You wake up in an unfamiliar place. The
artificial lights overhead sear your eyes. Where are you? You try to stand, only to
realize that you’re not wearing your own clothes - You’re wearing a strange, humiliating
joke of an outfit intended to make fun of you. You look around and can’t help but notice that the
environment around you seems strangely artificial. You’re in a pretend forest - Plastic trees,
astroturf underfoot, and beyond the trees, walls painted with fake foliage. What is this place?
That’s when another flash almost blinds you. You look up and see a large pane of glass, and
behind it, gawking strangers - snapping pictures of you with cameras. Muttering to each other
about your strangeness. You yell and scream for them to help you out of here, but they
just laugh. Nobody is going to help you. You’ve just become the latest
exhibit in the human zoo. The term ‘human zoo’ alone conjures up a
horrifying image of people being confined to cramped cages or enclosures with barely enough
space, treated as spectacles for paying patrons to come and gawk at from behind glass. Yet, while
this might sound like something that no moral or ethical person would allow to happen, there is
nothing fictional about human zoos. These were a very real phenomenon, one not often widely talked
about, given how much of a dark and unforgivable stain they were on the ledger of human history.
This was no fun day out for the whole family, despite being treated as such by people at the
time that these deplorable exhibits were in vogue. In reality, human zoos were a demonstrable and
dehumanizing practice born of colonialism, racism, religious self-aggrandizement, and simply abject
cruelty toward other human beings. We’re going to be taking a look at what human zoos actually
were, where they started, and what they entailed, as we try to determine what happened to them. And
are there still human zoos in operation today? The term human zoo, as you can imagine, refers
to any exploitative and unethical exhibition of human beings, who are put on display as a means
of providing entertainment. Don’t get it twisted, this isn’t to say that a concert, a talent show,
stand-up night, or any other similar entertainment showcase qualifies as being a human zoo. We’re
talking specifically about public displays of people that are designed to make their audiences
stare and laugh, while also intentionally demeaning the subjects of the human zoo.
There’s a long and uncomfortable history to delve into when it comes to human zoos. These
attractions and exhibitions starring humans date back to as early as the eighteen hundreds, but
there are examples of the practice that date back as recent as the fifties, only around seventy
years ago! You’re probably already familiar with the concept of a ‘freak’ show, a common and
equally unethical practice in circuses throughout history. These would see people who were often
visibly differently-abled being put on display for the paying public to look at, laugh at, and
whose differences were ultimately exploited for the organisers to profit off of. These were,
in a lot of ways, similar to human zoos. Just like the name suggests, human zoos
were displays of people in a zoo-like setting, but that doesn’t necessarily mean
that the people involved are kept in cages, the same way you might expect a traditional zoo
to house its animals. Rather, a lot of the people exploited by human zoos were enclosed in different
ways, trapped financially or socially, with some hoping to garner income in order to feed their
families by providing entertainment. Of course, someone of the kind of moral and ethical fibre
to run a human zoo would definitely make sure all their ‘entertainers’ were paid fairly, we’re sure.
Spectacles like this, such as one held in Tervuren, Belgium, in 1897, were often run
by organizers who gathered entire troupes of underpaid – or sometimes entirely unpaid
– people and displayed them in exhibitions around the world. In the United States, groups of
Congolese people were shown to the public, while Native Americans were put in the same position in
places like Brussels. These people, human beings, were kept behind fences or barriers, often half
undressed or covered in animal skins, and made to perform degrading activities, all while the
curators of these human zoos charged the public for the chance to see them, and then pocketed
the profits for themselves. Some estimates state that around one and a half billion people
worldwide came to view spectacles like these, from smaller-scale acts like the circus freak
shows of the time, to larger exhibits held at fairs in some of the major capital cities around
the world. And as if exploiting human beings in this way for money wasn’t bad enough, the practice
of human zoos also helped to perpetuate beliefs in archaic theories relating to white superiority
and upholding racist beliefs towards the people being used as the zoos ‘exhibits.’
Also referred to as ethnological expositions, the unfortunate goal of these human zoos that
have existed throughout history was to display people from different countries and cultures to
an audience of Westerners. This was built on a foundation of the erroneous and deeply xenophobic
idea that Western society and its culture were far superior to those living elsewhere in the
world, who were wrongly and racistly regarded as being ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ in some way,
typically just used as a justification for othering and dehumanizing these people. The human
zoo served to bolster this belief, by providing a public spectacle for demeaning and dehumanizing
those who lived outside of the Western world. So, where did this all start? Well, tracing
the exact origin of human zoos is tricky, since the use of human beings as objects
of curiosity has existed as far back as colonialism itself has. Let’s start in the Western
Hemisphere, specifically Mexico. Moctezuma, the ninth Emperor of the Aztec Empire,
who reigned from as early as 1502 to 1520, was said to have had a zoo a lot more like the
regular kind, containing wild animals like bears, mountain lions, and various exotic birds. There’s
also some possibility that his zoo also showcased humans, since some Spanish writings at the
time mention human ‘involvement’ in maintaining Moctezuma’s zoo. However, there’s still a great
deal of debate around this. That involvement could have just been being used as tiger feed…
after a person had already died, of course. Moctezuma’s zoo has long been rumored to
have exhibited humans, particularly those with dwarfism, hunched backs, or albinism.
However, there are conflicting historical accounts surrounding how these people were
actually treated. A number of colonial writers, Europeans who’d traveled to the Americas or
the ‘New World’ as they called it, portrayed these differently-abled people as possessions
of Moctezuma. Other discussions surrounding the topic suggest that these people actually played
honored roles in the Aztec Emperor’s court, serving as confidants, spies, and entertainers.
Whether or not Moctezuma’s zoo contained a human exhibit is still up for debate; it’s important
to remember that early colonial writers' recounting of the New World would likely have been
filtered through their own European-centric lens. Jumping forward in time, to when global culture
started making the shift from the Middle Ages towards modernity, and the Renaissance brought
arguably the first documented instance of a human zoo, as we outlined earlier in
this video. The House of Medici was, not actually a physical house, but a wealthy
banking family and political dynasty in Italy around the time of the Renaissance, funding the
largest bank in all of Europe, the Medici Bank. What do they have to do with any of this? Well,
it was the Medici who oversaw the development of a large menagerie at the Vatican. Yes, that
Vatican. This was a collection of captive exotic animals that was placed on display,
and the closest precursor to the modern zoo. Again, how is any of that relevant? Well,
remember we told you the House of Medici had a long political dynasty, and a lot of money?
That brought them a heck of a lot of power, enough to get one of their own, Hippolytus Medici,
a position as a Cardinal within the Vatican. In the sixteenth century, Cardinal Medici was said to
have had his very own collection of exotic animals like the aforementioned menagerie… as well as a
collection of humans. Reportedly, the Cardinal had a troupe of people of different races, inhumanely
referred to as his ‘Savages.’ Between them, the members of this troupe spoke over twenty different
languages, and primarily consisted of people from Africa, Turkey and India, as well as Tartars –
a nomadic ethnic group mainly from west-central Russia – and Moors – members of the Muslim
population of what is now Spain and Portugal. Elsewhere in Europe, we find an English explorer
named William Dampier. This privateer, pirate, and naturalist had been one of the first
Englishmen to explore parts of what is now Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate
his way around the entire world… three times! But Dampier’s exploration might not have been so
welcome to the indigenous peoples of the places he traveled to, since he was also said to have
had something of a human zoo all of his own. While in Mindanao, the second largest
island in the Philippines, he bought a native man from Miangas, an outlying island
in Indonesia. This man, whose name was Jeoly, was described as having been heavily tattooed.
Throughout history, tattooed bodies have long been made objects of spectacle, both as a source
of fascination and undue judgment. Many tattooed native people were captured by European explorers,
then brought back on ships in order to be used as curiosities. Jeoly was arguably one of the most
famous examples of this. He was described by William Dampier as having traditional tattoos
– or having been ‘painted’ – over his chest, between both shoulders on his back and
his thighs, as well as sporting several traditional bracelets around his arms and legs.
It’s also worth pointing out that, at the time, Dampier was especially broke. On his expeditions
around the world, he’d intended to gather valuable spice and gold, but had turned up empty-handed. So
instead, he took Jeoly back to England with him, intending to use the man as an exhibit, referring
to him incorrectly as ‘Prince Giolo’ or the ‘Painted Prince.’ Jeoly was put on display at the
Blue Boar’s Head Inn, in Fleet Street, London, in 1692. Advertisements of the ‘sight’ told an
embellished story of Jeoly’s life, describing, among other things, the supposed healing
and protective powers of the man’s tattoos: “The paint itself is so durable, that nothing
can wash it off, or deface the beauty of it: it is prepared from the juice of a certain
herb or plant, peculiar to that country, which they esteem infallible to preserve
humane bodies from the deadly poison or hurt of any venomous creatures whatsoever.”
Sadly, despite the fictionalized assertions of William Dampier, designed to drum up interest in
his captive, Jeoly’s tattoos didn’t have magical or medicinal properties. He contracted smallpox in
1693 and died, buried in an unmarked grave. In the first instance of something like this in English
history, though, a portion of his tattooed skin was removed and preserved, eventually used as
an ‘anatomical rarity’ at St. John’s College, Oxford. Jeoly’s story is a tragic one, a
man enslaved, forcibly taken from his home, and relocated to England, only to be publicly
exhibited for profit, even after his death! And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Dampier had
also intended to exploit Jeoly’s mother in the same way, too. All in order to earn himself
more profit, and would have done so had she not died at sea on the way back to England.
Then, over a hundred years later, P.T. Barnum enters the picture. Don’t let Hugh Jackman's
portrayal in The Greatest Showman fool you. Barnum was a ruthless and cruel businessman who profited
from the exploitation of the people he used as exhibits. The only reason that he’s remembered
by history is because his ‘shows’ are considered to be the very first modern human exhibitions
that were open to the public. Everything prior had all taken place behind closed doors, in
the private collections of the very wealthy or greedy, opportunistic explorers.
Now, Barnum was taking this exact kind of exploitation mainstream. Most notably, among
his human exhibits in the 1830s was Joice Heath, an African American woman who was displayed
as part of Barnum’s shows under the false claim that she was the 161-year-old nursing
mammy of George Washington – a ‘mammy’ was a term primarily used in the South, describing a
Black woman who cared for the children of a slave owner. P.T. Barnum also exhibited a pair of Thai
American conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, whose fame popularised the term ‘Siamese twins.’
Two decades later, in the 1850s, a pair of microcephalic children from El Salvador were
used in exhibits in the United States and Europe. Microcephaly, normally presenting itself either at
birth, or during the first few years of a child’s development, is a medical condition that prevents
the child’s head from properly developing. It can also have an effect on the brain’s development
too, and those with the disorder can be afflicted with poor motor function, as well as difficulty
with speech, differences in facial features, and even seizures. These two children
were referred to either as ‘Aztec Children’ or ‘Aztec Lilliputians.’
However, these examples were all merely the exploitative precursors to full-blown
human zoos that were still to come. Sadly, the practice would only become more commonplace,
as it was more widely adopted in the midst of the 1870s. This was when showing off what were
referred to as ‘exotic populations’ went from something that was confined to a single exhibition
at cruel freak shows, to showcases in major cities across the world. Throughout Europe, in cities
such as Paris, London, Milan and Hamburg, and even in American cities including New York and Chicago,
human zoos started cropping up in large numbers. One of the earliest proponents of this trend was
a man named Carl Hagenbeck, a German merchant and animal trader. He’d received a suggestion from
an artist named Heinrich Leutemann to hold an exhibit of the Sámi people, a group from the
region of Sápmi, which encompasses parts of what is now Norway, Sweden, and Finland, as well
as the Kola Peninsula in Russia. This region had long been referred to as ‘Lapland’ in English,
terms which are still regarded as offensive to the Sámi. But of course, because of the terms
used at the time, Leutemann’s innovative idea for Hagenbeck was to host a ‘Laplander Exhibition.’
Hagenbeck though, not just content with already exploiting the Sámi people that would be used
in his exhibition, intended to go above and beyond for his paying customers. He wanted to sell
patrons the feeling of having actually traveled to the Sápmi region, and used animals and plants from
the area to ‘recreate the natural environment’ of the Sámi. It’s a pretty safe bet that none
of this was in any way accurate or authentic, but it is notable as being the very first
human zoo in existence to go to these kinds of lengths to draw in an audience. After all, the
exploitation of human beings had been going on for a while now, Hagenbeck’s exhibit needed a
unique selling point, it’s Marketing 101. Shame that his latest business venture, which he put
so much effort into, was human zoos, as he would later go on to launch his very own Nubian Exhibit
and Inuit Exhibit in 1876 and 1880, respectively. All of the exhibits that Hagenbeck
hosted were met with huge popularity among the public – and the accompanying
financial success meant that Hagenbeck could line his pockets on the backs of the people
he exploited for his exhibitions. He didn’t just help the growing trend at the time of hosting
human zoos to continue, but Hagenbeck effectively actively encouraged them to get worse. The bar
for this type of cruelty had been raised, and the public in the Western world had voted in favor of
the trend with their wallets. Human zoos were now being given a financial incentive to get bigger
and more elaborate, as a way to charge more. They began to lean heavily into racial
stereotypes aimed at the real people being used within the exhibitions, promoting ideas
of Western superiority and feeding into popular Imperialist sentiments at the time. The notion
that what was being exhibited were the natural living conditions of the people and cultures that
were the targets of colonial subjugation was done, partially for profit, and partly to
justify the narrative that these cultures somehow ‘needed’ subjugation by colonial rule.
Carl Hagenbeck wasn’t the only one responsible for human zoos and their perpetuation of abject
cruelty and harmful colonialist stereotypes. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire was the director of
Paris’ Jardin d’Acclimatation, a park that played host to two ‘ethnological expositions’
in 1877. Much like two of Hagenbeck’s, these focused on presenting Nubian people – an
ethnic group indigenous to what is now Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt – and Inuit people, who
are a group of indigenous people who traditionally inhabit the subarctic regions of North America.
Thanks to these exhibits, the audience attending Jardin d’Acclimatation doubled to around one
million people in 1877, and between then and 1912, there were nearly thirty similar human zoos housed
there. The success of these Paris-based human zoos even led to them being incorporated into the
Parisian World’s Fair, in both 1878 and 1889. With approximately 28 million visitors, the latter 1889
Parisian World’s Fair showcased 400 indigenous people as their main attraction, complete with
an imitation of their native villages, which was given a name we literally can’t repeat on YouTube.
The reach of human zoos seemed to permeate across much of Europe, with Spain even getting in on the
trend in 1886. In one exhibition, they displayed natives of the Philippines, referring to them
as the people that Spain had ‘civilized’ through their conquest and control over the Philippines
since the 16th century. On somewhat of a positive note, this treatment of the Philippine people did
contribute to the Philippine Revolution of 1896, when Filipino nationalists revolted against
Spanish rule. However, before then, the business of conducting human zoos in Spain had even been
institutionalized by Queen Consort of Spain, Maria Cristina of Austria. A number of indigenous Igorot
people – one of the ethnic groups hailing from the mountains of northern Luzon, in the Philippines –
were sent to Madrid and exhibited in human zoos. But human zoos weren’t an exclusively European
endeavor. Over in Chicago, during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and Buffalo, New
York, at the Pan American Exposition in 1901, also featured the exploitation of peoples from
other countries. The UK, not one to be left out of colonial exploitation and far-flung ideas
about supremacy, wasn’t exempt either. Around eighty people from Somalia were displayed in a
so-called ‘exotic’ setting at the 1895 African Exhibition, held at the Crystal Palace.
Even as the turn of the century arrived, the widespread interest in human zoos didn’t seem
to be diminishing all that much. That’s right, horrifyingly some of these zoos were still
running even only a hundred years ago. France, in particular, continued to hold colonial
exhibitions, in Marseilles in 1906 and 1922, and in Paris in 1907 and 1931. These involved
displaying human beings in literal cages, and often in various degrading states of
undress. This was a pattern among a lot of human zoos. Particularly the women who were being
displayed and exploited became targets of this, being given a lack of privacy and respect,
and objectified while also being dehumanized. Some even had their bodies displayed or
dissected after death, without their consent. The 1900s saw a continuation of human zoos in
the States as well, thanks to Madison Grant, a socialite, amateur anthropologist, and believer
in eugenics – because, of course, he’d also be a eugenicist. At the time, Grant was the head of the
New York Zoological Society, and in 1906, thought it would be a good idea to display a Congolese
pygmy named Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo… alongside apes and other animals. The zoo’s director,
a man named William Hornaday, had Ota held in a cage with chimpanzees, which is already hugely
dangerous. Chimpanzees, especially those that have been bred in captivity, might seem all cuddly
and friendly, but even domesticated chimps can turn aggressive if they feel threatened, and
there are infamous examples of chimpanzees violently attacking and disfiguring humans.
Luckily, despite the horrendous circumstances, Ota survived without incident. Also
displayed alongside the 26-year-old man were an orangutan and a parrot. Appallingly, Ota
was described as a ‘missing link’ in evolution, that deliberately played into shocking beliefs
from the time, suggesting that people from Africa, like Ota, were evolutionarily closer to apes
than Europeans were. And we hope we don’t have to point out to anyone how disgustingly
racist those ideas were, as was this kind of treatment he received. Ota was subject to vigorous
mocking from the crowds that flocked to visit him; despite a few protests against the way he was
treated, over 40,000 people a day came to see him. There were, thankfully, those that rightly
recognized what was being done to Ota, and other victims of human zoos like him,
shouldn’t have been permissible. Controversy started to surround the practice, and while
there was painfully little in the way of audible objections, a number of Black clergymen in the
city specifically took offense to how Ota was being treated, being made to stay in a cage
with monkeys for public amusement. Reverend James H. Gordon, who was the superintendent
of Howard Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn said: “Our race, we think, is depressed
enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes… We think we are worthy of
being considered human beings, with souls.” Despite their protests, the Mayor of New York
at the time, George B. McClellan Jr, refused to meet with Reverend Gordon or any of the other
clergymen. That move delighted William Hornaday, who thought that the objections by the clergymen
would be a ‘most amusing passage’ in the overall history of the Bronx Zoo. As its director, he
was pretty apathetic towards how Ota Benga was being treated, unapologetically refusing to do
anything about it, since their intention was just to put on another ethnological exhibition.
He and his pal Madison Grant even published a racist tract wherein they asserted their belief
that society shouldn’t be dictated to by these Black clergymen who were calling for Ota to be
treated like a human being. Even after Hornaday eventually shut the exhibition down, when Ota
was found walking around the Bronx Zoo, he was accompanied by jeers and yelling from people.
Opposition and objection to human zoos was far from becoming a widely held sentiment, especially
as many still continued to operate. In 1904, the St Louis World’s Fair saw over 1,100 Filipino
people being put on display. The United States had just acquired a lot of new territory in the wake
of the Spanish-American War, and this included the Philippines, along with Guam and Puerto Rico. The
US-appointed civil governor of the Philippines, William H Taft, was the one who permitted
the 1904 exhibition of Filipino people, which was held in association with
the Summer Olympics of the same year, in order to show off America’s shiny new colony.
These Filipino people were forced into mock villages, which were referred to incorrectly as
Igorot Villages. The Igorot are a tribe from the southern Sierra Madre and Caraballo Mountains,
on the east side of Luzon. Even though they heralded from the Philippines, there was actually
a variety of different tribes and ethnic groups of Filipino people being displayed in this exhibit,
including the Moro and Visayan tribes, alongside the Igorot. Yet fair attendees either didn’t
care to differentiate, or hadn’t been taught to think otherwise, and simply lumped all Filipino
people in with the one tribe they were aware of. The exhibition itself was intended to be a display
of the power and expansion of the United States, by keeping groups of Filipino people in a
zoo in order to showcase their newly acquired territories. But in order to achieve this, it
depicted Filipino people as “racially inferior and incapable of national self-determination.”
These people were forced to perform their own tribal customs in full view of fair attendees,
which were unfamiliar to Americans – and therefore depicted as being ‘savage’ thanks
to how these Filipinos were portrayed by this human zoo and others like it. These people
were treated as the physical evidence of the United States' power, and as human beings second.
They were only provided with minimal rations of rice, hardtack – dense crackers made from flour,
water, and salt – and a few canned goods when they were first transported to St Louis. Many were
sick upon arrival as well, then made to live in temporary quarters while the mock village was
being made for them to inhabit when they became part of the zoo. As if that wasn’t bad enough,
the exhibition at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair inspired a copycat human zoo as well. A United
States military officer, Truman Hunt, sought to start his very own exhibit of “Head Hunting
Igorrotes” in Brooklyn. However, there were soon numerous reports of the Filipino ‘performers’
being made to stay in highly questionable living conditions. Eventually, the federal government
got involved, and shut down Hunt’s exhibition, discovering he’d been guilty of wage theft.
There were still plenty of human zoos to be found in Europe too. 1908 saw the Scottish National
Exhibition being opened by the grandson of Queen Victoria, Prince Arthur of Connaught. Here, one of
the attractions was said to be a Senegal Village; Senegal being a country on the Atlantic coast of
Africa. Here, the Senegalese residents – who were fluent in French – were made to perform their
way of life, all while living in huts that were designed for housing bees, not humans.
The following year, the same infrastructure behind the Scottish National Exhibition
was used to construct the Marine Gardens, a new entertainment complex at Portobello, on the
east coast of Edinburgh. Here, a group of men, women, and children from Somalia were shipped
over to Scotland to be a part of yet another similar exhibition, where they had to live in
thatch-roofed huts. Further south in Manchester, around 1925, the Belle Vue Zoo had a
display that was simply titled ‘Cannibals’; in an alarming and unconscionable act of
racial stereotyping, it features Black African people in traditional native dress,
depicting them in many of the same offensive, uncharitable and dehumanizing ways you’d expect.
And back over in Paris, the trend was far from dying out either. Around a hundred Kanak people,
indigenous to New Caledonia, which had become an overseas territory of France, were displayed in
1931, once again at the Jardin d’Acclimatation. At this point, the Western world had been
exploiting people from different countries and cultures in human zoos for decades, if not
centuries. By the time the 1930s rolled around, exhibits like these were starting to disappear,
thankfully, and some countries even discontinued ethnological expositions, including Germany. But,
sadly, this didn’t necessarily lead to things being better for the people who had been exploited
by human zoos. As you might have already clocked, we did say by the 1930s – and something else was
going on in Germany around that part of history. Many of the people who’d been taken from their
homeland and made to perform in these demeaning and dehumanizing exhibits effectively became
trapped wherever they ended up. Some managed to make lives for themselves after they stopped
working at the zoos, and even started families. And those who had been brought to Germany
almost had no choice but to settle there, despite having little to no rights.
They couldn’t participate in the same life that typical German citizens enjoyed.
Then, as tides began to turn for the worse and the Nazi Party began to rise in power, these
former victims of human zoos were faced with harsh discrimination. A lot of the time, the only thing
keeping these people out of Nazi concentration camps was simply because the purity-obsessed
Hitler didn’t view these foreign actors as a real threat. They were even forbidden from joining
up in support of the Nazis, with adults of any background other than German being rejected
from the army, and even children with foreign parents being barred from the Hitler Youth. This
meant that a lot of these people were forced into munitions factories to support the war effort
when the Second World War broke out, or worse, others were sent to foreign labour camps.
Even post-war, it seemed that the world wasn’t entirely past the obsession with
human zoos. Far fewer of them popped up, and they mercifully weren’t as in vogue as they’d
been in Europe a century before in the 1850s, but there were still some that didn’t quite catch
on as to how vile and racist the practice was. In 1940, the Portuguese World Exhibition displayed
members of a native tribe from the Bissagos Islands. Nearly a full two decades later, the
Brussels World’s Fair was still at it, putting a Congolese village on display to the public. That
was in 1958! In the grand scheme of things, that’s not that long ago from today. This human zoo was
huge, too; on display were around 600 Congolese people, a total of 103 families of men, women
and children. A baby from one of these families, named Juste Bonaventure Langa, died during
the exhibition. He was only eight months old. In the modern day, you’d think it’d be more widely
accepted just how horrible this practice was. Yet, even within the last twenty years, people have
still tried to get away with holding exhibits that resemble human zoos. Germany’s Augsburg Zoo hosted
an ‘African village’ in 2005. The organizers of this event defended it as being a showcase
of African cultural performances and crafts, and was in no way racist since it didn’t involve
exhibiting African people in a debasing way as had been done in the human zoos past. However,
the event still received an undue amount of backlash. The issue was that presenting
African culture in the context of a zoo contributed to stereotyping, which could
encourage potential racial discrimination. Even to this day, many indigenous people
who choose to live in isolation have been met with the same pervasive problems that
human zoos created. Tourism has led to a number of indigenous peoples having their ways
of life intruded upon, especially those who are known as ‘uncontacted peoples,’ indigenous
groups that survive in voluntary isolation, and do not maintain contact with the outside
world. Yet, groups such as the Sentinelese, indigenous to North Sentinel Island in the Bay
of Bengal, are threatened by interference from the world that classifies them as a vulnerable
group, even though they’d much rather live without cameras being poked into their business.
Now check out “This Last 'Untouched' Tribe Is Extremely Violent - North Sentinel
Island.” Or watch this video instead!
