India, March 23 -- T
he Weda Bay Project mine in Maluku, Indonesia, is the largest nickel mine in the world by production volume. It is one of 19 located in the Halmahera rainforests, across land that overlaps with the territory of the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa people.
This tribe numbered about 3,500 in the mid-1990s. About 3,000 of these were contacted, "mainstreamed" and "settled" by missionaries and the government.
The 500 that remained in the forest fled deeper into what is now the Aketajawe Lolobata national park.
Like the Sentinelese, they have express- ed their disinterest in being contacted by shooting arrows at those who try to enter their territory.
"We know a lot about the Hongana Manyawa's way of life, because we can spea...