Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Well, welcome and thank you all for attending but most importantly thanks to Nemonte and Mitch for joining us today. It’s going to be a different Mishcon Academy because we’ve got translation happening simultaneously but first of all I just wanted to, to thank Mitch and Nemonte for, for coming to join us. We have a rich seam of people through the Academy at Mishcon and this is a fantastic opportunity for us to all learn a little bit more about the world and particularly Nemonte’s world.
So we’re talking today with Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson who Nemonte is, is author of this wonderful book which I commend to you and we’ll be talking about today, ‘We Will Not Be Saved’, but, but perhaps more importantly is from the Ecuadorian rainforest, from the Amazon, and has dedicated her life to being an activist protecting the lands that she grew up in and the lands that are so important in her history and culture. And ultimately the story is one about, is a fantastic story because it’s a story about Nemonte’s early childhood, her growth in the forest, her early years in a world that we’re seeing missionary activity in Ecuador, the very early stages of oil exploration in Ecuador, all relayed in the book through the, through the eyes of a child and that’s the first half of the book and the second half of the book is very much about the journey into adulthood and the, I guess the loss of innocence, the complexity and challenges that come with adulthood and ultimately to a point where Nemonte was involved in a, in a landmark case against the Ecuadorian government protecting 500,000 acres of, of the Amazon rainforest from oil exploration. And the juxtaposition of this wonderful story of childhood in the forest through to the almost the brutality of being in a courtroom and facing the government in Ecuador is a remarkable story and I, and I think perhaps most importantly is a true story, so it really is a privilege to be here with Nemonte today. And it’s a book that’s about so much. I came to this book as a, as a lawyer thinking, “well this is a really interesting book about a landmark legal case” but actually it’s a book about the reality of standing up for Indigenous rights, it’s a book about the forest as a place, as an environment, as an ecosystem, it’s about culture, it’s about history, it’s about the church, it’s about exploitation and coercion and all of the complexities and interrelations that we, ships that we see in life. So, a fascinating, real life story about life in Ecuador, life in the rainforest and I very commend it to you.
Perfect. So, thank you. I wanted to, we’ll talk in the next hour or so about the case and what that experience was like and we’ll talk about, a little bit about Amazon Frontlines which is the organisation which Mitch is a, is a founder and executive of and which has been behind bringing the case and some future work protecting rights, we’ll talk about the experiences and sometimes difficult experiences that Nemonte had growing up but I want to just, just start with the, with the book. It’s really clear Nemonte at the, through the story that storytelling is, is very important in your childhood, in your, in your culture and in your environment and I wondered whether that, that tradition of storytelling was what brought you to writing the book or whether it was something else?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
Thank you very much. I’m happy to be here. I’m a Waorani woman and my name is Nemonte Nenquimo and I come from very far away.
For me the story and being able to tell this story in a book is very special. In my culture, as Matt was saying, it’s a culture of oral storytelling which means that we love to tell stories and we love to listen to stories and we tell stories every day. In the morning we tell our dreams, in the evening we tell what we’ve done during the day and everybody gathers in the long house and we share stories from the forest, from the garden, from the river.
The reason why we’re able to write a book together has to do with the fact that Mitch and I became partners, husband and wife and life partners and he lived with me in my territory, learned about our culture, learned how to fish and hunt and go into the forest and we also worked together to protect the territory and protect the land against extraction, against oil and against mining because my territory is vast and it’s a treasure chest of resources that the world’s always wanting to exploit from us and after fighting for, for many years to protect our land, we realised that it was the time to tell the deeper story of my people to the world.
And so the process of writing this book was really interesting and special and fun. We lived together in the forest and we decided to write a book together. I got to relive all of my memories from my childhood, memories that I had forgotten, beautiful times with my younger brothers, my older brother, Opie, Victor, and it was also special because Mitch was listening to me and tell my stories and we were, we were talking to my parents and other Elders of the communities to remember our upbringing, to remember the times before our people were contacted and we were even telling stories as we would cross the river in canoe or go into the garden and I would remember different memories and Mitch would be writing them down and he had different coloured notebooks that he would, he would write down and one thing that’s important to say is that it wasn’t like a anthropologist or a journalist that comes for a month to try to figure everything out and write a book but we, we did this over the course of many years.
She said I was, she said it was funny as well because when I gave birth to our second child, Sol, the next day Mitch said that he was ready to, to begin writing this and so we, we had built the house in the forest and there was a little room where he you know went in and began, began typing, we could hear him on the typewriter beginning to, beginning to write, write the story and then my dad showed up and he said, “Nem, where’s Mitch? I need go to into the forest, he needs to cut wood with me, he needs, we need more firewood” and I said, “Dad, we already talked about this. He’s going to be writing the book now” and then dad stopped, looked and sort of contemplative and then he came back at about three in the afternoon and he was like sweaty and he comes back and he says, “Nem, where’s Mitch? Has he finished the book yet?” and she was like, “No. No!” Three years later, you know.
She says, so I’m really excited to be able to bring this book back finally and show it to my dad and say, “Look, this is the, this is the book that we wrote, dad. This is the book that we took three years to write” and it’s also just a very special moment because the book is going on a journey and it’s the first book that my people have ever written because we’ve always been an oral storytelling culture and so, if it’s alright, I’d like to, she said, “I’d like to read the introduction to the book in my own language and then Mitch is going to read it in English.”
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Perfect. Thank you.
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
“Walk down the trail, then veer off into forest, leaving no tracks.” This was my father’s counsel when I told him that I’d be telling my story to you. I knew what he meant, that my ancestors would be watching, that there are stories that must remain hidden, secrets that must be guarded. Across the centuries my people learned not to trust you. That’s how we stayed alive, unconquered, by leaving no tracks.
For us, stories are living beings that breathe life into our homes, into our forests, they pulse in our blood, in our dreams, they stalk us like jaguars, clack like peccary, sail like macaws, run like fish, they’re powerful beings, like rainbows they bring peace, like lightening they bring war and they’re always changing, that’s how we know that they’re alive. 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? Left too many tracks? What will you do with my story now that it has been written? I hope you will let it live.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you. I think that gives a really good, good sense of, of the way the whole book operates, which is it’s, it’s, it’s deep in, it’s deep in content, it’s rich in imagery and it’s rich in history as well and I think, you know, was well as being a fascinating story in its own right, the, the writing and they it’s written, the expression is absolutely fascinating.
Mitch, there’s a, there’s a, or both of you in fact, there’s a, there’s a fantastic part in the, in the story where Nemonte asks “Why do so, why do white people read so many books?” and Mitch replies, “Because they see a little part of themselves in the stories of others” and I thought this was a fascinating idea and a fascinating concept and I wondered whether Nemonte, you had learned something of yourself in writing this story?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
She said first thing is that as a woman now reliving my story of my childhood, I really was able to realise that I grew up in a, in the middle of the rainforest in a village that was torn by two worlds, it was a beautiful upbringing with my aunties and uncles and grandparents, learning about the forest, songs, medicine, and at the same time there were missionaries that were in our village that told us that our culture was the devil and that we needed to learn about Jesus Christ and that that was the only way that we would be saved and when I was growing up it was hard to understand what that was doing to me.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, no, I can, I can see that and that, that idea that, that there is a need to be saved is a very strong idea in the book and I, I think there’s an interesting thread that goes from the title of the book, which is “We Will Not Be Saved” through to a comment you made about the court case where perhaps this court case would save the white people, “the uncivilised” as they’re called in the, “the civilised” as they’re called in the book, from themselves. And I wondered how important that idea of salvation was in the story?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
She said as a, as a child and as a Waorani woman, I have noticed in my own experience in life that many people have come into our territory, the missionaries and others, with this idea that the Waorani people needed to be saved, we needed to be helped, that we didn’t know enough and maybe they came with good intentions but ultimately, that arrogance, that lack of desire to understand us but rather just to save us and to help us has caused a lot of harm to me, for my people and to my culture and I also see that, Nemonte said, in the world today where we’re facing a lot of threats to Mother Earth and what I’ve learned as a woman, I feel it in my body, is that Mother Earth is also not asking to be saved, she’s demanding that we respect her and the Waorani people are demanding the same, that we are respected. And as a young girl it was hard for me to understand all of this and so, I listened to the missionaries and I thought that, you know, I was bright and that I was going to learn from them and so I followed them and I followed them out of the forest and I tried to learn their ways and ultimately, I realised that I was doing harm to myself, they were doing harm to me and that I had been losing the trail and that I needed to return to the forest and respect and value my own culture and one of the messages of this book is not a gloomy message about everything is, is, is, is, is going, is going to hell but really it’s that we need to save ourselves, no one’s going to come to save us and Mother Earth demands that we respect her.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Mother Earth, I think that’s, that’s really interesting because it’s that idea of respect is, is integral in terms of what you need from people outside but I also got a strong sense in the, in the book that there was a need to preserve dignity and that’s something we preserve ourselves, we, we stop people eroding our dignity so there was the two, the two themes of dignity and respect going in parallel. The book is not a, it’s an uplifting story in many ways but it’s a very challenging story and Nemonte, you’ve experienced some very difficult things in your life and you, you talk about those very openly in the book and a lot of the language to me is, is the language of, of exploitation and abuse and I wonder whether that was intentional and it was meant to be a metaphor for how you feel about how your lands are being treated or whether it was simply about how you were treated personally?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
She said thank you for asking about abuse and exploitation and yeah, I’ve lived through a lot of pain and violence towards me and as a woman, I buried it for a long time and this book was an opportunity to be courageous and to be vulnerable, to unbury a lot of the stories inside of me and ultimately, it was a healing process, it was a therapy to be able to tell me story, confide in my story, write my story down, share it with the world and I became stronger through the process of writing this book with, with Mitch and ultimately, I feel free and that’s a beautiful feeling and it’s a feeling that I, I’m proud of because I want this book, this story, to uplift women around the world and I want to be able to accompany and support women leaders, women on the frontlines around the world to tell their stories to be leaders in this, in this movement in this world.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And I think we’ll definitely talk about leadership because I think that’s one of the strong senses I got about what the next, the next chapter for, for you Nemonte is about. But before we do that, it’s, it’s clear in the book that you’ve lived in two very different worlds, you’ve grown up in the forest, you’ve lived in, in the city, you’ve experienced the West and the western world and I wondered how whether that had been very difficult for you and whether, whether you felt that had made you stronger or weaker and where you now felt was home?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
She said the, the forest is my home, the forest is definitely my home because the forest gives life to me, gives life to my people. When the forest is healthy, I feel healthy and alive. When the forest is threatened or if the forest sick, then I feel sick and I feel threatened and for me, I’ve realised and I have travelled and lived in cities and seen the world and I’ve understood now that it’s really hard for people living in the cities and living in the system because what the system does is it little by little, it breaks up community, it erodes families, it makes people feel oftentimes like just individuals, isolated in the world and for me as a Waorani woman that’s very hard because we come from a collective, communal family and culture in the forest and, and so it’s been very challenging for me to adapt and adjust spiritually to the, to live in the cities. I oftentimes find myself feeling disconnected as well from Mother Earth because it's, it’s, because it’s hard, because it’s hard because you’re not going out into the forest and bringing home food from the rivers or the garden. But definitely the forest is my home.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And do you, do you Nemonte, do you think you had to experience those other environments to be able to, to challenge them, to take them on and to operate within that system?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
She said for me it was really important to, to leave Waorani territory and my forest where there are no roads and there’s no oil drilling, there’s no mining and learn about the Cofane and Siona and Secoya peoples in Ecuador’s northern Amazon and it was Mitch who was already working with those tribes in the northern part of the Amazon, building access to clean water, who invited me to see an oil spill that had happened there and it was through that experience of seeing the oil fields in the middle of the forest and the oil spills and meeting women who had stories of, who had cancer, stories of losing their children to oil spills, to contamination, to miscarriages and seeing how those tribes have lost so much of their territory and how they’ve been surrounded by oil companies, mining companies and African palm plantations and colonist towns and then that’s when I realised that the, that the world is enticing, is invading and it’s also trying to entice the indigenous youth with all of these things, with clothes and internet and cell phones and, and if I as a young woman, as a Waorani woman, go that route and succumb to the, to the, to consumerism them what I’m going to lose is my entire culture and my entire territory and what’s going to happen is, soon what I’m seeing here in the oil fields of Ecuador’s norther Amazon, it’s going to happen in my territory and that was what gave me the conviction and the courage and the desire to say no, we’re going to organise now, we need to bring our tribes together and we need to share our strategies and we need to build a movement to protect our lands, to protect our water against invasion and protect our culture.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And I think that, that experience is really well portrayed in the book because the, the momentum begins when you’ve had that experience outside, outside the forest. And I want to talk a little bit about leadership because I think it, you know at some levels this is also a book about leadership and it’s, it’s clear from the first part of the book, to me anyway, that the, that you as a, as a young girl, as an adolescent were slightly disruptive, you were very curious, you had spirit and you know to some extent it was obvious you were going to take a leadership role, you, you have that character. When did you know you either wanted to become a leader or that you had to become a leader? And what does leadership mean to you?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
For her, she remembers those days when she first travelled to Ecuador’s northern Amazon and saw the oil fields and she saw the oil company signs that said that oil is progress, oil is development and past those signs was the river filled with crude oil, stained with crude oil and there were Indigenous families, the Cofane people, the Siona people, Secoya peoples living on the banks of those rivers. The river is a source of life, water and the companies had given them as compensation for poisoning their rivers little grocery bags of a couple cans of tuna and cooking oil and a couple of gallons of water and for Nemonte it was, it was this afront to dignity, this, this degrading offering to Indigenous peoples who had been poisoned, whose lives had been disrupted for decades and then they had the, the gall to just give little grocery bags to the communities and she, she felt rage and she felt that we can’t let this happen and I can’t let this happen to my people and it was in that moment where she, she also realised that this world is set up for men, the oil companies are set up so that men can go and they can became wage labourers and they can work in the day with their machete and take the money and go and get drunk in town, the women are there maintaining the family, the community, the garden, the children, thinking about the future. And so we began building access to clean water with Nemonte’s people and she began working with the women and learning about how women of her tribe in different parts of the territory that was, had been invaded by oil, had experienced the oil company contamination and this new culture and it was really through drinking sacred plant medicines and highly caffeinated plant beverages in the morning, the circle of women, the elders really beginning to think about collectively what is our vision and our dream for our forest and our cultures and what do we need to do that she began feeling what leadership must look like in this moment.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And Mitch, you were, you were part of Nemonte’s life at that point and as you were leading up to the galvanising that sense of community and, and thinking about bringing an action, a court case, was that a scary time or an exhilarating time?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
She says if you’re asking about fear then I can answer, I wasn’t afraid of anything, maybe you can answer that.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
You get that sense in the book.
Mitch Anderson
I can give a little background too. So, I am, I’m not from the Amazon. I didn’t grow up in the forest, you know, I grew up in the city and I grew up, I didn’t really plant my own food, never hunted an animal, bring home food for the family, like it is, like it is in Indigenous cultures in the Amazon, didn’t really know like where the water came from, you know, where the garbage went when you put it out in the street and, and so you know my life, you know my life changed a lot by you know, by living with and working with and learning from Indigenous cultures across Central and South America and I began working in 2007 in the Ecuadorian Amazon and I began working on court cases actually against the oil industry in Peru and Ecuador. Two very different experiences of big international campaigns against the oil industry and several years you know was, was you know supporting Indigenous communities to wage these big international campaigns, public relations, shareholder activism, all this kind of stuff and I always, I always, I always had this sense inside that, that if the oil companies couldn’t be the owners of justice like they, like justice wasn’t in their pockets, you know, like the communities, there must be a way for the communities to build justice and build solutions from the ground up and I moved down to the Amazon in 2011 and asked the Indigenous communities affected by Chevron’s oil contamination if we could start a project together, what would we focus on and there was a big discussion, you know, was it around health, their education or water and then ended up saying let’s build a, a project that will make sure that every Indigenous family affected by oil contamination has access to clean water. And so I moved to the Amazon in 2011 and began this project which had a simple goal of providing rainwater catchment systems with biosand filtration for Indigenous communities and at the same time make sure that the Indigenous villages, the youth, the dreamers were the ones that were, had ownership over the project and that were learning about fundraising and project management and budgeting and all the technical pieces of building the systems and working with their communities to maintain the systems and it was through that that all of these different, amazing Indigenous youth and elders gravitated towards this project and we began working together across many different nations in like one of the most threatened forests on the planet and realising that there was power in this, there was power in working together and it was through that experience that I met Nemonte and she began working to build clean water in the communities, the Waorani communities affected by oil and you know, all of this is in the book so I won’t repeat everything but we found love and we together helped build an alliance between the nations and we founded Amazon Frontlines together and we always knew that, you know deep down the system and the Ecuadorian Government was going to try to auction off her people’s lands to the oil industry because in 2012 they had launched this big oil auction across 7 million acres of forest, covering you know over ten Indigenous nations and they consulted the people by flying in in planes and handing out you know coca colas and bread and promising them a lot of you know health clinics and school, school systems and, and but ultimately the Ecuadorian Government had auctioned, it was trying to auction off under like terms that the oil industry didn’t think was favourable and so the auction didn’t work but they, the Government said that they were, that they had signatures, the Indigenous communities already signed off and so we always knew that they were going to do it again and, you know, you asked about fear or excitement. It was an, it was a, it was an exciting, it was an exciting time building the 43.32 Alliance and the Amazon Frontlines, we, we, we built an organising centre in the outskirts of an oil town called Lago Agrio which is named Sour Lake, which is named after Texaco’s headquarters in Texas and you know journalists that came to visit called it “The WeWork of the jungle” there was monkeys and parrots and Wi-Fi in the jungle and there was 50, 50 people speaking 10 languages and we were building wire systems and solar systems and doing trainings on technology and we had rights trainings and, and building our economic associations with women and recovering traditional healing systems and building up maps of the entire forest, living maps, as a way to show the world that these forests were the ancestorial lands of the Indigenous peoples and there is no room for oil wells, there is no room for mining and that was really the wisdom of Nemonte and of her father and of the elders saying to the world thinks that this forest is this huge and just like vacant and empty and just ready for the taking and so what we need to do is show them that it’s full of life and so, you know, by the time that the Government tried to auction off the land, we had already been working on a multi-year process to build territorial maps and water systems and solar systems and communities and the Waorani people were ready to go to war, ready to go to battle and that’s, that’s part of the…
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
The whole part of the story and that, and that contrast is, is really apparent in the, in the way you have constructed the book because there’s, it’s maybe, maybe 60,000 words build this rich image of, of forest with all the complexity and life within it and then the Government simply described it as “Block 22” and that, it’s, it’s, so you’ve lived with this for you know for days of reading and then suddenly it’s “auction of Block 22” and I think that to me, that really conveys that point you were making about the lack of understanding of the richness of the forest. So I can’t think of a more different environment than a courtroom. How did both of you bring the, the story into the courtroom? How did you show the Waorani people in the courtroom?
Nemonte Nenquimo/Mitch Anderson
Well she said that for her she really likes, she really thinks this is a special moment and likes this question about how it was to be a Waorani woman and Waorani person within the courtroom and you know, for her she was a young leader, she was the lead plaintive and she was the first elected woman of her, of her tribe and she was sitting with her elders in the courtroom and there was the, the government lawyers were in their suits and they had their ties on and briefcases and they had their manilla envelopes and books you know that were for her, it was like, it was full of the law, they had the law on their table and what we had, my face was painted with the achiote, with macaw feathers and we carried in our chonta palm or peach palm spears and we had our peach palm machetes and machetes made of wood and we had plants, we had bundles of plants, we wanted to bring in the forest and the sacred medicines of the forest into the courtroom. And the judges were there and I was trying to make eye contact with the judges and, and feel the, feel, for them to feel the power of my people but at the same time I was nervous and my elders were you know they were very confident, they had dreamed that we were going to win this court case and Nem was now saying, you know, that she remembers one moment which actually isn’t in the book, we took, it was removed, we took it out of the book before the editors, you know, so this will be interesting for you but there was a moment where one of their elders, oh Nemo said that we were barefoot as well, we were barefoot, we were humble, we were trying to root our toes and our feet into the earth you know but it was just a courthouse. And there was a moment where one of our elders needed to give, she needed to swear the oath you know that she was going to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help her God and she was standing there in there, there was a Waorani translator and so the judge looking at her and saying, you know, you promise to swear, do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God and if you don’t, you’re going to go to, you’ll go to jail, this will be perj, you know it will be perjury or whatever, you know, perjury, what is it, yeah, yeah, perjury and she said, “Nope” and here’s like the judge was like, “Okay, can you, translator, please can you ask her will she tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth otherwise there will be problems”. And she said “No”. And they, and she continued on for maybe like an hour where she just refused to subjugate herself to a system that was going to put her in jail based on them determining what was true or not, she just would not do it. Okay, well we’ve move on.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
There’s also a beautiful moment where the court case is adjourned because you won’t stop singing.
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
Nemo said that, that um that the court proceedings went on for many days and it was a small courtroom and so we jampacked the courtroom with Waorani women and warriors but a lot of people couldn’t enter in and so there was outside in the hallway, there were chants happening all the time and we could hear our warriors dancing in the hallways outside the courtroom and it went on for so many days and then the Waorani people had come from the forest to be there to witness history, to take on the Government, to protect our lands, didn’t want to leave, they didn’t want to go anywhere and so there was even one woman who was pregnant and she gave birth outside the courthouse, she wouldn’t want to leave, didn’t want to go to the hospital and there were so many midwives amongst the Waorani that they actually were able to, she gave birth outside the courthouse and we could hear the, the, the, we could hear the cries of a newborn baby in one of the days of the court proceedings and then inside the courthouse, there was all these different moments, you know, where like what I told you where one of our elders didn’t want to swear the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth, help you God, there was all these moments where the judge, you know where, where, there was a panel of judges and they were reading, they were making motions and things like that sometimes we felt they were going against us, you know, and so there was one moment where we decided you know what, the judges are going to be siding right now with the Government lawyers and so we are going to not let this happen right now and so we just stood up, I grabbed my elder’s hand and we had a sign, stood up and we began singing and we sang and sang and sang and we saw the Government lawyers’ faces and the judges, they did not know what to do with us and we just kept singing and kept singing and filled the entire courthouse with song until finally the judges said “okay, the courtroom is suspended, we cancel proceedings for the day” and for us, we felt like we had just won a moral and spiritual victory against a system that was trying to disenfranchise us.
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Sounds like my kind of law. Which is, which is good. And I, and I don’t want to spoil the story but it’s public so, so the case was successful, so the case was about whether there was consent from the, from the people essentially and the court ultimately ruled in your favour that there wasn’t consent and the effect of that was, was to protect certainly in the short term half a million acres of rainforest. That, that’s a big enough achievement for any leader, any activist but I sense it’s not the end so I wonder what’s next for you and what’s next for Amazon Frontlines?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
55.55 to 1.03.17 no sound
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah and it’s such important work and certainly chimes with, with some of the priorities that, that we have and to some extent it’s humbling to hear the scale of the ambition. We’re up against time so I wanted to, to ask finally Nemonte, whether was a, whether was a message that she wanted to leave us with before we go to questions?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
1.05.18 to 1.07.32 no sound
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you, it’s an extremely powerful message to finish on and it’s a, it’s a very clear call to action and certainly something we can all reflect on. Mitch and Nemonte, I want to thank you not just for producing the book and telling such a fantastic story but for your leadership generally and your communication of this message globally as part of this process so thank you.
Are there any questions in the room? We’re very overtime but we’re just going to keep going because it’s fascinating so.
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
1.08.29 to 1.08.54 no sound
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So the question was how would Nemonte and Mitch feel if their children ultimately wanted to leave the forest?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
1.10.05 to 1.11.42 no sound
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So the question is essentially how do we, how do we in the West, in what you call in the book, “the civilised world”, but I’d question that, how we in the West can overcome that alienation, how we can reconnect with nature?
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
1.14.10 to 1.16.21 no sound
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you. Well I’m sure we could draw on this wisdom for hours to come but I think we’d, we need to draw to an end unfortunately, not least because you have another book launch event to go to but you know on behalf of those of us in the room and on behalf of the sort of broader Mishcon Academy community that have been online, I just want to say thank you for being so open and honest today and for such an interesting conversation.
Nemonte Nenquimo
Member of the Waorani tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest
1.17.19 to 1.17.43 no sound
Matt Meyer, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
I will take you up on all of those offers. I think there’s also some pieces of paper around with QR codes that talk about Amazon Frontlines so please feel free to learn some more about Amazon Frontlines. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody.