Dear Reader,

My father often told me that people must find it easy to destroy what they don’t understand. Perhaps if more people understood something about life in the Amazon rainforest, they would not want to burn it down or poison it.

My people, the Waorani Indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, come from a vibrant storytelling culture. We are always sharing stories. When we tell these stories, we keep them alive. At this moment in time, and with our book, We Will Be Jaguars, telling our stories is not only about keeping the stories alive, but about keeping our people alive, and keeping the Amazon itself alive.

When the forest is healthy, we’re healthy. When the forest is threatened, we are threatened. When the forest is sick, we are sick. This is what we see now with the fires raging across the rainforest, the governments and oil companies drilling and pumping oil deep in the forest, and the impacts of global climate change that have already altered the patterns of weather and the rhythms of life deep in the forest.

My father gave me his blessing to tell my story, to help more people understand who we are and where we live. For more than ten years, Mitch has been my partner in life and in activism. We decided that he would join me too in telling my story. I am from an oral culture, and Mitch comes from a written culture. He loves books like I love telling and listening to stories. And we’ve both come to love each other’s passion for story.

Our hope with this book is to reach more people, to touch readers’ hearts, to stir them awake to the dangers facing our home and the ways they can help reduce those dangers, to make connections across cultures and to strengthen spiritual connections to the earth.

If thousands, millions, of people across the industrialized world were to make relatively small adjustments to their patterns of consumption, were they to hold their representatives accountable, then moms like me could take their kids to the river without feeling that our lives may be in danger from oil spills.

Thank you for reading, discussing, and sharing my story.

Nemonte Nenquimo