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ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA, April 5, 2004: Just off the coast of Burma in the Bay of Bengal is a group of islands called the Andaman Islands that belong to India. What is unique about the islands is the fact that they boast a tribal race of 250 people known as the Jarawa tribe. The Jarawa tribe live today as they have for thousands of years. They are protected from outside contact by the Indian government. But slowly in the last three hundred years, their existence has been threatened by so-called civilized settlers. In 1997, measles killed many in the tribe. In recent years, any contact that the Jarawa tribe has had with other human beings has been on the highway that the Indian government built through their reserved land. Apparently the government thought the road was needed for defense purposes. It was on this road that 16 year-old Enmay was hit by a truck and ended up with a broken leg. He was taken to a hospital in Port Blair. In the hospital Enmay picked up the Hindi language and he described how frightened he was of taps (strange metal objects on the wall that produce water) and television. Enmay choose to return to his tribe after his leg healed. He described how his people are affected by settlement on the islands. Logging has taken away areas of the forest where they used to hunt. Botanist Samir Acharya interviewed Enmay before he returned to his tribe. Acharya says, “He pointed out dozens of plants around him saying what they could be used for; to treat cuts, bruises and insect bites, what time of day they should be picked and how they should be prepared. This remarkable know-how, which we in the developed world never had or lost generations ago, appears destined to disappear along with the tribal people of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.”

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