Nenquimo’s husband, Mitch “Michi” Anderson, is the co-author of We Will Be Jaguars. The memoir’s Introduction identifies his role as helping Nenquimo render her oral storytelling into written form for readers outside her community. Their partnership runs alongside the book’s argument that effective resistance to extractivism requires cross-cultural coordination, though Nenquimo keeps the Waorani perspective at the narrative’s center. An American activist and co-founder of Amazon Frontlines, he assembled the legal team and built rainwater harvesting systems that supported the Ceibo Alliance’s territorial defense. 

Anderson is presented as an example of a cowori collaborator who supports rather than directs. Nenquimo states that “He didn't fear what he didn't understand. He wasn't afraid to grunt like a peccary. He didn't want to change my people. He danced to be accepted by them” (334). The description explicitly contrasts him with other white “savior” figures such as Rachel and Steve Saint who attempt to impose their own cultural values on the Waorani.

An American evangelical missionary, Rachel Saint is the primary embodiment of cultural colonialism in the memoir. After her brother’s death at the hands of Waorani warriors, she dedicated her life to converting the tribe to Christianity and Western cultural standards. Nenquimo frames this mission as an insidious form of conquest. Saint’s material gifts—clothes, sugar, medicine—function as tools of control, creating dependency while she shames the Waorani for their spiritual beliefs and traditions. Nenquimo’s father describes her influence as being “like when a boa mesmerizes a deer by flicking its tongue” (25). The image portrays the missionary’s manipulation of the Wairani people as a form of mesmeric seduction.

Acting as gatekeeper to the outside world, Saint discourages traditional practices and instills fear of the Christian devil. Her authority culminates in brokering a deal with the Maxus oil company. Nenquimo portrays this event as the ultimate betrayal that opened Waorani territory to environmental destruction, stating “I knew how this all had come to be. It was, in large part, Rachel Saint's doing” (221). Saint illustrates a form of colonial conquest that operates through cultural shame rather than overt violence. Although she died from cancer in November 1994, the memoir illustrates how her influence continued to impact the Waorani, leaving a legacy of division that Nenquimo’s generation must confront.

Tiri is Nenquimo’s father, a respected Waorani hunter. Nenquimo observes that “Dad was born before any of that food came to the forest. Before there were any churches or missionaries. Before clothes, before blankets. When everyone had been the uncontacted” (58). This description underscores how he serves as her primary link to ancestral tradition and the historical memory of his people. He teaches his children about the forest’s spirits. He also recounts his own experiences with first contact and the destructiveness of oil companies. His wisdom is rooted in the forest, and he dismisses the missionaries’ world as incompatible with Waorani life.

Nenquimo features Tiri to establish the moral and spiritual grounding for her own activism. His declaration that oil “is the blood of our ancestors” (110) portrays resource extraction as a sacred desecration. While others are swayed by missionary gifts or oil money, Tiri remains committed to the forest as the source of Waorani identity. His accounts of working near Texaco oil operations, where machinery frightened away game animals, and the company’s presence provoked conflict with uncontacted neighboring clans, give Nenquimo’s territorial arguments a lived generational context.

Manuela, Nenquimo’s mother, is a medicine woman of biracial Kichwa-Záparo heritage whose position as a partial outsider within the Waorani community shapes her role in the memoir. Nenquimo shows her developing a harsh, pragmatic demeanor, demonstrated in her increasing desire for money. She is suspicious of the cowori yet drawn to the material security they offer. At the same time, she steeps her daughter in Waorani tradition, teaching her to make chicha and instructing her to have a natural labor in the birthing hammock. Manuela also severely punishes Nenquimo for imitating white culture, rubbing chili peppers in her eyes when she steals a lipstick, and withdrawing her affection when her daughter goes to missionary school. The memoir frames these punishments as products of intolerable colonial pressure.

Nenquimo’s fraught relationship with Manuela runs as an emotional thread through the memoir, and the author describes a shift beginning only when she becomes a mother herself. Then, Nenquimo realizes that Manuela “had birthed and raised thirteen children. She had healed us and fed us and then watched, helplessly, as the white man's world took us away. Deep down, she didn't really care about money. Her words masked her fear” (298-99). Ultimately, Nenquimo feels a deep respect for her mother’s strength and resilience when faced with the likely erasure of their culture. Manuela shows how the pressures of colonialism can fracture intimate family bonds alongside broader community ties, grounding the book’s political argument in domestic consequence.

Opi is Nenquimo’s older brother, whom she features to illustrate the specific damage the cowori world inflicts on young Waorani men cut off from traditional roles. Nenquimo describes him leaving for a university in Quito, struggling with alcohol addiction, and returning displaced. Like Nenquimo, he finds purpose through activism, joining the Ceibo Alliance’s organizing work, adopting the self-description “Waorani Intellectual Revolutionary” (329). Focusing on the legal aspects of their case, he educates community members about their legal rights. Nenquimo also recounts Opi explaining how an oil company supplied weapons to a rival Waorani clan, provoking the massacre of the uncontacted Taromenane people. This account reinforces the memoir’s theme of Extractivism as Cultural Erasure, illustrating how the oil industry fuels conflict between the Indigenous people of the Amazon.