North Sentinel Island Crisis

The **North Sentinel Island Crisis** was a migrant crisis after the North Sentinel Island had become uninhabitable following overwhelming natural disasters.

## The Crisis

### Fleeing Extinction

The Sentinelese were a prehistoric tribe isolated from the developed world. There had been several attempts to uplift the tribe, but all of them were unsuccessful, resulting in aggression from the tribe with primitive weapons. At least ten known people were killed in such attempts. Consequently, the Indian authorities sealed off the island, preventing anyone from the outside world to even get close to the island. They established listening posts to track the nearby sea traffic.

The isolated tribesmen started to feel the changes of climate change, starting from the 2050s. The fauna started to reproduce more quickly, and this triggered overpopulation. Later, an earthquake badly affected the flora and the fauna, inflicting suffering on the tribesmen. Despite these hardships, life went on as it always had been, except with more people due to the availability of resources. A series of typhoons in the 2100s changed everything. While the developed islands could heal the damage quickly, the natives faced a devastating choice: Leaving the island or total extinction.

On July 21st, 2106, the listening posts were met with a surprise. Canoes from the island were moving to South Andaman Island. At first, the authorities thought that they carried deceased islanders’ corpses; floating corpses was not an uncommon sight after the late 2080s. However, the canoe arrived with live people on board. The Sentinelese, a people so isolated and territorial, were desperately trying to flee the island. The listening posts counted at least 3000 refugees.

### Fortunate Newcomers

The Indian Union paid a colossal amount to save the natives, but their efforts paid off. The government made a three-step plan to save the Sentinelese. The first step involved shrugging off the setbacks of the contact. Thousands of linguists around the world joined forces to decrypt their then unknown language, and they have succeeded in avoiding aggression while keeping them somewhat isolated from most people. The tribesmen chose a speaker, nicknamed Bare Mouth, to simplify the relations. Authorized people from the Indian Union had to be decontaminated before contacting the tribesmen, in fear of an outbreak among the refugees.

The second step, started around 2109, was direct contact with the outside world. At first, the tribesmen expressed disdain towards the outsiders but seeing nothing but help and shelter from the outside world made more of them approach them with friendliness. In time, some people brought more modern gifts, such as a ruler or processed food. The refugees became curious and began to want more of these strange things. On December 3rd, 2111, they expressed their intentions to “become powerful and use gifts better” via Bare Mouth. The islanders did not wish to “be left alone somewhere else only to face extinction again.” The Indian Union had intended to isolate the tribe somewhere else so they could preserve the tribe’s identity. The authorities reacted with great surprise, so they changed the third step of their plan.

The third step became making sure that all refugees lived a prosperous life in modern world. All refugees were given Indian citizenship and social support. The Indian Union gave the Sentinelese practically unlimited resources; they could afford to do so for such few people. The refugees took basic education, mostly literacy, numeracy, the bare bones of the modern society, and wielding some tools that may help the refugees find jobs. The children could learn more subjects, so many of their parents chose to enroll them in special schools, which offered an enriched curriculum. In 2136, the Sentinelese speaker declared the outsiders “great friends who had given powers our ancestors could not even imagine,” effectively ending the integration process with success.

## Legacy

By the fourth generation, born in the 2160s, the fleeing members of a hunter-gatherer community had been uplifted into modern life. A great majority became bilingual in Sentinelese and Hindi, later generations adopting English as a third language. Despite this, the Indian Union encouraged them to use their own language more, both as a way of preserving the refugees’ culture and an act to discourage total assimilation.

There are currently around 4500 people of Sentinelese origin, centered around the Indian Subcontinent. Some have joined the Systems Alliance as a perceived way to thank the outsiders; their recent hunter-gatherer origin makes them powerful combatants. Some others work closely with nations around the globe to preserve or uplift other tribes.

## Timeline

* **2050s:** Climate change starts to take its toll on the North Sentinel Island’s ecosystem.
* **2100s:** Many typhoons hit North Sentinel Island consecutively, forcing its inhabitants to flee the island.
* **July 21st, 2106:** The first refugee canoe arrives the South Andaman Island.
* **August 16th, 2106:** Bare Mouth becomes the speaker of the Sentinelese refugees.
* **Early 2107:** The Indian Union begins its plan to save the Sentinelese people.

* **December 3rd, 2111:** Bare Mouth declares that the Sentinelese wish to be uplifted, not isolated in somewhere else.
* **October 13th, 2139:** Bare Mouth names the Indian Union as “great friends,” officially ending the integration campaign.