INTERVIEW

Your book We Will Be Jaguars was released last year; what was your reason or motivation for writing this book? 
My father gave me the motivation to write the book. I have been living between two worlds, that of our Waorani Indigenous culture in the forest, and the outside world of the city. I know the vital importance of the forest for Indigenous peoples: it is our home, the source of life. And yet people come here and think one of two things: “poor Indians, they need to be saved,” or “we can get very rich if we get this oil or these trees to the cities.” That is their mentality because they see the forest as a thing to be used to make money. They don’t understand who we are, how we relate to the natural world, how we live. People come here to the Amazon with their religion, with their oil projects, and they come to colonize, often thinking that they will be “saving those poor Indians.” But the very things they do to “save us” are the things that most harm us: the repression of our spirituality, of our language, our culture, and the destruction of our territory, our home. So, my father told me that I needed to tell my story to as many people as possible, to write a book together with my partner, Mitch Anderson, to help people understand who we are and how we live so they won’t keep trying to destroy us. To show them how we bring together our spirituality, our relationship to the natural world, our collective social practices, our sense of joy in life. My father told me that this is of vital importance, to write a book and share this with the world. 


What are the three key messages you would like the readers of your book to pass on to others? 
My first key message is this: don’t come here to the Amazon thinking we need to be saved. Try to understand our way of life, and to respect us. Second, it is essential to express that we Waorani have an oral storytelling culture. My father told me that a story dies when people stop telling it. Part of our effort with this book is to respect and share a bit of our oral storytelling tradition, the stories of who we are and why we are fighting to protect the Amazon rainforest and defend our territory, in the form of writing. A third key message for me is to share how memory and truth-telling are forms of healing. Remembering my childhood and adolescence and writing this book have been deeply healing for me. I would like to inspire readers, particularly women, to raise their voices, to refuse to be silenced, to gather courage and strength to remember and share their stories, and to begin to heal from past and even generational traumas. And the outside world should try to understand something of our world and thus respect our territories and our lives. 


In 2014 you co-founded the Ceibo Alliance with your husband Mitch Anderson. What was the inspiration behind this?
A major inspiration came from traveling to the Indigenous territories in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon and seeing firsthand the devastating impacts of oil development and colonization. I also saw how many organizations had been corrupted, the leaders only listening to the government’s deceit and manipulation and thus deceiving their own people. My inspiration was to found both an alliance of the four different Indigenous peoples of the region so that we can dream together and a parallel, sister organization of international activists, lawyers, cartographers, forestry engineers, photographers and others. Our inspiration was to create our own visions beyond the projects that always come from outside our communities. By founding two separate but linked organizations we have been able to maintain and build Indigenous autonomy while working together with people from all over the world who come to follow our lead and help us defend the Amazon and Indigenous cultures. We have been working for over ten years now, winning major political and legal victories for our peoples and territories and looking and dreaming into the future, empowering our youth, passing on and keeping alive the wisdom of our ancestors and elder generations to protect our identities, territories, cultures, languages, forms of self-governance and autonomy. We want to continue being who we are as peoples: Waorani, Cofan, Siona, Siekopai. 


What is your vision for the future of the collective organizing you all have been building?
Over the last ten years we’ve stopped destructive oil, logging and mining developments, protected hundreds of thousands of pristine forestlands, strengthened our Indigenous communities, and bolstered our Indigenous languages and education in our territories. And yet the threats continue, the government, loggers, miners, and oil companies keep coming back either to “save” us or to destroy us; they keep lying and cheating to get around the law to contaminate and ruin our home. 

Our vision for the future is to continue to accompany our peoples and communities, to fight against all attempts to poison our lands, forests and waters, and to support and strengthen the young people. We will keep building our community leadership schools, autonomous education, so that coming generations have the knowledge to value, protect and take care of our territory, to know when to say: enough! We want to continue being who we are, to defend our territory and autonomy. We want to cultivate our own visions for our territories, not be subjected to the colonizing visions imposed from afar. We have our own visions, our own roots, values, and knowledge. 

And our vision for the Ceibo Alliance and Amazon Frontlines is embedded in our vision for the Amazon rainforest and for the world: to stop the destruction and protect the rainforest, one of the largest, most biodiverse and important forests left in the world, and in so doing help to stop the devastating global impacts of climate change. We will continue to build the political and cultural power of the Indigenous communities in the forest to confront the threats of oil and mining destruction. And while we defend our lands and forests from the ongoing assault, we will also be building thriving communities. Our resistance is for survival, yes, but it is also for the right to live beautiful, full, joyful lives in our territories, according to our spiritual and cultural traditions. We will not only stop the destruction of our homes, but we will continue to create vibrant, healthy, and happy families and communities. 


You are the first female president of the Waorani of Pastaza, and the only Indigenous woman ever to be named to the Time 100 most influential people list; this is both a great honor and huge responsibility. What inspires you to inspire others?
First, I would like to express my gratitude to my elders and to my people. They have been the path of all my learning and wisdom. They have made it possible for me to bring communities together and have the strength to trust my vision, to face the threats to our territories. Something that greatly inspires me is to help strengthen and encourage other women, help women find the bravery in themselves to become leaders, to protect our territories and communities, our identities and languages. 


What legacy do you hope to leave behind?
The legacy I hope to leave behind is to help women all over the world raise their voices. To show that women can govern, that we are capable and have the same strength and rights to govern in our territories. I want women to feel unafraid, to feel strengthened to continue in our struggles. 

Women’s participation is essential to the greatest possible legacy of all our struggles, to protect life itself, to protect future generations by maintaining healthy, clean territories, and clean water. Indigenous voices and values are transforming the world. Our voices must be heard to change the path of environmental and climate destruction now so doggedly pursued by the leaders of industrial societies. Mother Earth is weeping, and she is angry. We hear her cries. You should listen too. 


Is there an experience you have not had yet in life that you would love to have?
I would like to travel to other, distant Indigenous territories in North America, Asia and Africa where people have faced threats and challenges similar to those we face and share stories and learn from their wisdom. I would also like to know what it is like to live in my territory, in my home, without facing the constant threat of its devastation. 


What does happiness mean to you? 
For me happiness is being healthy and being surrounded by a healthy forest, land and water that have not been contaminated. Happiness is speaking my native language, Wao Tededo, having our own songs, our connection to the natural world, and our own spirituality. That is daily happiness. To feel the earth, to feel pure water, to feel the connection with nature and animals. To learn and gain knowledge. To speak my own language. To sing. To be happy with my family. That is my happiness. 

Two excerpts from We Will Be Jaguars, as chosen personally by Nemonte Nenquimo 

Excerpt 1:

Over the last few years, my people had recognized my leadership of
the Ceibo Alliance, and they had honored me. I had been elected the first woman leader of all the villages along the headwaters of the Ewongono River; villages that were now threatened by the oil auction.
“When I was only a little girl, I left the forest because I thought that
the white people were better than us, that they knew more than us. I liked how round their heads were. I liked the color of their skin. I hammered out my own teeth because I wanted the white people’s teeth.”
Tense laughter stirred across the longhouse. Tementa was sitting in
the second row. He winced at the memory.
“I lived for many years in the cowori world. I tried to imitate them, become like them, please them. I was wrong! I was confused! The cowori are not better than us. They are afraid of us. We remind them of what they have forgotten. They don’t hear the voices of their ancestors anymore. They don’t plant their own food. They give birth in hospitals. They don’t live in communities. They try to conquer us, not because they are better but because, deep down, they are afraid.”
Mom was standing in the shadows, swaying my sleeping daughter in a shawl upon her chest. Dad sat quietly in the beating heart of the assembly, a peach palm spear resting on his shoulder.
“The auction is about more than oil. It is about ending our way of life.
To get to the oil beneath our forests, they must first break us apart. That
is the only way. They need to tear the community, rip up our connection
to the forest, turn us into beggars. Make us believe that we need their money, their pills, and their things in order to survive.”

Excerpt 2:

I turned my gaze to the judges and realized that if they were to see
us, to truly see us, then we must also see them. Not as enemies, not as heartless judges, not as caricatures of conquest but rather as people, like us, capable of love and hate, of joy and grief. As souls that were here on this earth in these bodies for just a momentary flash. Maybe if we showed them that we were capable of seeing them, then they would see us, hear us, learn from us? That’s what my dream was telling me. Maybe Michi had been right about healing? Maybe violence is born in the chasms between us, within us? Maybe the conquest, at its root, has always been about that chasm, a pain so lonely, so unbearable, so spiritually numbing that violence becomes the only path, the narrow trail to being human, to feeling something, anything.

Purchase We Will Be Jaguars here

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