by ERIN BLONDEAU
Waorani leader and activist Nemonte Nenquimo’s book ‘We Will Be Jaguars’ is a journey through her life and the web that connects the Amazon to the fate of the world.
“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.”
With these words from the 2024 book “We Will Be Jaguars,” Waorani leader, activist and mother, Nemonte Nenquimo shows storytelling to be the beating heart of Indigenous resistance in the Amazon. Story is the power that fuels social movements and brings forth radical change. When languages, myth and ancestral stories are interrupted, so too is the knowledge that keeps us connected. For the Waorani peoples of the Amazon, spiritualism and stories are essential in the struggle against colonialism.
With the help of Nenquimo’s husband, Mitch Anderson, “We Will Be Jaguars” takes the reader on an expedition through the eras of her life to help us understand the web that connects the Amazon rainforest to the fate of the world — especially as we face a global climate emergency and biodiversity collapse. Transforming their tactics from a warrior tradition of killing outsiders to a multi-pronged approach, the Indigenous resistance movements described in Nenquimo’s book utilize methods of cultural revitalization, storytelling and strengthening autonomy through direct action.
Violent colonialism in the Amazon
As a young girl in the late 1980s and ‘90s, Nenquimo lived in the Ecuadorian village of Toñampare alongside giant anacondas, pet grasshopper-munching monkeys and friendly squawking parrots. At just six-years-old, she understood the ominous danger that airplanes carried, packed with traveling missionaries bringing gifts, curiosities and death. She knew they came from the land of the white people, or cowori as the Waorani call it. And yet, even through the violent colonization of Nenquimo’s village, she fostered a deep, spiritual and material relationship with the land. Her culture taught her everything she needed to know about resistance and the fight that was to come.
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