We Will Be Jaguars Quotes

“Your feet know more about the forest than that government lawyer. Your toes know more about the forest than all of Civilization.” She nodded, unmoved by the thought, kept her eyes trained on the courtroom. She knew that already. When she was a young girl, on the trek with my father to the missionary village, she was bitten by a pit viper. The venom had coursed through her toes, up her ankles, her legs. Her feet had stepped on uncountable roots, seeds, leaves, mushrooms, thorns and been bitten by bullet ants and mosquitos, stung by wasps and scorpions and stingrays, dusted by tarantulas, burned by caterpillar hairs. Her feet could press into a garden’s soil and tell her when it was time to plant and when it was time to burn. Her toes could distinguish between the bark of cedar and mahogany, of peach palm and cinnamon, of kapok and guava.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“So was that what it meant to be Saved? To have sugar and pills and prayers?”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“The white people’s world seeks to destroy community.” She spoke in Spanish, using the word blanco-mestizo. “Once they destroy the community, then it is easy to destroy the individual.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“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.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“My heart soared with joy. Menki is the Waorani word for brother-in-law. I had accepted a cowori into my heart, and my family had accepted him into our lives. Love was part of the warrior’s path.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“I said: “I looked into the future. And the jaguar showed me what I must do.” He raised his eyebrows. “What will you do?” “I will lead my people in the fight against the oil companies.” It sounded so simple. Maybe destiny is a simple thing, after all.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“And suddenly I understood how the companies had taken everything and given nothing back. No running water, no medical clinics, no schools.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“In fact, I wondered if I was betraying my ancestors, if my desire to make chicha for a white man was a betrayal. I stopped calling him.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“The company was taking the oil from our forests and contaminating our water sources. The oil was taken to the cities so that the white people could drive cars and fly planes while Waorani women were degraded in the dusty shadows of the barbed wire, left to beg for water.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“They found them, the Taromenane. Their longhouse. They killed them all.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“I felt lightheaded. My people were about to go to war against our uncontacted relatives – and all because of the oil company.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“knew how to do this. My ancestors were sneaky and courageous too. They hid in trees. They crossed rivers unseen. They imitated birdcalls. That’s how they ambushed the cowori. I would do the same, but in the city.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“The oil companies will destroy everything,” Opi said. “Our stories, our families, our forest, our waterfalls . . .” “What are we going to do?” I asked. There was a long silence. We didn’t know what to do.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“I was mesmerized by the giant, long-necked machine, craning up and down, up and down. So that was what it was sucking up. Our people from long ago, from the beginning. It was sucking up our past.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“I tried to picture my dad with the cowori in the forest, wearing one of those hard hats, cutting down all the trees, making holes in the ground. And all so that we could have shoes? I liked being barefoot.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“We had invited my elders to see what was here - the oil pits, the pipelines. But they had seen beyond that. They had seen what was not here. They had seen what was missing from these wounded lands.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“The forest is screaming. . . and the white lawyers are still in courts far away fighting about money and words.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“We are threatening what makes the cars move, what makes the planes fly,” I said. “We are threatening the white people’s comfort, their very idea of happiness. For us to win, the judges will have to betray their own people, betray the government that pays their salaries, betray the cities where they were born.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“That if you lose your stories, the forest will fall?”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

“A story dies when no one tells it. Our stories have never been written down. Not like this. Part of me is scared. Have I told too much? Have I left too many tracks? What will you do with my story now that it has been written? I hope you will let it live.”
― Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People