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Living in the serenity and solitude of the Andamans is a 70,000 year old community called the Jarawa tribe. Originally hailing from the African continent, they belong to the Negrito ethnicity and live in recluse, isolated from modern civilisation. This community’s total population on the Andaman island they occupy is no more than 420, showing a sharp decline from 670 in the 1900s due to man-made circumstances. The tribe whose survival depends on isolation is now facing extinction owing to man’s curiousity.
“We find everything we need in the jungle. And we only hunt what we need,” says a Jarawa tribe member in the documentary film by Alexandre Dereim titled Organic. The feature documentary goes on to highlight the harmonious connection the Jarawas have with the forest, and the balanced sustenance they gain from it.
Poachers entering the Jarawas’ land threaten their source of sustenance and reclusive lifestyle, as we learn from a member in the documentary, “They give us tobacco and they teach us how to chew. It is not good for us.” They add, “Some of them have got firearms to shoot at us.”
The Andaman Trunk Road that runs south to north is one of the biggest threats to the Jarawas, as it passes through their territory and allows ‘human safaris’ to bring in vehicles full of tourists taking pictures and tossing food at the tribe, like animals in a zoo. The global tribal rights advocacy group Survival International has been fighting to close the road down since 1993, with no avail.
“For the first time, the Jarawa are speaking to us,” the narrative of Alexandre Dereim’s Organic states, “They want to alert us.” Jarawa tribe members go on explain that their land is where their life is, where why want to live, and that they can never love our world.
