There are always at least two 'histories' of encounter or contact, as each party would tell the story differently, but where and when is it really the 'first contact' and for whom? This book deploys an analytical framework developed from Semiotics to have both sides of the story address each other. It is ethnography of dialogue, emerging from textual representation by outsiders and its relationship to visual response and presentations by the Andaman Islanders that this book aims to present as the critical 'ethnography of history.' The section on Visuality looks at how the 'Other' is incorporated into an organized knowledge-system, including Ongee myths and songs about outsiders and the early photographs of tribal people by British settlers and ethnographers. The section on Materiality concerns the investment in things made, to influence natural processes or to distinguish the human body, and discusses how they are transacted between cultures that come into contact. The concluding section on history addresses encounters and developments in which the experiences of both tribal and settler are implicated more thoroughly than in the transaction of objects. Thus juxtaposing alternative perspectives on change indicates areas of experience unaccounted for in the dominant discourse and shows the provisionality of images.

This book is an ethnographic account of colonialism in the Andaman Islands, Bay of Bengal, India. It examines the links between colonialism and development under British and Indian administrations, and analyses how the different indigenous groups (the Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa and the Sentinelese) have responded differently and been affected in different ways by colonization and the everyday dynamics of colonial administrative practices. It emphasizes particularly the dynamics of power and gender. The books also looks at the present situation of the Jarawa who, until recently, were known as a people that avoided contact with the sorrounding society. The book concludes with a section on current advocacy initiatives being spearheaded by civil society organizations and scholars aimed at securing the Jarawas' right to territory and to choose for themselves which future they want. The book includes an appendix containing the 2003 'Draft Policy on the Jarawas' (by Shri K.B. Saxena, member of the Expert Committee on the Jarawas) as well as an alternative Jarawa policy framework drafted by a group of independent experts and observers, of which the author is a member.