The pronoun problem

Question

The following passage is from the website as follows:

http://www.epubbud.com/read.php?g=H8AVF5J5&tocp=7

At least this is true of the Jarawa tribe on Great Andaman. The North Sentinelese, on the nearby island of North Sentinel, have not volunteered to give blood – at least not their own. As the only hunter-gatherers who still resist ‘contact’, these fine-looking people – strong, slim, fit and stark naked except for a small plant-fibre belt round the waist – usually greet visitors with showers of arrows. Good luck to them.

In this paragraph I am not sure what the undrelined ‘them’ stand for? It seems to represent ‘visitors’ in a way, but I cannot rule out the possibility of ‘them’ being ‘the North Sentinelese.’ Can you tell me what it is and why it is so?

GPY · Accepted Answer

I belive that "them" refers to the North Sentinelese. "Good luck to them" is most probably a way of showing the author's good wishes towards these people. There is a chance, I suppose, that it could be ironic, meaning "they have no chance of surviving in their present state" or something like that. The overall tone of the text as a whole may give a further clue about which is most likely.

Fivejedjon · Answer

If you were not happy with the responses you received in another forum, Stenka, you could have asked follow-up questions there, rather than cause GPY to respond to a question that has already been answered elsewhere.

Deepuji · Answer

Why should you be so worried,fivejedjon over his asking?
This forum does not ban this thing.So please stop moral policing.I have found you to be demeaning others way too often.

Mister Micawber · Answer

deepujiWhy should you be so worried,fivejedjon over his asking?This forum does not ban this thing.So please stop moral policing.I have found you to be demeaning others way too often.

This is the second time I have found you being rude to our volunteer staff, deepuji. The third time, you will be banned from further participation here.

Deepuji · Answer

First of all respecting you I say sorry.
Second thing is This is the first time not second time.
Third thing is as you have a right to defend your volunteer staff I, too defend that person as he had not violated any rules.
I didn't know that you all would react to it with the force of a flash flood without going into the merits of the case.

But I assure I won't respond to this particular volunteer at all.

Mister Micawber · Answer

deepuji This is the first time not second time.

I fully understand the 'merits of the case', if you will, and this remains your final warning. This is a private website, and we are strictly against any aggressive controversy or confrontation outside the designated forums (see our main menu). In particular, it is not at all your right to interject your moral outrage into a thread that is not even your own.

It is internet courtesy that a person not double-post on a single website or multiple sites once a reasonable answer has been provided to his question. Repeat offenders have been and will be banned from participation here.

Stenka25 · Answer

I am sorry about causing all of you this trouble.
But let me have my explanation.

Usually I have put my post on this forum and what you called ‘another forum.’
But I do this, not because I am not happy with any forum, but because I want to have more different ideas about my questions.

I have had innumerable helps from your forum, and I cannot thank enough this forum for those helps.
But I’ve also had almost the same amount of help from ‘another forum’ and a few times had precious ideas I couldn’t get from this forum. Actually two forums are complementary to me and both are indispensible to me.

Can’t you give me a chance to have an many ideas from English natives as possible?

And I have a question to ‘Mister Micawber.’ (Again sorry to cause you this trouble. You are a few of those who have given me incalculable helps.)

According to your post, I made a breach of an understood internet courtesy.
But I’ve done this double-posting without any bad intention. And I have never compared two forums and neve tried to put one forum under the other. I do admire two forums and I can hardly thank these two forums enough for all helps. I’m just posting on these two forums to get as many helps and ideas as possible.

Do you still think my double posting is discourtesy to this forum?

Expecting your reconsideration, stenka25
(If you and englishforum thinks it is, I know I have no choice but to follow your opinion.)

Stenka25 · Answer

Thanks a lot, GPY.

GPY · Answer

Stenka25Do you still think my double posting is discourtesy to this forum?

My opinion is that if you do this, please include a link to the discussion in the other forum so that people don't waste their time writing duplicate answers.

Mister Micawber · Answer

GPYMy opinion is that if you do this, please include a link to the discussion in the other forum so that people don't waste their time writing duplicate answers.

That is a good idea.

It is unrealistic to think that members should or could be loyal to just one forum website, Stenka. It is also a shame that knowledgeable advisors who volunteer their time too often find that time wasted—not because the learner has gained a variety of opinions, but because he has gleaned the same information merely phrased differently at different sites. In my 10 years here, I have many times discovered the same question posted not just on two but on multiple sites, good and bad and all the way down to the abyss of About.com. That is not acceptable; it is a thoughtless act...which usually produces no more than confusion.

If your 'other site' is a reputable one, then I am probably a lapsed member there also; when these sites began operation, I spread myself rather thin. Now I have settled into a place where I am comfortable in the overall accuracy, appropriateness, thoroughness, and good will with which responses are offered, and I suggest that that would be a wise course for learners as well. In the real world, you choose a school that you respect, you listen to a teacher that you like; hopping from school to school or from classroom to classroom is counterproductive.

The pronoun problem

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