Re: Language deaths on the Indian Ocean?

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 06:45:46 GMT

"Jarel" <nahali@aol.comnotojunk> wrote...

> I found this news update:
>
> http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13638487
>
> It says that the Onge, Jarawa, and Sentinel are safe.

The Onge and Jarawa villages tend to be inland, so I'm not surprised they're
OK. Also, the Jarawa reserve is on the west side of their island. The
Sentinel Islanders seem to spend a lot of their time on the beach, and one
might expect them to rush down to pick up the dead fish after the first wave
and get caught by the second. I'd be surprised if anyone has done more than
fly a plane over the island to check up at this stage -- there are no
non-indigenes there, and no means of communication or other facilities
AFAIK.

I just heard on the radio that there are still 10 000 Andaman Islanders
unaccounted for. These would be settlers from India, of course. The local
authorities must have enough to deal with sorting them out, before starting
to do anything serious about the few hundred indigenes.

BTW, Jarel, have you heard anything about Siberut, in particular the
Mentawai? (I've heard that Nias is in rather a mess.)

John.