We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

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, reprinted with permission.

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