Many Stars, The Jaguar Warrior
How One Woman's Journey Saved the Amazon
Nemonte Nenquimo’s name meaning 'many stars' in the Wao Terero language, is a cosmic designation for a woman who has dedicated her life to the most grounded, essential task: protecting the earth. How does one person mobilize the resources to save half a million acres of rainforest? It begins with a vision as vast as the stars and as grounded as the soil.
(Intro Video read by Emma Thompson)
Nemonte Nenquimo is an indigenous Waorani leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon. Born in 1985, Nenquimo led a historic, successful lawsuit in 2019 against the Ecuadorian government to protect half a million acres of pristine rainforest from oil drilling. She represents the front lines of indigenous activism.
The Waorani Nation is a culture of traditional hunter-gatherers who had lived in relative isolation until first contact with Christian missionaries in 1958. Her worldview was shaped entirely by the oral histories of her elders and her grandfather, a legendary warrior who fiercely defended their territory. At age 12, a formative trip with her father to visit an aunt living near an active oil well changed her life forever. Seeing the literal smoke, fire, and social destruction caused by resource extraction instilled a deep, lifelong determination to protect her pristine homeland.
Her memoir also describes her identity struggles throughout her adolescence and how she admired the straight white teeth of the white missionaries. She hammered out her own teeth in the hope that the white people would give her new ones. Her memoir recounts the disturbing interactions she experienced with the Christian missionaries who both mistreated and sexually exploited her.
After briefly studying in the city of Quito, Nenquimo returned to the rainforest with a mission. In 2014, she co-founded the Ceibo Alliance, a groundbreaking non-profit that united four distinct Indigenous nations (the Waorani, A’i Cofán, Siekopai, and Siona peoples) across Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Historically, some of these tribes had been divided, but Nenquimo recognized they faced a shared existential threat: the auctioning off their ancestral lands to foreign oil companies.
Nenquimo focused on making her people self-sufficient so they wouldn’t have to rely on oil company handouts. She spearheaded projects to install rainwater harvesting systems, solar panels, and organic cacao farming. Simultaneously, she organized a massive community-mapping project to digitize and chart their territory using GPS, proving their historical and ecological connection to the land.
In 2018, Nenquimo made history by being elected the first female president of the Waorani organization of Pastaza province (CONCONAWEP). Almost immediately, the Ecuadorian government announced plans to auction off sixteen oil concessions covering millions of acres of primary, biodiverse Amazon rainforest.
Nenquimo and her allies launched a massive global digital campaign called, “Our Rainforest is Not for Sale,” gathering nearly 400,000 international signatures. More importantly, she served as the lead plaintiff in a historic lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government, arguing that the state had systematically violated the constitutional right of Indigenous peoples to give free, prior, and informed consent before their territory could be exploited.
In April 2019, the courts ruled in favor of Nenquimo and the Waorani, a victory that permanently protected 500,000 acres of pristine Amazon rainforest from oil drilling and set an invaluable legal precedent for Indigenous land rights across the entire Amazon basin. Nenquimo was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize (the “Green Nobel”) in 2020, named a United Nations Champion of the Earth, and featured on TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People. She also published a highly acclaimed memoir, We Will Be Jaguars (published as We Will Not Be Saved in the UK), making her the first Indigenous woman from the Amazon to have her life story published in multiple languages worldwide.
Link to Time Magazine Article
Many Stars’ Connection to the Stars
To understand how Nemonte Nenquimo transformed her personal trauma into change, I examined her chart through the specific lens of Chiron, the architect of resilience, and Ceres, the steward of the harvest.
Chiron and Ceres in Living Archetype
Nenquimo was one of ten environmental activists whose charts I studied recently through a focus on Chiron and Ceres. Chiron rules the “method of the quest,” and is known as the “Wounded Healer.” Chiron represents our capacity to turn our deepest struggles into our greatest strengths, confronting our own imperfections and fears, so that we can step more fully into our power. Since Chiron is a celestial body that sits between Saturn and Uranus and goes between the two, Chiron is also a bridge builder.
Ceres, on the other hand, represents the force behind the harvest in mythology. In terms of earth activism, Ceres is the protective energy that ensures sustenance and demands that we respect nature’s boundaries. Ceres represents the Earth stewardship principle.
Nenquimo’s Chiron
CHIRON at 7/8° Gemini 7 Gemini is "an old-fashioned well," or “a well beneath majestic trees,”while 8 Gemini is “aroused strikers round a factory." In Sabian symbolism, the old-fashioned well represents deep, primordial, ancestral resources, the life-source that sustained previous generations, requiring manual effort to draw up, but offering pure sustenance unaffected by modern, artificial infrastructure. While the symbolism of the aroused strikers is more obvious when connected to Mars.
Nemonte’s Chironic wound and medicine are both deeply tied to the oil well. In her book she often refers to oil as the “blood of my ancestors.” The wound is the modern world threatening to poison or dry up the ancient, pristine and primal sources of life (literal clean water and ancestral heritage in the Amazon). Or, one could tie this directly to the visit she made to the oil well which made such an impact on her at a young age. In recovering and reclaiming her own identity and the stories of her ancestry within her family and tribe, she taps into the wellspring of strength and spiritual support. The writing of her own story itself becomes the clear water from life-giving well providing healing. So you have both the negative connotation of a polluting oil well, and the positive connotation of the wellspring of story as a life-giving force like water.
"I was mesmerized by the giant, long-necked machine, craning up and down, up and down. So that was what it was sucking up. Our people from long ago, from the beginning. It was sucking up our past." — Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars
Chiron is the energy of the translator. Just as Chiron taught the heroes of mythology the arts of healing and music, Nemonte translates the language of culture and the rainforest. She transforms her personal suffering into healing teaching.
Mars (The Warrior) conjunct Chiron at 8/9° Gemini
Sabian symbol for 9 is “a medieval archer stands with the ease of one wholly sure of himself, bow in hand, his quiver filled with arrows” Mars is how we fight, express anger, and defend our boundaries. For an Indigenous activist who stood up to international oil consortia and her own government’s industrial plans, this symbol shows how she organized a massive, unified front across four distinct indigenous nations to say: “The factory cannot operate here. The rainforest is not for sale.”
Gemini rules mapping, communication, local networks, and signatures. Nenquimo fought her battle using community-led GPS mapping tools (Gemini data) and a legal lawsuit/petition (Gemini documentation).
Nenquimo’s Ceres
Ceres is the archetype of the steward, and Nemonte operates with that same fierce, protective focus on the source of life. By installing rainwater systems and prioritizing cacao farming, she is actively cultivating the 'harvest' of her people’s future. She understands that you cannot defend the land without also securing the physical, day-to-day resources needed to sustain it.
"I knew how to do this. My ancestors were sneaky and courageous too. They hid in trees. They crossed rivers unseen. They imitated birdcalls. That's how they ambushed the cowori [outsiders]. I would do the same, but in the city." — Nemonte Nenquimo, We Will Be Jaguars
CERES at 16/17 Gemini opposing Uranus
Sabian Symbol: "The head of a robust youth changes into that of a mature thinker." Outmaneuvering powerful corporations is no small feat. Ceres in Gemini nurtures and protects through communication, education, and the written or spoken word. Nenquimo co-founded the Ceibo Alliance and mobilized her community to map their own lands, blending ancient oral history with modern GPS technology. She had to pivot from the ancestral wisdom to the legal and technological realms
Nemonte Nenquimo does not just advocate for the Earth; she embodies it. Her life is a blueprint for what is possible when we stop waiting for a savior and begin to act as the architects of our own preservation. Her journey is a reminder that we are all capable of defending the sacred. We are not just witnesses to the modern crisis, we are the stewards of the next harvest.
Author’s Note: Portions of this post were derived directly from my previous research, Chiron, Ceres, and the Call to Activism: A Study of Ten Environmental Pioneers. To access the original, go to this link.
Further Resources
The Amazon Frontlines. “I want the People to Wake Up”: Nemonte Nenquimo on growing up in the rainforest and her fight to save it.
One Earth. Nemonte Nenquimo- Defender of the Amazon
Time Magazine, Nemonte Nenquimo
What a great post and subject. Thank you. Fascinating to look at someone like her and Chiron and Ceres, it turns Chiron into a more empowering placement too. I hadn't heard of Nemonte Nenquimo before, will go and look her up now.