She didn’t know what the United States was. She didn’t know where it was, she called it “the land of Rachel” after the missionary in her village. She didn’t know what God was. She only knew if she went to church, she may get a pretty dress. And she wanted one.

More important than an activist tome, more important than a cry for the Amazon Rainforest and acknowledgement of indigenous peoples’ right to their own land, more important than a scathing exposé on colonialist pillage, and predatory preachers, this book is the story of a woman growing up, a woman coming of age, a woman allowing us into her personal story and her unique worldview in her own voice. This book is a treasure primarily because of that. Because we finally get to hear the story from the point of view of a Waorani woman as she experienced it.

Born in 1985, the narrative begins in the Pastaza region of the Ecuadorian Amazon when she is a girl. Nemonte does not interject her current worldview, one where she speaks and writes Spanish, travels the world as a spokeswoman for her peoples, her land and ancestors, onto it. She allows that girl to tell her story with what she knew and didn’t know then. We have a window into her life with all its beauty and pain, no outside projections, no White gaze, no European worldview pasted over. It is an authentic telling that takes your breath away. From the point of view of a White person and culpability, it is not an easy read.

“For us, stories are living beings. They breathe life into our homes, into our forests. They pulse in our blood, in our dreams. They stalk us like jaguars, clack like peccary, sail like macaws, run like fish. They are powerful beings. Like rainbows, they bring peace. Like lightning, they bring war. And they are always changing. That’s how we know that they are alive. A story dies when no one tells it”(Introduction).

Her people are the Waorani living in the rainforest of what is now Ecuador. They have been referred to as Auca, meaning savages, for many years, when she begins her story. They are called Auca by their local indigenous neighbors because many of the Waorani tribes are still uncontacted and still authentically engaged with the wild forest. The White people who call them Auca are both missionaries attempting to baptize them into their brand of Christianity and the oil companies who want their oil.

The book opens with a crisis that reveals rifts already present in the village. Nemonte’s brother falls ill. While her mother goes to the forest to gather ancestral remedies from plants and trees, she also goes to church and prays to the missionary’s God. Nemonte’s father does not go to church, but the mother won’t leave a stone unturned to save her son. In this crisis, Nemonte becomes more exposed to the missionaries and their way of life. She finally receives the pretty things that she’s been longing for when her mother sends her to Sunday school.

Before this, she never had a dress like the other girls in the village who went to church  and were given them as reward. Now she has one. Thus begins her indoctrination. She learns to hate herself. She begins to believe that White is beautiful and brown, the color of her skin, is not. She begins to resent her own teeth with large gaps in them, not straight like the White girls. She begins to dislike the way her face looks—wide and wild— when she sees its reflection in the water.

At the same time, her life continues as a Waorani in close communication and embeddedness with the wild forests.

“When we die, we become jaguars,” her father tells her.

“We will live in the forest, tracking peccary and wooly monkeys. But we are not like any old jaguar. We are spirit jaguars. The souls of our ancestors roam in these woods. They remember everything. They carry sadness, anger, revenge, songs, healing powers. Only some of us can speak with them. The meneras and the meñemempos. The mother jaguars and the father jaguars”(23).

These are the shamans of her people. Nemonte is identified as one of these people.

She is also told by the missionaries that the devil is small and black. It makes her fear her grandfather who is small and black.

Also living in the area, only further out, were other tribes, the Taromenane and The Tagëiri. These are the uncontacted. They had stayed away from the White people. They are also known for killing with their spears to protect their land. The Waorani are related to these people, and feel a kinship and loyalty to them.

The oil companies want their land.

Eventually, Nemonte is fully taken in and away from her village by the missionaries to the city where she is indoctrinated further into White world with sexual abuse and rape. After years of this she is raging and lost, separated from her people and living in the city. She finds her brother and they decide to return to their people and try to find a way to change the trajectory.

“I couldn’t go home anymore. It was too late for that. I had left the forest many years ago because I believed in the white people. I had trusted them, thought they were better than us. Their skin, their teeth, their clothes, their planes, their promises. But now I knew they had no limits, that they wanted everything. They wanted to save our souls and change our stories and steal our lands. Those distant oil wells rumbling in the depths of the village night—those wells were creeping closer and closer. I still didn’t know what to do about it”(198).

Now she can speak, read, and write Spanish. Now she is educated in the White people ways. Now she can be a bridge. And what a bridge she will become.

Nemonte and fellow activists heading to court. photo Credit: Amazon Frontlines

With Mitch Anderson, an American man that becomes her partner in work and life, Nemonte installed rainwater catchment systems to provide clean and safe water to the indigenous people of the area.

In 2019, she led a lawsuit of indigenous peoples against the Ecuadorian government who were in the process of selling off their land to oil companies. The victory of that case secured half a million acres of Waorani ancestral land for the Waorani and associated tribes, including the uncontacted, and saved it from drilling.

On a visit home to her parents when she is beginning her activist work, Nemonte and her brother Opi try to explain the work they are engaged in:

“Dad, you remember when Rachel Saint sent you to work with the oil companies because the uncontacted were spearing their workers?”

“Yes. I had never seen a chainsaw before,” Dad laughed.

“And you didn’t know anything about the law then,” Opi said. “You didn’t know that we have rights!”

Dad leaned into the fire, warming his hands. Something about the way the flames licked at his palms made me realize suddenly that my father, that our peoples, knew only what we knew. We knew about spirits and dreams, about fire and water, about plants and animals. We knew how to live and die in the forest. We didn’t know about the rest, about the strange inner workings of the white man’s world or how threats could brew in distant cities, invisible—until suddenly they were upon us and it was too late.

“What are rights?” Dad asked”(298).

Nemonte describes the court battle in her book. How when the judges tried to dismiss the case, the women began to sing and the men began to dance. And they wouldn’t stop.

Our ancestors never forgave.
They always walked together,
Always ready to die.
We act like we respect you, but we don’t.
We are more violent than you know.
Our ancestors’ struggle continues to this day.
Our ancestors fought to defend our lands.

“I kept my eyes on the lead judge until she finally surrendered. Until she finally met my gaze: a momentary stare, a squint, an exhale, a nod. She recognized what was happening. She knew now that this was not going to be an ordinary court case, that she could not dispatch us, that the papers in the manilla envelope before her held more than words. Beneath the words were the footprints of our ancestors, songs that we sang to replace the bloodshed of our spears, dreams that we dreamed to protect the land that gave us life.

We women refused to stop singing. Our men refused to stop the war dance. The court was adjourned. The hearing was suspended because of song. The government lawyers were unnerved. They saw our songs as a set back in the proceedings. We had just won a spiritual victory over a system that had always kept us voiceless”(339).

Nemonte Nenquimo co-founded the Ceibo Alliance and Amazon Frontlines which protect the forest and return the guardianship of the forest back to the indigenous peoples. She is the 2020 winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

I recommend that you immerse yourself in Nemonte’s worldview and story. It is so worth it. And my retelling it will not accomplish what she does in this important book. You must hear her words, feel her reality, let it embrace you and hold you and take you into her world. The accomplishment and gift of the book is without measure.

Nemonte Nenquimo is a Nasty Woman Activist.

© Theresa C. Dintino 2025

Nenquimo, Nemonte. We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. Abrams Press, New York 2024