboriginal tribes and is scheduled to appear in court on April 17. The charges carry a possible sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine.
Who are The Sentinelese Tribe?
The Sentinelese tribe are the most isolated Indigenous people in the world, according to Survival International.
Researchers believe that the Sentinelese are the last pre-Neolithic tribe on earth and they are likely descendants of Africans who migrated to the area about 50,000 years ago.
They are thought to survive on the small, forested North Sentinel Island by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants.
The tribe has aggressively resisted contact with outsiders for generations and has been known to attack anyone that comes near the island. And almost nothing is definitively known of their lives, except that they attack outsiders with spears or bows and arrows.
In 2006, the Sentinelese killed two fishermen who had accidentally landed on the shore. In 2018, American missionary John Allen Chau was killed by the tribe after he paid fishermen to illegally take him to the island. The tribe apparently shot Chau with arrows and then buried his body on the beach.
Despite their isolation, the Sentinelese come under Indian government rule. In 1956, India declared North Sentinel Island a tribal reserve and banned any travel within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of it.
To this day, India maintains a constant armed patrol in the surrounding waters to stop people from making contact with the tribe. This is to protect the Sentinelese from contracting modern illnesses and to keep outsiders safe.
In 2017, the Indian Government introduced further laws that forbid taking photographs or making videos of the tribe.
