We Will Not Be Saved – Book Review
We Will Not Be Saved, by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson. June 2024, Wildfire Books. ISBN 9781472289711, 368 pages. RRP £12.00
We are often told that we must “learn from Indigenous wisdom” in order to live with harmony upon the planet. If you are unsure about how to do this, or wonder if you even really need to, reading this book would be a good place to start.
It is an account by Nemonte Nenquimo, transcribed by her North American husband, of her upbringing in the Ecuadorian rainforest and her path to becoming an environmental activist and leader within her community. Life within the Waorani tribe is filled with a deep respect, knowledge and love of the Amazonian rainforest, the trees, rivers, animals and birds that surround them and on which they depend for food, clothing, medicine and shelter.
Indeed, a menagerie of exotic animals and birds – including monkeys, toucans, and tortoises – are acquired as pets and share the home inside the Oko, the long huts where cooking fires continually burn. She learns to hunt, and cook peccary (wild pigs), make sweet chica from manioc and weave palms to make hammocks and baskets.
There is a rich spirituality celebrated in storytelling and dance. Nenquino describes “the sacred connections that breathed between our peoples and the animals and the land” They believe that the ancestors are guiding the tribe, through their dreams and through the jaguars who are believed to embody ancestral spirits, and whose cries warn and guide them.
The story also lays bare the frustrations and conflicts of communal life, and the community’s vulnerability to the wider world. First missionaries, closely followed by oil companies and loggers come to the area; the forest begins to shrink as local men are given work clearing trees for runways and oil wells. Women become cleaners and acquire western habits, clothing and tastes. They eagerly await the delivery of salt, sugar and oil to their village but the wads of money, with which they are paid, often grow mouldy.
As a headstrong young woman Nemonte decides to pique her parents by accepting the missionaries’ offer of an “education” in the city – an offer that turns out badly as she, and other girls, are shockingly exploited and sexually abused by the Christian pastor.
Her reconnection with her family, her determination to heed the voice of her ancestors and the calling of the forest itself, form a gripping story.
By her mid-twenties Nemonte had become a leader, and is now regarded as one of the most creative and committed of environmental and climate activists. In 2019, she led the development of an alliance of tribal peoples across the Upper Amazon to a legal victory against Big Oil. The book describes the cooperation between different tribes as well as the support of outsiders that enables the winning of their case.
Reading this book forms an education in seeing the world around you differently and heeding its call to care. It’s also a love story; not only recounting how she met the activist who becomes her husband but describing also her first love – the rich life-giving forest itself.
Clare Redfern
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