A new breed of adventurer is chasing internet fame by targeting uncontacted peoples. Critics say they are risking the wellbeing of these remote communities – and their own lives
He set out from the beach around midnight, packing his camera, a coconut and a can of Diet Coke. Mykhailo Polyakov – then 24 and a native of Scottsdale, Arizona – pointed his inflatable dinghy out towards the open water, keeping his speed slow in the hope of avoiding detection.
After hours of motoring across the Bay of Bengal, his destination came into view: a low-lying island, narrowly separating sea and sky. With the sun now high above him, Polyakov cut the engine and set his GoPro to record. “So, the goal,” he said, squinting towards the blinding-white beach. “Introduce this Palaeolithic tribe to modernity … Let’s land on this bitch.”
Polyakov was nearing North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman archipelago governed by India. Venturing within 5km (3 miles) is strictly prohibited, let alone setting foot on shore, and authorities routinely patrol the surrounding waters. But Polyakov saw himself as on a mission: to see – and, more importantly, film – the Indigenous people who live there.
The Sentinelese are perhaps the most isolated people in the world. They are hunter-gatherers, and believed to number about 100. Beyond that, little is known about them, not even what language they speak. That is how they want it. The tribe opt to live in isolation from the outside world and have fiercely resisted attempts at contact. In 2018, an American missionary was fatally struck by arrows on his third attempt to land on the beach. Earlier, in 2006, two Indian fishers were killed after their boat accidentally washed up on shore.
Polyakov, who turns 26 this year and studied finance, believed the risks to be overstated – or at least secondary to his desire to take the first shots in crystalline 4K resolution. “I wouldn’t condone illegal activities but, in my case, the draw to go there was very powerful,” he says, a year after his illicit trip. “You see videos of the Sentinelese and it’s all grainy footage from the 90s … It was a big drive for me to get them on camera.”
He took a mirror and a whistle, “to coax them out”, and some goodwill tokens, in the event that he succeeded: the Diet Coke as a “symbol of modernity” and a coconut “because we know they like coconuts”. It wasn’t just clickbait, Polyakov adds, smirking: “It would be bad form not to bring gifts to people you’re visiting.”
The human rights organisation Survival International estimates there are 196 Indigenous communities living like the Sentinelese, in voluntary isolation. Most are in South America, in the Amazon rainforest and the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay and Bolivia, with a few more across Indonesia, West Papua and elsewhere in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Though fundamentally diverse, these communities have all chosen to reject outsiders and the industrialised world, and live self-sufficiently. They are known to policymakers and advocates as “uncontacted peoples”.
Increasingly, however, outsiders are trying to contact them – and make content from them. Survival and other organisations working to protect isolated peoples report they are increasingly being targeted by influencers chasing exclusive footage of “first contact” – and with it internet fame. For now, their numbers are believed to be few, with Polyakov a rare confirmed case, but advocates believe the threat to be real, growing and warranting action. Influencers were discussed at an international summit held in Jakarta in January, and again at a United Nations meeting in Brazil in June.
GTI PIACI, an alliance of 21 organisations working to protect uncontacted Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and Gran Chaco, has put the word out across their network, says secretary Daniel Aristizábal from Bogotá, Colombia. “It’s becoming a trend, and we have to adapt. These people have money.”
The UK-based Survival goes further, monitoring social media for influencers who might be motivated to make contact. “It’s all so unnecessary,” says Sophie Grig, head of advocacy and research, over Zoom from her home in Cambridge. She has been with Survival for 30 years, until recently focused on the Asia-Pacific, and is impatient with this “emerging threat” of influencers. The charity tracks a dozen or so accounts across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram with posts about uncontacted peoples. Many of those behind these accounts – overwhelmingly white men – are in the vicinity in South America or Asia and making content about “contacted” Indigenous communities. Their posts may also showcase weapons, snakes and “plant medicine” such as ayahuasca. “It’s very ‘look at me, I’m so macho’,” Grig says with disdain.
Though the likelihood of them ever reaching uncontacted peoples may be slim, the potential danger is great: isolated populations have historically been decimated by the introduction of unfamiliar diseases such as measles, to which they have not developed immunity. “Contact with these peoples can lead to their extinction in days,” says Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader from the Javari valley in the Brazilian Amazon.
In 1987, Brazil’s government ended its policy of “forced contact missions” to uncontacted Amazonian tribes due to the devastating epidemics that persisted despite safeguards. For an influencer to argue against the risk and speak on behalf of uncontacted peoples is “an irresponsible, even criminal attitude”, Marubo says.
Such western “adventurer types” have long been drawn to places like the Amazon, Grig says, but influencers pose an additional risk with their global reach: those on Survival’s watchlist have a combined audience of more than 40 million followers. Even if they are not actively trying to find uncontacted peoples, by posting about them, Grig says they often affirm damaging stereotypes, spread dangerous misinformation and potentially influence others to try.
In interviews, Polyakov has dismissed Survival’s criticism that he endangered the Sentinelese, arguing that he was vaccinated and the risk of transmission low. He also claims trespassers there are more common than reported, and has even questioned whether any truly “uncontacted” people exist. This, Grig says, is self-serving semantics: while “voluntary isolation” may better reflect their position, there is no question they want to be left alone. Often, this is in response to past violence or traumatic experiences. “If you are uncontacted in 2026, that’s because you have made an active decision,” Grig says. “People like the Sentinelese have made it clear: we do not want people in our territory.”
