Storytelling is the beating heart of Indigenous resistance in the Amazon

This article Storytelling is the beating heart of Indigenous resistance in the Amazon was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

“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.

For decades, intermingling power structures were conspiring against the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon: evangelical missionaries, colonizing politicians and capitalist forces hungry for the wealth hidden underground. In the 1950s, evangelical missionaries attempted to contact the previously-uncontacted Waorani peoples (also referred to as Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation) on the Ecuadorian side of the rainforest.

Embodying the fierce warriors they were known to be, Nenquimo’s Waorani ancestors speared the missionaries to death. Soon enough, the international media began coverage that further perpetuated racist myths about Indigenous peoples. Eventually, more missionaries came and settled in the villages to proselytize and convince the Indigenous communities to accept Jesus in their hearts and resource extraction on their land.

Decades later, with the guidance of Nenquimo and other Indigenous leaders, the Waorani took a different approach to resistance. Through the collective strength of the Ceibo Alliance — a nonviolent resistance movement built by the Waorani, Secoya, Kofan and Siona nations of the Amazon — they mobilized to stop the attack on the rainforest.

Cultural revitalization and the power of story

In the struggle against ongoing colonialism, the Ceibo Alliance and Amazon Frontlines (a nonprofit organization co-founded by Nenquimo and Anderson) began a project to preserve Indigenous stories. Through the project, Indigenous youth are trained in storytelling techniques with the use of photography, videography and writing. Community members are also able to learn from each other’s stories and experiences. “We Will Be Jaguars” itself is an expression of this work; Nenquimo uses the power of her voice to show the world how ethnocide impacts every facet of our shared existence.

These cultural revitalization strategies have been successful in amplifying their movement’s messages and reaching the media. Nenquimo’s memoir has gained notable praise, earning a spot in Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club Picks.

Cultural revitalization has been an important strategy in the resistance movement of the Amazon. But like all powerful things, story can also be wielded by oppressive forces. For centuries, dehumanizing stories have been used to justify unthinkable cruelty. In Canada and the United States, for example, Indigenous peoples were labeled “savages” through all eras of colonialism. Similarly, the Waorani peoples were referred to as “aucas” — a term modified from the derogatory Quechua word awqa, meaning “Waorani savage.”

Evangelical missionaries co-opted this word as a tool of dehumanization to justify their plan to dismantle Waorani culture. Missionaries also encouraged Waorani peoples to wear Western clothes while discouraging their use of their native language, similar to the forced assimilation tactics of the Canadian residential school system.

Perhaps colonial forces knew the power of Waorani stories because early on they forbade them from practicing shamanism and spiritualism — belief systems that were essential to the fabric of Waorani life and survival in the rainforest. Doubts about their traditional medicines were sowed, and eventually, new and deadly diseases like polio broke out, further destabilizing their culture. Families and communities were torn apart as Waorani children were removed from their homes and placed with missionaries to study the Christian gospel.

As a result, Nenquimo lived away from her village and her family, suffering physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the missionaries who were supposedly there to save her from her own “savagery.” Some Waorani people converted to Christianity and moved back to their villages with new English names to preach to their relatives, who were often thought of as being possessed by the devil for practicing their traditional culture.

Suppressing the Waorani’s means of communicating with each other increased isolation and made it difficult for individuals to understand the scope of the devastation that was being inflicted on them. Throughout the book, Nenquimo describes feeling isolated, yet finding consolation when she dreamed of her ancestors and the messages they had for her.

When she joins the story preservation project, the stories of others ignite a fire inside her to continue the fight. Opi, Nenquimo’s brother, stated that, “stories are what keep the rainforest alive.” If the Waorani lose the stories of the elders, then the forest will fall to capitalism and imperialism.

Fighting capitalism by building autonomy

Throughout “We Will Be Jaguars,” we are shown that the money-hungry machine of capitalism never sleeps. While the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon were battling racism, cultural annihilation and Christian conquest, capitalist industry was ushering in a new era of resource extraction.

Oil tycoons first drilled in the Amazon in 1967. By the time Nenquimo was growing up, the colonial state of Ecuador was auctioning off parts of the rainforest to be used for industries like oil, rubber, mining and logging. Indigenous land grabs such as this are common across the globe as profits are prioritized over the intrinsic value of life.

To steal acres of Indigenous land, oil executives and politicians utilized methods of coercion. Jobs and useless paper money were offered to Indigenous peoples by the corporations, with work often involving dangerous situations without access to protective material. Sometimes people were also offered western food, alcohol and tools in exchange for their cooperation. Without full disclosure of the risks of pollution and toxic contamination, many people who lived near the oil fields continued to fish and live along the watersheds. Companies were even encouraging people to use oil residue from spills and road work as medicine. They claimed that rubbing it directly on the skin could offer health benefits. One of the men Nenquimo was organizing with told her that his community was not aware of the dangers of contamination and, eventually, they became gravely ill. Their shamans could not heal them from the toxins.

When Nenquimo and the Ceibo Alliance started sharing stories with other community members, they heard the ways in which oil corporations were exploiting everyone and everything, poisoning their elders, children and animal kin. In reflection of this moment, as they floated down a sacred and sick river dotted with dead fish, Nenquimo writes: “The oily water lapped against the edge of the canoe. I had never thought about that, the way the white man’s sicknesses weakened the power of our shamans, of our healers. For us, it was polio that our elders couldn’t heal. For the Kofan, it was oil.”

For over 50 years, contaminated waterways from Ecuador’s oil fields have impacted Indigenous peoples’ access to clean water. In an act of resistance and survival, the Ceibo Alliance began a campaign to install rainwater systems as a form of mutual aid throughout the Amazon, dealing directly with the deadly implications of environmental racism and colonialism.

As explained on the project’s web page, the water program has served over 6,000 people in the Amazon rainforest, with the goal of empowering every Kofan, Siona, Secoya and Waorani family to have access to clean water. Community members are trained in every aspect of the project, including implementation and planning, so that they have full sovereignty over their own water resources. The rainwater collection and filtration systems in their communities empowered them to survive and uphold their basic human rights, even as the oil industry, deforestation and mining threatened their rivers with deadly toxins.

International legal resistance

While re-asserting their autonomy with rainwater systems and revitalizing culture through story archives, the Waorani peoples were also busy preparing for a monumental legal battle. In 2018, the Ecuadorian government announced it was going to auction seven million acres of the world’s richest biodiversity — a place that is home to thousands of Indigenous peoples — to oil companies.

By February of 2019, hundreds of Waorani peoples travelled from their communities deep within the rainforest to launch a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government. Auctioning Indigenous land without consent was illegal, they argued. It was a breach of their right to free, prior and informed consent, a failure to uphold their right of self-determination and a violation of the rights of nature. In July of that year, the Waorani won their case. 

In “We Will Be Jaguars,” Nenquimo explains that oil executives in partnership with colonial governments (and sometimes with the help of missionaries) “consulted” occasionally with Indigenous peoples — only it was in languages that the Indigenous peoples did not speak. Without understanding the full implications, people would sometimes sign away their rights. Consultation with Indigenous peoples is not consent. 

Leading up to the lawsuit, the Waorani launched a campaign to declare to oil corporations and to the world that “Waorani land is not for sale!” This coincided with a petition that amassed 74,500 signatures at the time, capturing the attention of the media and the global climate movement. They also began a massive project to strategically map the Amazon rainforest, which successfully mapped 445,000 acres of Waorani land.

Indigenous nations must be given free, prior and informed consent to all projects on Indigenous land, otherwise it is a violation of the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples, as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Lessons from the rainforest

All of these tactics and more work together in the Indigenous resistance movement against extractive capitalism and white supremacy. By utilizing the tools of the oppressors, the Waorani and other Indigenous nations of the Amazon have been able to challenge colonialism on every front. With accelerating climate catastrophe directly linked to imperialism, we should all heed the warnings of Nenquimo and the Ceibo Alliance. 

“We Will Be Jaguars” is beautifully crafted, allowing the reader to visit the humid rainforest to listen to the tarantulas scuttle along a longhouse roof and to smell the smoked fish and crackling fire. These visualizations are a key part of the storytelling process that can allow settlers to humanize Indigenous peoples living in isolation and understand their struggle on a deeper level. The mobilization of Waorani peoples shows us that there is power in our connection with one another and with the land — we cannot separate the two.

As Nenquimo explains, the rainforest is a teacher: It is a web weaving together all essential tools provided by the earth. We cannot analyze these issues in isolation, nor can we continue to live individualistically and reject the stories of our relatives. We must work to understand that our struggles against capitalism unite all of us. And connecting to the land and our communities courageously, wherever we are on the planet, is an imperative form of resistance.

This article Storytelling is the beating heart of Indigenous resistance in the Amazon was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/02/we-will-be-jaguars-book-storytelling-indigenous-resistance-amazon/