Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice

“Essential reading, filled with exactly the kind of truth that this precarious moment demands.” —Kaira Jewel Lingo, author of We Were Made for These Times

In 1999, Abby Reyes lost her partner, Terence Unity Freitas, as he and two other land rights advocates 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.