Dear Jack,

It’s Uncontacted Peoples Week 2025, and this year we’re exploring a very simple theme – the right to reject contact.

Many uncontacted Indigenous peoples, from the Sentinelese in the Indian Ocean to the Kawahiva in the Amazon, have made it abundantly clear that they want to be left in peace.

They know from bitter experience what happens when that wish isn’t respected: epidemics of new diseases which can decimate entire populations, or violent invasions by loggers and ranchers who are willing to kill in order to steal the land and its resources.

On India’s Great Nicobar Island, the Indigenous Shompen people stay in their lush rainforests and won’t let outsiders in. Interactions with government field agents are restricted to just a few members of the tribe.

But this caution may be in vain. The Shompen don’t know it, but the Indian government is planning to turn their tiny island into “the Hong Kong of India.”

If the plan goes ahead, huge swathes of their unique rainforest will be destroyed – to be replaced by a mega-port; a new city; an international airport; a power station; a military base; an industrial park; and 650,000 settlers — a population the size of Las Vegas.

There’s simply no way the Shompen will be able to survive this overwhelming and catastrophic transformation of their island. They will share the fate of so many uncontacted peoples before them, and be bulldozed to destruction.

Jack, please tell India’s Tribal Affairs Minister that the project must be scrapped or the Shompen will be wiped out. If enough allies around the world raise their voices in protest, the Shompen can survive.