Indigenous Leader Nemonte Nenquimo on Fight to Defend Ecuador’s Ban on Future Amazon Oil Extraction

By Nemonte Nenquimo, Amy Goodman 

November 29, 2024

Source: Democracy Now!

In Part 2 of our special broadcast, we look at a recent victory for Indigenous communities in Ecuador, where people overwhelmingly voted to approve a referendum last year banning future oil extraction in a biodiverse section of the Amazon’s Yasuní National Park — a historic referendum result that will protect Indigenous Yasuní land from development. But the newly elected president, Daniel Noboa, has said Ecuador is at war with gang violence and that the country is “not in the same situation as two years ago.” Noboa has said oil from the Yasuní National Park could help fund that war against drug cartels. Environmental activists and Indigenous peoples say they’re concerned about his comments because their victory had been hailed as an example of how to use the democratic process to leave fossil fuels in the ground. “Amazonian women are at the frontlines of defense,” says Nemonte Nenquimo, an award-winning Waorani leader in the Ecuadorian Amazon who co-founded Amazon Frontlines and the Ceibo Alliance. Her recent piece for The Guardian is headlined “Ecuador’s president won’t give up on oil drilling in the Amazon. We plan to stop him — again.” Nemonte has just published her new memoir titled We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. We also speak with her co-author and partner, Mitch Anderson, who is the founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines and has long worked with Indigenous nations in the Amazon to defend their rights.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

In this this holiday special, we turn now to Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous leader from the Waorani Nation in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador. Last year, she helped win passage of a referendum in Ecuador to block oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest’s Yasuní Park. But now Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa is pushing for oil drilling to continue, saying it’s needed to help finance the government’s war against drug cartels. Environmental activists and Indigenous peoples fear their victory to keep the oil in the soil could be overturned.

Nemonte Nenquimo co-founded Amazon Frontlines and the Ceibo Alliance. In June, she wrote an article for The Guardian headlined “Ecuador’s president won’t give up on oil drilling in the Amazon. We plan to stop him — again.” Nemonte also recently published a memoir titled We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People.

She came into our Democracy Now! studio in September along with her co-author and partner Mitch Anderson, who’s the founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines. He has long worked with Indigenous nations in the Amazon to defend their rights.

I began by asking Nemonte Nenquimo to introduce herself and to talk about the Indigenous nation she’s from and the land where she lives in the Amazon, in Ecuador.

NEMONTE NENQUIMO: [translated] Good morning to all of you.

My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, leader, mother, who comes from the Waorani territory of Pastaza in Ecuador. All women, in general, Amazonian women, are at the frontlines of defense, giving our lives, because we women are more considerate and we worry about our sons and daughters, so that our daughters can have their living space, water, land, knowledge, values, plants, animals, so that we can live well, freely and with dignity. Now our territory is threatened every day. Why should we, as women, be threatened in our territory?

That is why I wrote a book about my resistance, about my childhood, from a child’s point of view. I grew up between two worlds. The missionaries came talking about saving souls, saying that our beliefs were bad. The oil men came to our territory, flying in helicopters, promising development. They did a lot of damage. They destroyed our water. They contaminated our land. They contaminated our people, as well, by disconnecting us from our knowledge and values. And also the governments and the big organizations come to offer to say that they’re going to build national parks, and at the same time they make things worse and take away our territory.

The struggle that we have lived through is very important, so I would like to contextualize it. It is a long story to tell in detail. So, for me, it is very important. As my father says, “Daughter, the more the people of the world don’t know the jungle well, the more they destroy it.” So my story and our culture is oral. That is why I transformed this oral story with my husband, Mitch, into writing, so that the world can understand how we Indigenous peoples are living, connected with Mother Nature, with much love and with much respect.

So, this is a story of resilience, of resistance, so that the people of the world can know the true story of the Indigenous peoples, of all the Indigenous peoples who are living a great, gigantic threat, because this system from here reaches our territory day after day after day. So this message is very important. You can read the book. You can touch and open your hearts and make a real commitment to take action.

What am I trying to say with this? The communities and the civil society here, you have to open your hearts and condemn that the companies do not continue to invest in what harms our territory and what exterminates our territory, our knowledge, our culture. So, from here, we have to begin to reeducate ourselves, not to consume what destroys our health, and to reconnect with Mother Nature, to reconnect spiritually, to love Mother Nature again and to heal ourselves. That is what’s important.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to what happened last year, Nemonte, in Ecuador, in the rainforest. On August 20th, 2023, Ecuador voted to halt all future oil drilling in Yasuní National Park. Then Daniel Noboa won the presidency in October, about a year ago exactly. You were one of the leaders of this fight to protect Yasuní. Describe the Yasuní National Park, the movement you led, and then Daniel Noboa’s changing position.

NEMONTE NENQUIMO: [translated] Well, the Yasuní is an ancestral Waorani territory and is one of the world’s most biodiverse areas. It gives us oxygen to the planet. To achieve this, the Indigenous peoples united with all the peoples and then with activists, filmmakers, students. We made the people of the cities, of all the civil society understand the importance and also see that throughout the oil exploitation in the territory in Ecuador, in all the country, there has been no development. There has been more corruption, more problems, more death. So it was very evident. And the societies realized that it was very important to protect, to conserve the territory for the future. So this was also the work that we campaigned for.

I also headed Amazon Frontlines. And with other organizations, we made a film so that people could see the Yasuní rainforest and its importance, not only for the Waorani people, but for all the peoples of the planet. Then we achieved this victory in the referendum in Ecuador. In the whole country, we convinced them, and they voted yes to life. That was a powerful sign that I felt, that the people in the cities opened their conscience and opened their hearts and saw what was important was life. So we won. But the president has not met the standards. He should already begin to close and dismantle. And we, the Indigenous peoples, have had enough.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me interrupt for one minute. So, you passed the law first, and this took enormous mobilizing of people across Ecuador. What was the position that Noboa, as candidate, took, after this law was passed, clearly so popular that in order for him to win the presidency, he had to support the bill. Is that right?

NEMONTE NENQUIMO: [translated] Yes. During the campaign, Noboa said that he was going to respect the Yasuní. But now that he has been elected, he is not respecting it. I would say the politicians, not only Noboa, from my experience, from what I have seen in the presidents, they take office, they make promises, beautiful words in campaigns, but when they are already elected, they do not act with courage and bravery and don’t think of asserting the right of the Indigenous peoples, the right to nature, never. That is why the Indigenous peoples are united, ready to confront them. Our territory is our home. It is a living space for the future and for the people of the planet, and our territory will not be for sale.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the way Noboa is framing it now is they need money to fight drug lords and drug trafficking in Ecuador, and the way to get that money is to bring in foreign companies and to extract more resources to save the country. Your response to that, Nemonte?

NEMONTE NENQUIMO: [translated] Well, he talks about the economy, the economy, but one day the oil is going to run out. It is not going to be sustaining the future. President Noboa has to care. He has to think about the future. He has to give opportunities. He should be a more important leader in the world that can change and leave the oil in the ground and see the alternative, not the mentality of consumerism, but another form of mentality, a change, to see what can be generated in the future and to see that the Indigenous peoples are respected, that Mother Nature is respected to stop climate change for the world. But many times, the leaders never think that. They just want money now, and there is no solution. That is not the solution for future generations, because Noboa has a great opportunity, because he is a young president who could change the world.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re here in the midst of a presidential election in the United States, perhaps the most important. You’ve got the main parties, the Democrats versus the Republicans. On the issue of immigration, they vie with each other, or, you might almost say, agree on many points, is shutting down the border to immigrants coming from Mexico and south from there, including Ecuador. Can you make a direct link between thousands of Ecuadorians and people overall in the Amazon fleeing their land, their countries, because of environmental destruction, because of poverty, because of violence?

NEMONTE NENQUIMO: [translated] I think that this has happened a lot in the last few years, because the climate crisis in general in the world is very serious. And we must not let that happen. We have to awaken the conscience of the people of the city.

Why are people not happy? People are fleeing their countries because it not only affects Ecuador, because this system of consumption here provokes armed conflicts. It provokes oil extraction, because the wider world needs that to plunder. They need money.

That is why we have to look, to balance, to reconnect, to feel again the peace that we want in the society, because Mother Earth is suffering these phenomena that affects all of us. And people are not realizing it. The politicians, with the great power they have, are not realizing it, because they are disconnected. They are not connected with the Earth. They are not connected with their spirituality. They don’t have love. They don’t have love at all.

So, people, society, we have to get together, promote, socialize, unite, so we can solve it. We are not going to wait for the government to make the decision in our home. We are not going to allow the government to govern our blood, our territory. So the responsibility is for all of us. That is what I’m trying to say. The responsibility is not for the Indigenous peoples.

Why do we have to live in our territory daily under threat, day after day? Because the system does not stop, this mentality does not change, this heart does not touch deeply. So the work is here, in the big cities. I try to say, as an Indigenous woman, I see that. As an Indigenous woman, I am seeing that the problem is not in the Indigenous territory. The problem is here, this system. And all of us have to stop the system. That is the message. As long as we do not know life, which is the most important thing, we are going to destroy it. Mother Earth is not waiting for us to save her. Mother Earth is waiting for us to respect her, to love her again, to heal her again. That is the society we have to heal.

AMY GOODMAN: Mitch Anderson, you have worked on this issue for years. In the early 2000s, you were with Amazon Watch. You’ve spent a lot of time since then, well over 15 years, in the Amazon. You, together with your partner Nemonte, have founded Amazon Frontlines. But as you come back up into the United States, to your home country, do you see any progress being made? And also, as a person who can see the Amazon from here, from where your family and community was, to where you are living now with your children, with your new community, what do you feel is the biggest misunderstanding we have of the Amazon?

MITCH ANDERSON: Yeah. So, I’ve been living in the Amazon with Nemonte and her people for the last 15 years. Most of the oil that’s produced in the Amazon destroys the rivers and the forests and then is shipped up to California to be refined in California, and then it’s distributed to gas stations around the country and made into jet fuel. I don’t think that people in the United States truly understand that and truly understand what Nemonte is saying about our consumption patterns and our systemic addiction to oil and how it is devastating Indigenous cultures, their life ways and also their territories.

You know, in the 1960s, American oil companies discovered oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Peruvian Amazon, made deliberate decisions to dump barrels of oil into the rivers, millions of gallons of oil and wastewater, in order to save money, and created this massive public health crisis. For the Ecuadorian government at the time, they thought that this was going to be their salvation. It was going to take them out of, you know, subdevelopment and poverty. But what it’s created over the last 60 years is disparities economically, inequalities, corruption, massive environmental contamination, poverty.

And, you know, I think that what Nemonte, her people, youth climate activists in Ecuador have done is they’ve shown the Ecuadorian people, they’ve told stories to the Ecuadorian people, they’ve helped wake up consciousness and say, “Look, 60, 70 years of oil development, and look where we’re at right now. We need to keep the oil in the ground. We need to protect the most biodiverse forests in the world. We need to wake up our imagination, think about economic alternatives, think about regeneration.”

And, you know, the win in the Yasuní, in the most biodiverse forests in the world, is that. It’s this model of climate democracy that is an inspiration for the entire world. And, you know, at Amazon Frontlines, with Nemonte, we’re a collective of Western activists and Indigenous leaders that are looking to stop the oil industry, the mining industry, the loggers, not let them into the forest, create permanent protection zones, but also work with Indigenous communities to get their land back, because, essentially, Indigenous communities are the ancestral owners of nearly half the remaining standing forest in the Amazon. They are only 5% of the world’s population but protect 80% of the biodiversity on our planet. Indigenous peoples are the owners of 40% of the intact ecosystems worldwide.

And so, what we’ve seen here at Climate Week is civil society is waking up. Indigenous peoples are leading the marches. Indigenous peoples are sharing their stories, sharing their positions, amplifying their values. But what we’re seeing is that politicians, world leaders of companies are still really committed to sucking the last drops of oil out of the forests, out of the oceans. And we can’t afford that.

AMY GOODMAN: Nemonte, take us on this profound journey you take us on in your book, We Will Be Jaguars. Tell us first about where you were born in Ecuador, in the Amazon, one of the last places contacted by missionaries. You’ve said, “The authors of our destruction are the very ones who preach our salvation.” But start off by talking about your face and the images on your face that, for our radio audience, it is a hue of red across your eyes, from temple to temple, and what that means, and also your headdress.

NEMONTE NENQUIMO: [translated] As a child, I grew up in two worlds, very pretty, beautiful, the feeling as a child of seeing the evangelicals flying around, bringing us the word of Jesus, and also seeing our grandparents around us, healing us with plants. So I was a very curious girl. I wanted to discover. I wanted to understand who were these people, the white people, and the grandparents. Who are they? So I grew up in a very nice, very beautiful time, because in our territory, we still lived collectively at that time. Our chakra, our river, our way of living was free, in a big space.

Our culture is the achiote. On the forehead, we paint our eyes to protect from bad energy, and also beauty for the women, who can paint that part of the face and show the identity of our origin as Waorani women.

The crown is from the feathers of the macaw bird. And for us, the bird is very sacred. And they were very valuable for our ancestors, and we still believe that. Macaws fly. They sit in a tree and start to communicate amongst themselves, and then they plan where they’re going to fly to look for food. So, when you wear the crown, it represents a woman leader and that you’re united with your family to protect your home and your communities.

And the necklace means that you are a leader. It represents power, the power of women. That’s our culture. This seed is called pantomo. There are many of these plants in the jungle. And for us, it protects us from bad energy and also gives us good vibes, good energy. And when you go to a ceremony and when you go to meetings, you wear this.

So, in our culture, it’s like 50 or 60 years since we’ve had contact with the world, with the outside world. And, of course, there is a new generation, and we think about how to describe our knowledge, and our grandparents are already dying. So we have to teach our own culture to the young people, to young leaders, so that they continue to protect their territory and having their own language.

And so, it’s very important for us to go back, to have our own education system, our own traditional education, and at the same time learn about the outside education system and learn about how to use this knowledge to protect our territory, so there’s still forests. And if the forest is healthy, we’re going to be healthy. But if the forest is sick and is contaminated, then we’re going to start to get sick, and we are going to disconnect ourselves from our knowledge, our language, and we are going to lose everything, as has happened to other peoples who have been disappearing for 500 years. And we do not want our territory and our life to disappear. We want to continue being Waorani with the knowledge of two worlds, valuing our principles.

AMY GOODMAN: Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous leader from the Waorani Nation in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. Her new book is titled We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. She wrote it with her partner Mitch Anderson. Together, they founded the group Amazon Frontlines.

And that does it for this holiday special. Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud and Hana Elias. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Hugh Gran, Denis Moynihan, David Prude, Dennis McCormick, Matt Ealy, Anna Özbek, Emily Andersen and Buffy Saint Marie Hernandez. I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!


Nemonte Nenquimo is an Indigenous leader from the Waorani Nation in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador. In 2023, she helped win passage of a referendum in Ecuador to block oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest’s Yasuní Park. She is a co-founder of Amazon Frontlines and the Ceibo Alliance.