by Abby Reyes
North Atlantic Books
5/6/2025, paperback
SKU: 9781623175214
In 1999, Abby Reyes lost her partner, Terence Unity Freitas, as he and two others were murdered after departing Kajka Ika-- the heart of the world--of Indigenous U'wa territory in Colombia.
Imperiled by multinational oil interests, U'wa lifeways were under attack. Terence, Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa (Menominee), and Lahe'ena'e Gay (Hawaiian) arrived to listen to community needs and accompany the U'wa. But then they disappeared. Days later, their bodies were found, bound and bullet-riddled in a cow field across the border in Venezuela.
Twenty years later, Abby finds herself in Case 001 of Colombia's truth and recognition process. They want to know her stories. They want to know her questions. They want to know her truth demands the fragments she's held for decades about the last days of Terence's life. Why was he taken? Who pulled the trigger? Who was really behind the killings?
Plunged back into grief, ambiguity, and the unknown, Abby is called to navigate the past. Old wounds are reopened, old histories are redrawn, and fresh angers flare as she confronts the testimony of one of her lover's killers--and the burden that Terence unwittingly compelled her to bear.
Spanning three decades and three continents, Truth Demands charts Abby's parallel journeys as she navigates the waters of loss, purpose, and impermanence while fighting for truth and accountability from big oil. A profound and haunting memoir, Truth Demands is an invitation into the current. It shows us how to hold fast even as we let go--holding us as we bear witness and welcome with courage and skill what the truth demands of us all.
Reviews:
"This book is the voice of the U'wa in the words of Abby, and these memories of the truth are a primary source of respect, help, and coordination for the defense of Mother Earth." — Juan Gabriel Jerez Tegria-Kuanakuvo (U'wa Nation), legal advisor for international affairs at AsoU'wa, the Association of the U'wa Traditional Authorities and Cabildos U'wa
"[This book] couldn't have come at a better time as we humans navigate so many upheavals and make necessary decisions about our climate future." — Donna Chavis (Lumbee Nation), founder of the RedTailed Hawk Collective and program manager of Climate and Energy Justice, Friends of the Earth US
"Written with the delicacy of a novel and the pace of a thriller, this book will find a place among memoirs of spiritual enlightenment as well as among classic stories of political education." — Angela P. Harris, JD, codirector of the Critical Justice Institute
About the Author:
Abby Reyes cut her teeth doing rural environmental legal assistance in the Philippines, her father's homeland, and walking alongside the Colombian U'wa Indigenous pueblo for dignity against big oil. She directs community resilience at University of California, Irvine, supporting community-academic partnerships to accelerate community-owned just transition solutions.