US tourist arrested for trying to visit isolated Sentinelese tribe
Maxar closeup satellite imagery of North Sentinel Island, which is one of the Andaman Islands, an Indian archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. The island is a protected area of India. It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous tribe in voluntary isolat
A U.S. tourist was arrested after he reportedly traveled to North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean to try and contact the "world’s most isolated" Sentinelese Tribe.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, allegedly landed on North Sentinel Island over the weekend, leaving a can of Diet Coke and a coconut on the shore and blowing a whistle to entice the tribe while he filmed his encounter.
Survival International, a group that advocates for the rights of tribal people, called the incident "deeply disturbing."
Why was Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov arrested?
What we know:
It’s illegal to travel within three nautical miles of North Sentinel Island. The territory is a designated tribal reserve.
Polyakov was arrested late Monday, about two days after he went ashore. Andaman and Nicobar Islands police chief HGS Dhaliwal told AFP that he blew his whistle for about an hour to get the tribe’s attention, but no one emerged. He spent about five minutes on shore and recorded a video on his GoPro before he left.
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"This is it. The last uncontracted tribe. The last mystery. If they see me, will they attack? Or will they accept me?" he reportedly whispered into his camera.
Someone on a neighboring island saw him and reported him to police.
Authorities in India said it was his third attempt to visit North Sentinel Island. In October 2024, he tried to use an inflatable kayak to reach the island but was stopped by hotel staff. He tried again, unsuccessfully, in January 2025.
This time, he used an inflatable boat with a motor, traveling more than nine hours in the open sea to reach the forbidden land, according to The New York Post.
The last time an American tried to visit the island, he was killed by the tribe. John Allen Chau, 26, was last seen being dragged onto the island by tribe members in 2018 after they shot him with arrows. His body was never recovered.
Reports say Polyakov faces anywhere from three to eight years in prison.
What they're saying:
"It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic," the statement from Survival International said. "This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk. It’s very well known by now that uncontacted peoples have no immunity to common outside diseases like flu or measles, which could completely wipe them out."
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"It’s good news that the man in this latest incident has been arrested, but deeply disturbing that he was reportedly able to get onto the island in the first place. The Indian authorities have a legal responsibility to ensure that the Sentinelese are safe from missionaries, social media influencers, people fishing illegally in their waters and anyone else who may try to make contact with them.
Who is Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov?
Dig deeper:
Polyakov is a self-described "thrill seeker" who posts on YouTube as "Neo-Orientalist."
According to The Telegraph, he’s from Arizona. The New York Post reports that he’s of Ukrainian descent.
His other videos on YouTube show him traveling to Afghanistan to meet the Taliban and posing with guns and swords.
What is North Sentinel Island?
The backstory:
For thousands of years, the people of North Sentinel Island have been isolated from the rest of the world.
They use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island, and gather plants to eat and to fashion into homes. Their closest neighbors live more than 30 miles away. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who comes through the surf and onto their beaches.
"The Sentinelese want to be left alone," anthropologist Anup Kapur told The Associated Press in 2018.
Scholars believe the Sentinelese migrated from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, but most details of their lives remain completely unknown.
North Sentinel is an outpost of the island chain, which is far closer to Myanmar and Thailand than to mainland India.
Estimates on the group’s size range from a few dozen to a few hundred.
For generations, Indian officials have heavily restricted visits to North Sentinel, with contact limited to rare "gift-giving" encounters, with small teams of officials and scientists leaving coconuts and bananas for the islanders.
Any contact with such isolated people can be dangerous, scholars say, with islanders having no resistance to diseases outsiders carry.
Many of the island chain’s other tribes have been decimated over the past century, lost to disease, intermarriage and migration.
The Source: This report includes information from AFP, The Telegraph, The New York Post and The Associated Press.