Decoloniality, solidarity, and indigenous ecology: reading Nemonte Nenquimo’s We Will Not Be Saved as hope in the Anthropocene

Abstract

In recent years, Latin American governments have escalated the issuance of mining and oil concessions, leading to the expansion of control of the transnational companies over the Amazon land and forests. Transnational capitalist organisations perceive the indigenous populations as impediments to their initiatives, subjecting them to environmental hazards, physical victimisation, and dispossession. Co-authored with Mitch Anderson, Nemonte Nenquimo’s autobiographical narrative We Will Not Be Saved: A Memoir of Hope and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest (2024) compellingly depicts the harsh realities of environmental threats that are adversely affecting the rich biodiversity of the rainforests and endangering the unspoilt existence of various Indigenous tribes that have upheld an ecology-centred sustainable livelihood. This article analyses Nenquimo’s memoir as a representation of how Indigenous tribes’ existence and traditional epistemologies have been historically jeopardised by colonial models and their endorsed developmental values and how they are currently opposing oil industrialisation in order to safeguard their land and ecology. We argue that Nenquimo’s story articulates the resistance, resilience, and environmental activism of Indigenous people but, importantly, underscores the imperative of decolonial ethics, collective solidarity, and ethical duty for inclusive planetary coexistence.