We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People (2024) is a memoir by Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo and American activist Mitch Anderson. The book chronicles Nenquimo’s life from her childhood in an isolated village in the Ecuadorian Amazon to her emergence as a leading international activist fighting to protect her people’s ancestral land. Nenquimo recounts her early encounters with Christian missionaries, her traumatic experiences after leaving the forest, and her eventual journey to organize Indigenous communities in a legal battle against the Ecuadorian government and big oil companies. The memoir explores themes of Extractivism as Cultural Erasure, The Deceptive Lure of Civilization, and Storytelling as Cultural Survival.

Nenquimo is an internationally recognized environmental defender who was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2020 and received the Goldman Environmental Prize the same year. We Will Be Jaguars is her debut book, co-authored with her husband, Mitch Anderson, the founder of the environmental organization Amazon Frontlines. The memoir was selected as a Reese’s Book Club pick upon its release. It details the real-world events that led to the formation of the Ceibo Alliance, a multi-nation Indigenous coalition, and the historic 2019 legal victory that protected half a million acres of Amazon rainforest from oil extraction.

This guide refers to the 2024 Abrams Press edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of racism, religious discrimination, child abuse, child sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, graphic violence, substance use and addiction, illness or death, mental illness, suicidal ideation, and animal death.

Summary

Nemonte Nenquimo grows up in the Waorani village of Toñampare in Ecuador, a world defined by the Amazon rainforest, her family, and the stories of her ancestors. The only white person, or cowori, in the village is the American missionary Rachel Saint. When a plane, or ebo, brings more cowori visitors, a curious six-year-old Nenquimo takes her younger brother, Victor, to see them. They follow the visitors and Waorani pastors to a beach where the outsiders pray fervently. During the prayer, Victor suffers a mysterious seizure-like attack, the first of many that plague his childhood. 

Nenquimo’s mother, Manuela, a powerful Kichwa-Záparo medicine woman, tries to heal Victor with forest remedies, but his condition worsens. Desperate, Manuela seeks help from Rachel Saint, who provides sugar and pills in exchange for the family’s attendance at her church. The family goes, and Nenquimo receives a coveted sky-blue dress, but Victor’s illness persists. Finally, Manuela summons Mengatowe, a revered jaguar shaman. He performs a ritual, diagnosing the illness as sorcery born from envy and declaring that Victor will become a meñewempo, a jaguar father. He bestows his own name upon the boy for protection, and the attacks cease.

As Nenquimo grows, the outside world encroaches further. Rachel Saint and her Waorani assistant, Dayuma, announce the arrival of an oil company. Nenquimo’s father, Tiri, is recruited by Rachel to help pacify uncontacted Waorani relatives, the Tagëiri and Taromenane, who are killing oil workers. Tiri returns months later with stories of the company’s destructive methods—dynamite blasts and trails cut straight through the forest—and a desire to move his family to a new village where hunting is better. The tension escalates when a young Waorani man named Amo, who opposes the oil company, is killed by outsiders. 

Rachel orchestrates a village-wide celebration to sign an agreement with the Maxus oil company, formalizing their entry into Waorani lands. Not long after, Rachel stops a traditional harvest celebration, calling the naked dancing the “devil’s fire.” She soon leaves the village and dies. When her body is returned for burial, the fragile order she maintained dissolves into chaos. 

Tiri, along with Rachel’s nephew, Steve Saint, found a new village downriver called Nemonpare. Nenquimo befriends Steve’s daughter, Stephanie and, hoping to one day visit the “Land of Rachel” (93), agrees to be baptized. When Manuela gives birth to a baby girl, Ana, she tries to give her to the Saints for adoption, believing they can offer her daughter a better life. A devastated Nenquimo is relieved when the Ecuadorian government denies the adoption, but the Saint family leaves soon after, severing Nenquimo’s connection to the missionary world.

Feeling lost, a teenage Nenquimo leaves the forest to experience “Civilization.” She first visits an oil road, where her father tells her oil is “the blood of our ancestors” (110). Driven by a desire for white teeth, she has her healthy molars crudely extracted, leading to a life-threatening infection. Her shaman grandfather, Donasco, performs a healing and warns that the “boa’s tongue” of the white world is leading her astray. 

Nenquimo is distressed after learning that Stephanie Saint has died from a brain hemorrhage. She runs away to a missionary school in Damointaro, run by a couple named Alfredo and Rosalina. There, Alfredo sexually abuses her. The trauma precipitates a mental health crisis, and she is sent to a stricter mission in the city of Quito. She becomes a model student, but feels spiritually hollow. 

After years away, Nenquimo returns to the forest as a missionary translator, only to feel utterly alienated from her own people. She breaks from the missionaries and spends seven years adrift on the fringes of society, a period of deep pain during which her beloved brother, Victor, dies mysteriously. Her life changes when her older brother, Opi, finds her. He is working with an American linguist to document Waorani stories and warns her that a new oil auction, the Ronda Petrolera, threatens their remaining territory. He convinces her to finally come home.

Back in Nemonpare, Nenquimo reconnects with her family and the forest. She meets Mitch “Michi” Anderson, an American activist building clean water systems for other Indigenous nations—the Kofan, Siona, and Siekopai—whose lands have already been devastated by oil. They fall in love. 

Nenquimo travels with Michi and leaders from the other nations, witnessing the oil contamination firsthand. The experience ignites a fire in her, and during a gathering, she proposes that the Indigenous peoples of the area form an alliance. Thus, the Ceibo Alliance is born. During a powerful ayahuasca ceremony with a Siekopai elder, a jaguar spirit appears to Nenquimo in a vision and tells her she will lead her people. Soon after, she becomes pregnant with Michi’s child. 

Inspired by her father’s idea to show the cowori the richness of their land, the Ceibo Alliance, supported by Michi’s team of activists called Amazon Frontlines, undertakes a massive project: creating their own territorial maps. For two years, they travel through Waorani lands, using GPS technology to document sacred sites, hunting grounds, medicine sources, and ancestral stories, creating a counter-narrative to the government’s empty maps.

Just as the maps are completed, the Ecuadorian government announces the auction of “Block 22,” a vast oil concession overlapping with the Waorani territory they just mapped. In a massive assembly, the Waorani people elect Nenquimo as their leader and decide to sue the government for violating their constitutional right to informed consent. 

As lead plaintiffs, Nenquimo and other elders travel to the city of Puyo for the court hearing. They enter the courtroom with spears and feathered crowns, transforming the space with their songs and spiritual presence. Nenquimo gives a powerful testimony, contrasting the government’s deceit with her people’s deep connection to the forest. 

After several days, the judges rule in favor of the Waorani. The court declares the government’s consultation process a fraud and nullifies the oil auction. The decision protects half a million acres of rainforest and sets a historic legal precedent. The Waorani and their allies erupt in celebration, marching through the streets of Puyo. Nenquimo, having found her path as a warrior and mother, returns home, secure in the knowledge that her brother Victor’s jaguar spirit is proud of the sister who learned to fight for their world.