March Update: Who's Who at Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán?

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Where did February go? Where did March go? For all of us here at the Cofan Survival Fund, it has been a busy time. (Have I ever not written that at the beginning of a newsletter?) It’s high time I provide a short overview of what our Ecuadorian team has been working on so you know exactly what your donations are funding.

Freddy Espinosa: Freddy is our legal and bureaucratic expert. He does just about everything. An especially important achievement this month was pressuring the Ecuadorian government to legalize the newly elected community leaders of the Cofan and Ecuador’s other Indigenous Peoples. Ecuador has experienced extreme governmental transitions and is suffering a lack of funds, so the director who signs off on community leadership changes was . . . nonexistent—literally. No one was in the position. And without officially recognized leaders, Cofan communities can’t access resources, stay financially afloat, or sign checks or contracts or agreements. Freddy staged a one-man “sit in” at the office where this director was supposed to be and didn’t leave until someone assumed the position. Finally, someone did, which means Cofan and other Indigenous communities can now function. Freddy is also working with the new president of Zábalo to confront several developing land conflicts and to make sure titling issues for other Cofan lands are addressed. Freddy is a ball of energy, and we rely on him for so much.

 

María Luisa Lopez: María Luisa has been our accountant for decades. It’s impossible to run a nonprofit without solid accounting, and that’s what María Luisa does for us. Given how “irregular” our funding can be, her job is extremely complicated, and she has to perform miracles at times. Recently, she’s worked on end-of-the-year reporting for the Ecuadorian government and organizing insurance payments and policies for our Ecuadorian team. Without extra insurance, people like Randy would either be bankrupt or dead. And without car insurance for our Ecuadorian staff, we’d be unable to do anything. Unlike some wealthier organizations, our personnel do all their work—whether in cities, Amazonian forests, or Andean valleys—in their personal vehicles, which suffer terribly as a consequence. One day, we’d love to have a truck or two for our team. . . .

 

Carlos Menendez: Carlos is like Freddy: a force of nature who never stops working. Currently, Carlos handles our healthcare programs, especially the Seguro Campesino Project, which aims to cover the entire Cofan Nation. Seguro Campesino is a government program that’s a combination of Medicare and Social Security for Indigenous Peoples and others living subsistence lifestyles. But to become a member, people have to pay and enroll, both of which are impossible for many Cofan families. Through Carlos, we cover those obligations. Another activity Carlos organizes are the visits of Seguro Campesino medical teams to Cofan communities. There, doctors perform urgent procedures and do diagnostic work to identify problems and arrange for their treatment. Additionally, Carlos helps Cofan individuals and families negotiate the logistical and bureaucratic complexities of Ecuadorian medical institutions. He’s been aiding me with care for two Cofan people with whom I’m very close, both of whom are receiving life-saving treatments. One has bladder cancer, and the other has late-stage diabetes. If it weren’t for Carlos making everything work, they’d be in very bad shape and perhaps no longer with us.

 

Felipe Borman: Felipe is now the on-the-ground director for our land-protection and conservation work. And so much more. For the past year, he’s been coordinating and participating in all the fieldwork of the Cofan Park Guards in the two hotspots of the Cofan-Bermejo Ecological Reserve and the Río Cofanes Territory. Felipe just returned from Río Cofanes, where he led a team of 12 guards as they cleared boundary trails, reestablished Cofan strategic and residential sites, and let illegal miners know that it’s time to get off Cofan land. Felipe is just as courageous as Randy, and he’s the one member of our team who can handle all that the forest, the rivers, and the mountains throw at him. Without Felipe, our work to protect the Cofan homeland would be impossible.

 

Randy Borman: And what has Randy, our Executive Director and founder, been up to? Though no longer as spry as he once was, his health has returned. Randy remains our leader, our strategizer, and our visionary. He led the visits of two groups of important supporters to the far corners of Cofan territory, and he helped them understand what we do, why it’s important, and what else we could do with more resources. If you haven’t made a visit to Zábalo and met Randy, it’s time to do it. He knows more about his people than anyone else—certainly more than me, a mere anthropologist—and he also knows the Amazonian environment inside and out. Plus, he’ll convince you why the CSF is the Indigenous rights and forest-protection force the world needs. Randy steers the ship: he does all the research and organizes all the decision-making. Plus, he’s our main point person with all the individuals and organizations who support our work and keep us afloat. Though the rest of our Ecuadorian team is stellar, Randy is the axis around which everything revolves. And that’s a full-time job of emails and meetings and reports and trips to the field.

 

Other news: Amelia Quenamá continues to oversee our new Lifeboat Garden Project, which involves transplanting all the plant species essential to Cofan medical care and sustenance to a higher-altitude area, where we hope to keep them secure in a time of intensified climate change. Amelia is also working with Emmy Borman and Gissela Yumbo on our efforts to create a truly bilingual and bicultural school curriculum for Cofan communities.

 

Finally, our Cofan Higher Education Project is still at work. However, after this year, we have no funds to sustain this foundational program. This year, two Cofan MA students are finishing their theses in rural territorial development and intercultural justice, and two BA students are finishing their degrees in engineering and tourism administration. Without highly educated leaders, the Cofan Nation will not be able to weather the challenges it faces. It has hundreds of people who maintain traditional knowledge and ways, but the Cofan also need engineers, doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople if they hope to survive another 500 years. Education is one of our core missions. Please, if you have the interest or ability, consider donating to our Higher Education Project. We have brilliant young people finishing high school and looking to get a high-quality college degree. Without us, they can’t do it. Currently, the whole project runs on $50,000 a year. If we can no longer fund it, the long-term welfare of the Cofan Nation will be at tremendous risk.

 

If you’d like to discuss our Higher Education Project or anything else, feel free to write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. Once more, I’d like to remind you that our U.S.-based team is all-volunteer. Our board is always at work even though we have full-time jobs that put bread on our tables. 100% of your money goes to the staff and projects in Ecuador described above. Please help us keep them at work, as the future of a proud people and their rainforest homeland—which are essential to mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity—is essential to our future as well.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

January 2024

 

 

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Hello from—cold, hot?—San Antonio, Texas. Yesterday started off at 34 degrees but made it to 75 in the afternoon. The climate of Cofan territory is extreme, too, but 40-degree single-day shifts don’t happen there. Reportedly, Texas will return to the 20’s tomorrow, so I’ll definitely be dreaming of the Amazon.

 

Many of you likely have seen news of the ongoing political violence in Ecuador. In short, criminal gangs allied with Mexican cartels are battling for control of the country’s Pacific ports, from which they ship cocaine grown and processed in Colombia. Ecuador’s new president has declared an “internal war” against the gangs. The situation has calmed over the last week, but it’s a very uncertain time for Ecuador. Luckily, none of the turmoil has reached Cofan territory. But if the country slips into the instability that has plagued Colombia and Mexico, it will bring a whole new set of challenges to the Cofan. After all, the narco economy is closely tied to the mining economy, and mining is one of the main threats facing the Cofan and their land.

 

We have good news and bad news. First, the good. With the generous support of your donations and grants from the Azimuth Fund and the Houser Foundation, our Project Manager Felipe Borman has doubled his efforts to protect the Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve from gold miners. The Cofan Park Guard Program has returned to a level of activity it hasn’t seen for years. My long-term goal as CSF President has always been to extend the program to the entirety of Cofan territory.

 

Our Executive Director, Randy Borman, has well-set plans to move the guards into the Río Cofanes Territory as well as the community of Zábalo’s norther border area, both of which are experiencing illegal incursions. Now, all we need is Felipe’s continued direction and additional financial resources to purchase equipment and supplies, move Cofan guards over long distances, and compensate them for their risky work, which keeps them away from their families for months at a time.

 

Despite the good news about the Park Guard Program, the Cofan Nation continues to struggle with medical issues despite the important contributions made by our Seguro Campesino Project, which is largely supported by the All Peoples Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Louisville, Kentucky. (Thank you SO MUCH, All Peoples!) Seguro Campesino has already saved Cofan lives; it has also allowed Cofan people to see and walk again.

 

Today, Octavio Lucitante, a close friend in the community of Duvuno, called and told me he was diagnosed with stomach cancer this morning. Luckily, a CSF team went to his village last year and signed his family up for Seguro Campesino. The service will save him tens of thousands of dollars—which he doesn't have—and hopefully his life.

 

Seguro Campesino and supplementary health insurance have also saved Randy, who has earned the nickname “Lazarus." He has finally recovered from the health problems of the last two years: a heart attack, skin cancer, and urinary-tract and kidney infections that went septic. Without your donations, Randy and the rest of our CSF team in Ecuador would have no wages and no safety net to deal with medical emergencies.

 

Beyond the Seguro Campesino Project, our Ecuadorian team helps keep Cofan people alive and well in other ways. Not every Cofan person is signed up for Seguro Campesino; we have yet to bring the project to all communities for lack of resources, and some Cofan individuals are hesitant to sign up because of bureaucratic hurdles. For example, signing up sometimes means temporary lapses in small-but-important welfare payments mothers and elders already receive. We are trying to remedy the issue.

 

With personal funds, I and other members of the CSF team have worked hard to fill the gaps. The money is important, but the logistical skills of CSF staff in Ecuador make the real difference. I recently offered to pay for an elder’s cataract-removal surgery, which typically costs $3,000. But CSF’s trusty legal expert, Freddy Espinosa, was able to locate a high-quality medical-care facility in Quito that offered a “free week” of the surgery.

 

Freddy got the elder an appointment, I paid for his tests and travels, and Freddy paid for his food and arranged his lodging at CSF headquarters in Quito. Now, the elder is cataract-free in one eye. In a few months, he’ll get the same operation for his other eye. He’s overjoyed with the results and grateful for CSF support. When his operations are done, I’ve promised to arrange the same surgery for another elder.

 

All too often, however, things don’t work out as we wish they would. You might be wondering who the two beautiful elders are in the photo at the top of this newsletter. Their names are Elena Criollo and José Queta. They once lived in the Río Cofanes Territory, where they worked closely with the CSF to protect the area from miners. When our resources for their work dwindled, we could no longer compensate them. They returned to their home community and a life of fishing, hunting, gardening, gathering, and doing anything they could to make the small amount of money they needed.

 

Yesterday afternoon, Elena and José drowned while panning for gold in the headwaters of the Aguarico River. The river rose unexpectedly and their small canoe capsized. In the community of Sinangoe, Cofan people saw their bodies pass in the turbulent waters, but they were unable to retrieve them. The search for their remains is ongoing.

 

Unlike other miners, Cofan people use a handmade wooden tray, an iron rod, and manual labor to find small amounts of gold. There’s no machinery, no mercury, and no cyanide. It’s one of the most environmentally friendly “jobs” available to the Cofan. But it’s also dangerous. We have long been interested in promoting safe, sustainable, artisanal mining techniques for Cofan communities. Unfortunately, Elena and José passed away before we could create a way for them to earn the income they needed without putting their lives in jeopardy.

 

The CSF is a one-stop-shop for Cofan welfare. If we had the resources to implement all our projects, no Cofan person would be exposed to such dangers. No rivers would be despoiled by toxic mining. No communities would have to negotiate political turmoil without formally educated, Spanish-speaking leaders. No family would have to maneuver through a byzantine medical bureaucracy without adequate support. And the Cofan Nation could rest assured that their rainforest homeland would be protected far into the future—and that they would find ways to access the income they need without putting their bodies, rivers, and forests at risk.

 

There is much more to say, but it’s simply too urgent and emotional a time. All of us are grieving the loss of Elena and José, and we’re afraid for the health of Octavio. As soon as I send off this newsletter, I’ll turn to working with our CSF team in Quito to make sure Octavio gets the care he needs to survive his impending battle with cancer.

 

If you’d like to discuss any of our work or the challenges the Cofan Nation faces, feel free to write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. I’d be happy to speak to you about our project needs in our three core areas: land protection, healthcare, and education. I want to remind you that our U.S.-based team is all-volunteer. None of us receive a paycheck; rather, we donate our own money, as well as our time and energy, so CSF staff in Ecuador can make use of all your donations to get their work done. If you want to fight for the welfare of Indigenous Amazonian Peoples and the most biologically diverse, carbon-rich forests in the world, giving to the CSF is a great way to do it.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

November 2023

 

 

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Despite months between newsletters, the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) is alive and well! Each day, our Ecuadorian team continues and expands the work you’ve supported over the past two and a half decades: protecting the one-million-acre Cofan homeland, educating a new generation of Cofan leaders, and providing lifesaving medical care for members of the Cofan Nation.

 

Though CSF’s work has always been a collective effort, no one has been more important to it than Randy Borman, who is pictured above in his earlier years. Randy is founder of the CSF and Executive Director of our Ecuadorian counterpart, the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan. He is also one of the most celebrated Indigenous activists in Latin America. Cofan individuals and communities have elected him as their leader many times, first in the community of Dureno, then in Zábalo, and then as the President and Director of Territory of the Cofan ethnic federation. Over and over, the Cofan have relied on Randy to lead their fight for survival—and he continues to fight as hard as ever.

 

Randy’s battles for his people and their rainforest homeland, however, have taken a toll on his wellbeing. From the death threats of his early days fighting the oil industry to the kidnapping of his son Felipe during conflicts between the Cofan Park Guards and gold miners, Randy has had many reasons to give up, but he never has.

 

The costs to Randy’s body have been extreme; a life fighting for the forest comes at a steep price. 21 years ago, I was living with Randy in Quito when he suffered a near-fatal case of equine encephalitis. The fever raged for weeks, and Randy’s brain underwent severe trauma. With a destroyed pituitary gland, Randy has relied on hormone-replacement therapy ever since just to stay alive. The side effects are tough, but so is Randy.

 

Recently, the threats to Randy’s life have returned. A year ago, I wrote to let you know that Randy had suffered a heart attack. As always, he pulled through that health scare with grit and determination.

 

The last two months have been some of the hardest. Living on the equator and spending so much time on mountains and rivers and wetlands have damaged Randy’s skin. Years ago, doctors detected carcinoma (cancer) on Randy’s face, but they removed it before it spread. Two months ago, they discovered that the cancer had come back with a vengeance. Four carcinomas were deep and threatening to spread to other parts of Randy’s body. A week of surgeries and recuperation in the hospital put the cancer at bay. The cancerous flesh cut from Randy’s nose and ears left him looking like he’d been in a fight with a jaguar, but the scars are the perfect adornments for the kind of warrior Randy is.

 

Even though the cancer is gone, the experience put a great strain on Randy’s immune system. A month ago, he developed a urinary-tract infection that made it all the way into his kidneys. Then, his body went septic. So it was another week in the hospital so the doctors could keep him alive and get the infection under control. He survived the latest threat to his life just as he’s survived the others.

 

Many of you know Randy personally, which is why I wanted to give you this health report. I also wanted all of us to remember that Randy is an incredibly courageous and determined man. He did not ask for this life of service. Indeed, one of the great ironies of his life is that his battle for his people’s rainforest homeland has prevented him from enjoying it. Randy’s political work keeps him in cities and government offices, whereas what he’s always wanted is to fish, hunt, and tend his garden in Zábalo with his Cofan family and friends. Life in the forest is his true love.

 

I’ve never met a person as brave, determined, ethical, and selfless as Randy. When I poked my nose into his business in 2001 to start writing about the CSF for my dissertation in anthropology, Randy invited me to live with him and his family. He gave me total access to the organization’s records, reports, grant applications, and account books, and he let me tag along to all his meetings. He only made two demands. If I wanted to write about him and his work, he said, I had to learn the Cofan language A’ingae and spend at least a year in his home community of Zábalo to understand how other Cofan people feel about him, his leadership, and the CSF. The demands assured me of Randy’s honesty and authenticity. I can’t imagine many other leaders, Indigenous or not, making a similar offer.

 

Each of Randy’s brushes with death reminds me of all that he, the CSF, and the Cofan Nation have accomplished. No one thought the tiny “tribe” would survive the onslaught of the oil industry in the 1960’s, but they did. And then, often led directly by Randy, the Cofan went on to recuperate one million acres of their ancestral territory and to protect it more effectively than almost all other Indigenous Peoples—as well as Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment and National Park System. Many Cofan leaders have been essential to this story, but Randy has been the most important of them all.

 

You, our supporters, should rest assured that we’ve long been preparing for the day when Randy is no longer able to lead the fight. His son Felipe, armed with BA and MA degrees and fluency in English, Spanish, and A’ingae, is now managing most of our projects. CSF board member Hugo Lucitante, now working on his PhD in anthropology, will also be a key player in the future of the Cofan Nation. Gissela Yumbo received her BS in engineering with the support of our Cofan Higher Education Project, and she’s part of the Cofan team working to create a truly bicultural, high-quality curriculum for schools in Cofan communities. Raúl Queta, who received his MA in intercultural justice and the rights of nature with CSF support, is now working with Gissela through his position with Ecuador’s Ministry of Education. And there are many more Cofan youth ready to take over when Randy makes the decision to “retire.” Personally, though, I know that as long as he’s breathing, Randy will fight. It’s simply who he is.

 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. I wanted to write this newsletter to express my own incredible thankfulness for Randy and his invitation, offered three decades ago, to become part of his life and the Cofan struggle. Additionally, I’m thankful for the love and support of all my Cofan friends and collaborators. Finally, I’m very thankful for YOU. Without your aid, the Cofan Nation would be in a treacherous position; I hate to think what the oil companies, loggers, gold miners, narcotraffickers, and settlers would’ve done to Cofan people and territory without you.

 

All of you have played an essential role in the miraculous story of Cofan survival. With your continued support, the story will have many more chapters, each more affirming and hope-inspiring than the last. Few of us have put our lives on the line over and over again like Randy, but more than anyone else, he knows that none of his accomplishments would’ve been possible without you.

 

So please keep the support coming! Last year was one of the CSF’s most financially stable in a long time, but there’s so much more we could do if we had additional resources. Your contributions truly mean the difference between life and death for many Cofan people and all the beings that inhabit their homeland, the most biodiverse place on earth. Cofan land is also essential to all our futures given the increasingly dire climate crisis. If Cofan forests don’t continue to stand, we’ll all be in an extremely precarious position. Ultimately, Randy, the Cofan, and the CSF are fighting for the world’s survival, not just their own.

 

If you’d like to discuss a project, idea, or donation, feel free to write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. Right now, we have a particular interest in donors who can help fund our Cofan Higher Education Project. Jon Will and the Betty Louise Smith Fund have supported Cofan education for years, but their aid is coming to an end as they spend down their endowment. I’d be happy to speak to you about this need or anything else. I’m a big believer in the CSF: as a volunteer, I don’t just donate my time and energy to the CSF, I also donate my money. I’d like to tell you why that choice was one of the best ones I’ve ever made.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

July 2023

 

 

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,


Once again, I find myself writing a newsletter I should’ve sent months ago. To put it simply, we at the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) are overwhelmed with work and travel. Whether we’re U.S.-based volunteers searching for funding or Cofan activists using that funding to sustain our initiatives in Amazonia, we hardly get a day of rest. But to us, it’s well worth the effort.

Today, I write from the Andes Mountains and Ecuador’s capital city, Quito. Tomorrow, a Cofan family will arrive to stay with me. Others are already here. Some are CSF employees who are using your donations to fight for Cofan lands in government offices, and others are depending on your support to battle illnesses in Quito hospitals. In a week, I’ll be in the forest working with Cofan collaborators to finish research for a book on the role Cofan shamans play in protecting Cofan territory. Two more Cofan individuals—CSF board member Hugo Lucitante and project manager Felipe Borman—are in Leticia, Colombia. With their expenses paid by scholarships, they’re attending an academic conference to share Cofan lessons and accomplishments with Indigenous leaders, human rights activists, and anthropologists from around the world.

In my recent newsletters, I’ve described our important work in the realms of land rights, healthcare, and education. Today, I want to remind you of one of our smaller-scale efforts, but one that is equally essential: our partnership with the Cofan community of Zábalo to save two species of Amazonian river turtles, Podocnemis unifilis and Podocnemis expansa.

Zábalo residents began repopulating the Aguarico River with these threatened species decades ago. With creativity, determination, and the support of people like you, the turtle populations first stabilized and then grew. Not long ago, one could travel the entire Aguarico River and not see a single river turtle. Now, if you’re in Zábalo’s territory, you’ll see hundreds if not thousands sunning themselves on beaches and logs. The turtles are perfect symbols of how an Indigenous community, committed scientists, and international donors can collaborate to return an imperiled planet to health.

 

Zábalo residents devised their own method to save the turtles. Cofan people have long enjoyed eating river-turtle eggs, but when they realized how few turtles were left, they went into action. 30 years ago, they took the first steps to create what is now a proven process: first, prohibiting the capture of adult turtles; second, locating turtle nests and protecting them from flooding rivers; third, transplanting threatened nests to “artificial” beaches on high ground; fourth, putting newly hatched turtles into pools and feeding them for six to twelve months; and fifth, releasing the turtles into rivers and lakes after they have become strong and large enough to fend off predators. To see what the process looks like, watch this VIDEO from our project manager Felipe Borman.

 

As usual, Cofan ingenuity worked. The recovery of Zábalo’s river turtle populations is confirmed by everyday sightings, but scientific papers also document the Cofan’s success. In 2005, a Field Museum scientist and three Zábalo residents published “Cofán Indians’ Monitoring of Freshwater Turtles in Zábalo, Ecuador.” More recently, scientists from the World Wildlife Fund and Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity, together with nine Zábalo residents, wrote “Assessment of the Charapa Turtle (Pelomedusoidea: Podocnemis) Community Management Program in Zábalo, Ecuadorian Amazon Region.” Both articles share decades of Zábalo data to describe the power of Cofan conservation.



 

Zábalo’s success has inspired ecologists, environmental organizations, and Indigenous communities to replicate Cofan techniques. What was once an idea conceived in a remote Amazonian village has become an international model for conservation success. At a time when anyone who cares about the environment can use a dose of optimism, the Cofan are here to assure us that with the right support, Indigenous Peoples can maintain biodiversity and protect forests in ways that will ensure a more sustainable future for us all.

 





 

The CSF is a “one-stop shop”: by giving to us, you’re aiding the survival of everything from newborn river turtles, to one million acres of rainforest territory, to two thousand Cofan individuals who are fighting to maintain their health, knowledge, language, culture, and autonomy. With your help, the Cofan will survive another 500 years as a thriving Indigenous Nation that will inspire us to imagine—and create—a world in which cultural and biological diversity are not doomed to disappear.

 

Against the odds, the Cofan have survived epidemic diseases, voracious extractive industries, and waves of non-Indigenous settlers who want to deforest Cofan land to produce beef, coffee, and palm oil. The great bulk of the credit belongs to the Cofan, but the generosity of individuals like you has played an important role in this miraculous story. As always, the Cofan want us to know that their fight is our fight. If they fail in their struggle, we’ll lose the biodiversity, freshwater resources, and climate-change-mitigating forests that are essential to us all.

 

Few other organizations work as efficiently as we do. Our U.S.-based nonprofit is an all-volunteer force. Our Ecuadorian team puts your donations to direct use. We don’t have bulky overhead: no do-nothing administrators, no public-relations teams, and no program consultants. In the U.S., we work hard to find funds; in Ecuador, Cofan people know exactly what to do with them. Our operating budget is less than a tenth of similar organizations, yet we believe our accomplishments are ten times as great.

 

Whether you give $10 or $10,000, know that you’re playing an essential role in the Cofan’s success. If you’d like to discuss what your gift can accomplish, write me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu so we can schedule a conversation. I’m always happy to speak to existing and potential supporters. I don’t just donate my time and energy to the CSF, I also donate my money—and I’d like to tell you why that choice was one of the best ones I’ve ever made.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

April 2023

 

 

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

 

Hello, dear supporters. It’s been months since we at the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) have sent an update. And that’s partially because we’ve been so busy! We’ve been working nonstop: helping Cofan people battle illegal gold miners, protecting Cofan land rights in court, enrolling Cofan families in healthcare and eldercare programs, managing community-conservation projects, and convincing the Ecuadorian state to put park-guard positions and carbon-sequestration revenues in the hands of Cofan people.

 

Some very sad news has also diverted our attention. At least two Cofan elders have died since we last wrote. In addition, a Cofan leader in the community of Dureno—Eduardo Mendua—was killed in February. His death was part of the Cofan’s long struggle to survive the horrors of oil extraction. We knew Eduardo well. We’re monitoring the situation closely and ready to help in any way we can.

 

Thinking about the recent tragedies has made us realize that everything we do could disappear overnight if we don’t have a new generation prepared to take control. Our Cofan Higher Education Project, which helps Cofan students obtain undergraduate and graduate degrees, is one way to ensure our long-term stability. We also help younger Cofan students acquire world-class educations in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. But not all Cofan children can be part of these programs. We don’t have enough resources to pay their way. Additionally, many Cofan children don’t want to live away from their families and communities for years on end.

 

 

Cultural Transmission Project

 

To meet the needs of these students, we’ve begun a new effort: the Cultural Transmission Project (CTP). With generous support from Chicago’s First Analysis Institute, a team of three Cofan women is combining Cofan and Western knowledge to create high-quality, primary-school curricula that will prepare Cofan children to negotiate a rapidly changing world while maintaining their identity and culture.

 

The women directing the CTP are perfectly positioned. Amelia Quenamá is an elder born and raised in traditional Cofan ways. Gissela Yumbo graduated through our Cofan Higher Education Project with a degree in engineering and is a shining example of how capable Cofan students are when given a chance. And Emmy Borman has substantial teaching experience and an MA in early-childhood education. Working alongside them is Raúl Queta—another graduate of our Cofan Higher Education Project—who currently works for Ecuador’s Ministry of Education. Raúl is ready to help these women make sure their curricula receive official approval to be taught in community schools.

 

The CTP team is dedicated to truly bicultural education. Its members are interviewing Cofan people to determine what it means to be Cofan yet is in danger of being lost, including language, ecological knowledge, traditional medicine, handicraft production, subsistence practices, and Cofan foodways. With the data they collect, the CTP team is developing course modules and lesson plans. Cofan children can learn geometry as they produce palm-fiber thread and weave it into the intricate patterns of bags and hammocks. They can learn biology and ecology as they master Cofan hunting and fishing techniques. And they can learn botany and chemistry as they prepare dozens of Cofan plant medicines.

 

The idea is simple yet powerful: the right educational program can ensure the continuity of Cofan culture while preparing forest-dwelling students to handle a new world. Many will obtain high-school degrees and become valuable members of their communities. Others will move on to college to learn new languages and specialized skills, eventually becoming globally capable leaders. We hope the most dedicated follow the lead of Cofan students Hugo and Sadie Lucitante, who are now earning PhD’s in anthropology with me at the University of Texas at San Antonio. They are already preparing to manage a research and conservation organization allied with the CSF.

 

Despite the CTP’s incredible progress, it needs more resources—time, personnel, equipment, and financing—to reach its potential. Amelia, Gissela, and Emmy are collecting a tremendous amount of data in the form of audio interviews, video recordings, written notes, photographs, and pedagogical materials. They need to organize it in an easily accessible database, which will require additional computers, expensive software, and other equipment.

 

Ecuador’s Ministry of Education has always acknowledged the importance of bilingual and bicultural education. But the materials it produces are insufficient to meet Cofan needs. It’s up to the CSF to take on a responsibility that no one else can handle. The CTP’s work will never end: culture and circumstances change, and education must change along with them. But we hope that in the next few years, we’ll have a model that can aid Indigenous Peoples the world over.

 

 

 

Serving the World

 

As the CSF constantly stresses, the Cofan aren’t doing this work just for themselves, they’re doing it for all of us. Protecting their forests will maintain essential biodiversity and facilitate climate-change-mitigation strategies for everyone. The success of the CTP will help other Indigenous Peoples use schooling to assure their survival and protect their own lands.

 

To make sure the CTP and all CSF projects succeed, we need your aid. 2022 was one of our best fundraising years to date. Yet we still aren’t halfway to our goal of securing $250,000 a year to cover our core personnel and missions. Though it sounds substantial, that sum amounts to protecting each acre of the Cofán homeland for only $.25 a year. Few other organizations work as efficiently as we do.

 

Donating $100 or $1,000 a month is a highly effective way to secure the future of the earth and its biological and cultural diversity. Despite its successes, the CSF operates on a shoestring budget that is anything but stable. Our U.S.-based fundraising and communication team works on an all-volunteer basis. We wish we had the money to hire a full-time director, development coordinator, and communications team, but we don’t. Instead, every dime the CSF gets goes directly to Ecuador and the Cofan, who know exactly what to do with it.

 

You can help the Cofan protect their culture, health, and territory--and our own future--by contributing to the CSF online by clicking the “donate” button below or going to our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

 

If you’d like to discuss the possibility of making a substantial commitment, feel free to contact me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu. I’m always happy to hear from our supporters and tell them why I’ve made the choice to donate so much of my own time and money to the CSF.

 

Finally, I wanted to share one more piece of good news: my partnership with the Cofan Nation recently helped me win a Guggenheim Fellowship. A Guggenheim is a prestigious award for individuals working across the arts and sciences. In my case, it’s also a tremendous recognition of the importance of the Cofan struggle. With the announcement of the new Guggenheim Fellows, many individuals will see the words “Cofan” and “Cofan Survival Fund” for the first time. We hope the news will gain us more supporters; we also hope it will increase your own confidence in how much the Cofan and the CSF mean to the world.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Cofan Newsletter December 2022

 

 

Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

 

With the holiday season upon us, I wanted to send one final end-of-the-year newsletter. Our November message told you how much the CSF has accomplished this year. In this note, I want to give you a more focused, visual report of one of our most important current projects: our effort to remove illegal gold miners from the Reserva Ecológica Cofán-Bermejo (Cofan-Bermejo Ecological Reserve) (RECB), a stunningly beautiful, incredibly diverse, and highly endangered area of approximately 140,000 acres that the Cofan Nation controls along Ecuador's northern border with Colombia.

 

The photos in this newsletter were taken by Felipe Borman, a long-time Cofan coordinator of our Ecuador work and also a recent participant in our Cofan Higher Education Project. Felipe is just finishing his MA degree in rural territorial development. While completing his graduate studies, Felipe and other members of our Ecuadorian team worked with 17 members of the Cofan communities of Avié and Chandia Na'e, both located inside the RECB, to help them learn how to become the highly effective caretakers their territory needs. For four days, these Cofan ecological stewards traveled far from their rainforest homes to stay in our Ecuadorian headquarters, which are located in the national capital of Quito. There, they underwent intense training sessions on how to negotiate the Ecuadorian legal system, how to use GPS units to map threats to their homeland, how to treat medical emergencies in back-country conditions, and how to carry out a patrolling plan to protect their territory and confront the illegal intruders who are trying to destroy it.

 

For two months, this new Cofan park guard team will reestablish the RECB boundary trails, confront miners and other forest intruders, generate reports on their work, coordinate with Ecuador's Ministry of Environment, and chart a path forward for the long-term care of their territory. They are in the field right now, and they will return to share what they've learned with our Ecuadorian staff on December 18th. This initial round of their work is funded by one of the CSF's most dependable partners, the Azimuth World Foundation.

 

In the below photos, you can get an intimate sense of what it looks like to save one of the world's most precious environments, which is heart of the Cofan Nation's ancestral homeland.

 

The beautiful peaks, valleys, and forests of the RECB. In 2001, a team of scientists from the Field Museum of Natural History carried out a scientific inventory of the area and determined that it is the most biologically diverse landscape in the world.

 


At the end of their training session in Quito, the members of our new RECB park guard team receive certificates that attest to their mastery of essential forest-protection knowledge and skills.

 


An employee of Ecuador's Ministry of Environment works with our Cofan team in Quito to pinpoint areas near the RECB where illegal gold-mining activities are known to be occurring.

 


Freddy Espinosa, our team's legal expert, explains key aspects of Ecuadorian environmental and Indigenous-rights law to training participants.

 

Participants receive special training on how to handle medical emergencies in remote areas, which are days and miles from roads, doctors, and hospitals. The park guard work is a necessity, but it's also incredibly dangerous. These people are literally laying their lives on the line to protect lands that are essential to their way of life but also essential to sequestering the carbon upon which the entire earth's future depends.

 


Felipe Borman (wearing a pink shirt in the center), helps the new Cofan park guards learn how to use GPS units that will be key to their work clearing the RECB boundaries and locating illegal mining operations.

 

Randy Borman, our Ecuadorian team's Executive Director, provides a lesson on the RECB's historical and political background to training participants.

 

After their training is complete, the guards travel back to their communities inside the RECB and prepare to begin their work in the forest.

 

A new Cofan park guard fords one of the RECB's many pristine streams, which are under direct threat from the mining invasion.

 

Cesar Lucitante, a member of the community of Avié with a long history of forest protection, maps a point with a GPS unit.

 

The park guards work in extremely rough terrain, carrying incredibly heavy packs filled with food and equipment and establishing temporary camps as they travel through the RECB.

 

Four Cofan guards take a moment to rest and relax after a day of hard work.

 


Cofan guards walk through a riverbed along the RECB boundaries to map another point with a GPS unit.

 

This initial effort to reestablish a Cofan park guard presence at the RECB will make an incredible difference to the future of this protected area. Knowing that the Cofan are organized, watching, and coordinating with the Ecuadorian government will convince many miners that it is no longer worth the risk to engage in their criminal activities. But we can't be naive: even if they leave, many will try to come back.

 

More than a decade ago, when the CSF still had strong relations with institutional donors including the MacArthur Foundation, USAID, and the Moore Fund, we were able to sustain a team of 50 Cofan park guards who maintained a full-time presence throughout the Cofan Nation's entire legalized territory: more than one million acres. After the global recession of 2008, these organizations gradually withdrew their support of our Park Guard Program. As CSF President, one of my personal goals has been to resurrect the entire program at full strength. To do so, we need at least $250,000 each year--an extremely modest sum, as it requires only $.25 to ensure the future of one acre of this precious portion of Amazonia. Protecting this land requires money: for equipment, logistics, communication, transportation, legal actions, and, most importantly, for our Cofan stewards. The guards have to spend months at a time away from their homes and families, leaving the latter without members who can hunt, fish, garden, gather, and engage in temporary wage labor to support the ones they love. When the park guards are working in distant lands to fight off miners, settlers, and loggers, they cannot be in their communities to care for their families. Consequently, we at the CSF have learned the hard lesson that our Cofan guards deserve a modest paycheck for their work. Without one, they cannot sustain their parents, spouses, and children, and none of us would ever ask them to make such an awful sacrifice.

 

All of the CSF's initiatives, including our new RECB park guard program, require resources that only the outside world can supply. The Cofan are an extremely rich people when it comes to their lands and their culture. But financially, they are some of the poorest people in the world. They could never sustain these efforts on their own. That is why it up to us--to you--to give them the tools they need to care for their homeland. All of us want the biodiversity of Cofan territory to survive. All of us want the Cofan to protect the forests and rivers that are essential to maintaining essential climatological and hydrological systems. And all of us want to mitigate global climate change, which will one day make our own lives in North America, Europe, and everywhere else impossible unless we do something to stop it. It's time for us to give the Cofan what they need to keep us and the entire world safe.

 

You can help the Cofan protect their culture, health, and territory--and our own future--by contributing to the CSF online by clicking the “donate” button below or going to our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

 

If you have any questions about our work, or if you’d like to discuss the possibility of making a larger commitment, feel free to contact me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu. I'm always happy to speak to actual or potential funders of the CSF's initiatives. After all, I donate part of my own income to the CSF, and my work as CSF President is completely voluntary. If you're curious about my more academic involvements with the Cofan Nation, feel free to consult my PERSONAL WEBPAGE.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

November Update

Cofan Survival Fund - Close Call and a New Year

 Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,
I write with unsettling news. Last weekend, Randy Borman, the Executive Director of the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofan (FSC), our Ecuadorian counterpart, suffered a heart attack. After the insertion of two stents and a short stay in the hospital, he returned to his house near Quito. I spoke with Randy on Friday via Zoom. To my great relief, he seemed fine. The doctors say his prognosis is good. Thankfully, he got treatment just in time. If he were in his rainforest community of Zábalo, I’d probably be writing a very different kind of letter

I hesitated to share this news with you, but I know how close many of you are with Randy. And the fact is that the CSF would not exist without him. He worked with U.S. allies to found our organization in the late 1990s to have a nonprofit vehicle for his fight to save the Cofan homeland and way of life. Randy has been leading this fight since the 1970s.

For those of you unfamiliar with Randy’s story, he was born in Amazonian Ecuador to North American missionary-linguists. He grew up in the Cofan community of Dureno, speaking the Cofan language and hunting with a blowgun. Despite his Euro-American heritage, Cofan people accepted him as one of their own. He married a Cofan woman and had three beautiful Cofan children. He was one of Dureno’s first elected leaders. With other Cofan activists, he secured the community’s land title in the late 1970s, just as the oil industry began to show the Cofan how destructive it would be. By the mid-1980s, Randy and his Cofan allies left Dureno in search of forests and rivers unaltered by oil. They found them on the land that became Zábalo. Randy was Zábalo’s first elected president and remained so for many years; currently, he’s the community’s vice-president. In the 1990s, Ecuador’s Cofan population elected Randy as president of their ethnic federation, which represents them all.

I’ve known Randy since 1994. That year, I interviewed him about his leadership of Zábalo’s struggle to eject an oil company from its territory. Randy and other community members kidnapped oil workers, burned their heliports, and took over an exploratory drilling rig. After a tense standoff with the Ecuadorian military, Randy and the Cofan won. The company left. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first time an Indigenous community had successfully removed an oil company from its land. As a 20-year-old anthropology student and environmental activist, I wanted to figure out how Randy and the people of Zábalo did it. At a time when I was deeply pessimistic, Randy and the Cofan gave me real hope for the future of the world’s biological and cultural diversity.

With Randy’s leadership, the Cofan have accomplished so much. People thought the Cofan would disappear after the oil industry invaded their territory in the 1960s. Instead, over the next four decades Randy led the Cofan’s struggle to achieve legal control of over one million acres of their rainforest homeland, the most biodiverse place on earth. On newly titled lands, Randy created models for community ecotourism and conservation programs that became essential to Cofan lifeways. Randy also created the Cofan Park Guard Program, which ensured a rate of zero deforestation in legalized Cofan territory. It’s no exaggeration to say that Randy and the CSF have been essential to the survival of the Cofan as a thriving Indigenous People with a homeland that, for the moment, is secure.

Randy’s accomplishments have come at a price. Over the decades, he’s faced death threats from actors who want to profit from Cofan territory’s natural resources. While doing conservation work in 2002, Randy developed a near-fatal case of equine encephalitis. As a leader of the Cofan Park Guard Program, Randy’s oldest son Felipe was kidnapped in 2012. (Luckily, he escaped after 40 days in captivity.) There are still parts of Ecuador where Randy cannot travel because the Cofan’s enemies are determined to stop his activism by any means necessary. And now, the years of constant threats, stress, and grueling treks to protect Cofan territory have culminated in the heart attack that nearly took Randy’s life.

Randy will continue to be part of the Cofan’s fight for their territory and way of life until the day he dies. But no one knows when that will happen. That’s why the CSF has been supporting Cofan education projects since its inception. The Cofan know that without leaders like Randy and organizations like the CSF, their future is far too uncertain. As a Cofan man from Zábalo once said to me in his native language, “Vendi pa’nin’jan, ma’caen ingi canse’faya?” (If Randy dies, how will we survive?).

Reproducing Randy’s political skills in the next generation of Cofan leaders has always been a primary CSF objective. The Cofan need leaders who can speak English, Spanish, and the Cofan language; leaders who are just as comfortable hunting tapirs in Amazonian forests as they are confronting government officials and oil-company executives in contentious urban meetings; leaders who know Ecuador’s legal and political system well enough to secure Cofan land titles and advocate for laws and policies that benefit all Indigenous Peoples; and leaders capable of attracting the aid of international allies—allies like you—to sustain the Cofan struggle.

With years of your support, the Cofan have developed an incredibly promising group of young scholars and activists who are almost ready to take over Randy’s work. As you’ve seen in previous newsletters, Gissela Yumbo now has an engineering degree with a focus on health. Carlos Descanse is in university studying tourism, an essential, ecologically benign income-generator for Cofan communities. Felipe Borman will finish his MA in rural territorial development, and Raúl Quieta will complete his own MA in intercultural justice and the rights of nature. Finally, Hugo and Sadie Lucitante are pursuing doctoral degrees in anthropology here at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where I’m advising them. They plan to return to Cofan territory and use their Ph.D.’s to protect the traditional knowledge, cultural heritage, and economic livelihoods of their people.

I once heard an old friend of Randy’s call him “Randy ‘Lazarus’ Borman.” He’ll bounce back from his heart attack as he has from all his other near-death experiences. But he won’t be here forever. That’s why I’m urging you to continue supporting the CSF. Our near-term goal is to protect Cofan territory; our longer-term goal is to help produce new Cofan leaders who will carry Randy’s and the Cofan’s struggles forward. Randy has been essential to what the Cofan have accomplished so far; future Cofan activists will produce achievements of their own. With our support, I have no doubt they will be successful.

So please keep giving to the CSF, and if possible, increase your level of support. Your contributions are more important now than ever. Let’s help Randy do all he can while the world can still benefit from his efforts. And let’s help equip the Cofan youths who will take his place with the best training available. Nearly five centuries ago, the Cofan survived the Spanish Conquest. Not long before that, they withstood the Inka’s attempted takeover of their homeland. I’m convinced that with the support of each and every one of us, Cofan people—with their language, their culture, and their precious rainforest territory intact—will be here for another 500 years. With climate change intensifying, all our lives depend on Indigenous Peoples’ protection of their forests. The Cofan are on the frontlines, but the rest of us are right behind them.

While our fundraising has been substantial in 2021, we are not even halfway to our goal of securing the $250,000 that the FSC needs to cover its core projects each year. We need more funds to maximize the effectiveness of Randy’s “Rapid Response Team,” whose political and legal work from Quito to the farthest corners of Cofan territory is never-ending. We need more funds to give additional Cofan students the opportunity to get undergraduate and graduate degrees in Ecuador’s best universities. And we need more funds for our “smaller” projects: enrolling more Cofan families in Ecuador’s “Seguro Campesino” healthcare system, creating a new reserve in the Andean foothills near the town of Cuyuja, starting a program to ensure the effective transmission of cultural knowledge from elder Cofan women to young Cofan girls, and sustaining the success of our Charapa Project, which has brought endangered river turtles back from the brink of local extinction while providing income to impoverished Cofan households. Finally, our long-term dream is to revive the Cofan Park Guard Program, which at one point had 50 Cofan rangers patrolling the entirety of Cofan territory to stop the illegal activities of miners, loggers, and other forest destroyers. Unfortunately, the money simply isn’t there. One day, we believe the world will pay Indigenous Peoples the money they deserve--and need--for their time-, energy-, and resource-consuming work to maintain the ecosystems on which our planet’s health depends. But we’re not there yet. Until that day arrives, people like me and you need to help the Cofan as much as we can.

You can join the fight by contributing to the CSF online by clicking the “donate” button below or going to our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

The CSF is a completely volunteer-run organization. We have no overhead. All your donations go directly to the initiatives, programs, and projects Randy and his Cofan allies lead. If you have any questions about our work, or if you'd like to discuss the possibility of making a larger commitment, feel free to contact me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

Cofan Survival Fund November 2021 Newsletter

Earlier this year, I shared the CSF’s proposed “Stability Fund.” Based on internal studies, we’ve decided we need to provide Randy Borman and our other Cofan partners approximately $250,000 a year so they can do their most essential work. There are two “core missions” the money covers: 

A rapid-response team based in Quito, with political, legal, and logistical capabilities to act across Cofan territory. This team maintains constant alertness to changing laws, policies, and events at national, provincial, and municipal levels to prevent incursions into the Cofan homeland, solidify and expand Cofan land rights, establish new conservation areas, and seize on opportunities to secure governmental and nongovernmental funding for forest protection.

High-quality education for promising Cofan students. Elementary, secondary, and university education programs are essential for Cofan youth to bolster their mastery of the Cofan language and cultural traditions, help them learn Spanish and English for fluid interaction with the outside world, and specialize in legal, scientific, and other fields to negotiate the long-term security of Cofan culture and forests in the 21st century. Education ensures new generations of strong, globally capable Cofan leaders.

I want to make a major announcement: your increased donations have put us over the $100,000 mark to sustain these core missions. That’s INCREDIBLE progress; we’re so thankful for your support. But it also means we have plenty of work to do. The goal is to support the core missions with our Stability Fund for the next decade. After that, based on our analysis of global trends, we believe the market for carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services will provide enough support to fund the Cofan’s core missions and major projects. To access those future funds, however, we must make sure Cofan territory and people remain in position to get them. And that’s where your donations are essential. Without them, we cannot ensure the protection of the Cofan's rainforest territory for even the next ten years.

Although we must cover the Cofan’s core missions first, we’re always searching for grant opportunities to fund other projects, whether they involve community-based conservation initiatives like the River Turtle Repopulation Project or our commitment to return the Cofan Park Guard Program to full force. But without the Cofan’s Rapid Response Team and Education Project, the present operations and long-term sustainability of our Cofan partners’ efforts cannot be assured.

If we can get 15 more people to give $10,000 per year, we’ll have our core missions covered. If we can get 30 to commit $5,000 annually, we could do the same. Of course, we deeply appreciate everyone who can only give smaller gifts, which have sustained much of our work over the past two and a half decades. All our CSF board members make sizable annual donations to the organization. Some exceptionally generous individuals have given tremendous amounts to keep the Cofan’s core missions in operation. But we need others to step up for the welfare of Cofan people and for the future of our global climate and the earth’s biological and cultural diversity.

In anticipation of the holiday season and Giving Tuesday, please consider the CSF and the Cofan while deciding to whom you will donate. I’ve been working with the Cofan Nation for nearly three decades. As a professor, I’ve studied the Cofan’s core missions and other projects in great detail. Based on all my work, I have complete faith in the power and practicality of the Cofan vision for protecting their people and rainforest territory. Remember, our annual Stability Fund amounts to $250,000, which means that we’re offering an opportunity to protect the Cofan's one million acres of legalized territory, some of the most precious lands in the world, for the cost of $.25/acre. That amount is an extremely low sum compared to resources requested by other international conservation organizations. I can’t think of a wiser investment for all who care about the future of our planet and its best custodians: Indigenous People like the Cofan.

A gift to the CSF directly aids the Cofan Nation; as a U.S.-based fundraising organization, we have no overhead, and all your contributions go directly to the Cofan people who know exactly what to do with them. You can contribute online by clicking the “donate” button below or going to our website: www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

As always, if you have questions about the CSF or would like more information on what exactly the Cofan could accomplish with a larger gift, email me directly at michael.cepek@utsa.edu.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

 

Cofan Survival Fund September 2021 Newsletter

Greetings Cofan Survival Fund Supporters!

As Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) President, I’m writing to thank you once more for your support and to let you know what we’re accomplishing with it. This month, I want to share a letter of appreciation to the CSF from Raúl Quieta, a young Cofan father who is participating in our “Cofan Higher Education Project.” The program receives substantial funding from the Betty Lou Smith Fund of Chicago, which has done so much for the Cofan Nation. Yet our existing funding is not enough. It cannot support all Cofan students who want to pursue higher educations in Ecuador’s best universities. Nor can it cover the rest of the CSF’s costs as we struggle to protect Cofan territory and the Cofan way of life, which are constantly threatened by mining, logging, and oil production at ever-increasing rates.

Raúl has proven himself to be a hardworking student and a dedicated defender of the Cofan Nation. We know that with continuing aid, he will finish his studies and return to help his community. In my English translation of his letter, Raúl—who appears in the picture above alongside his daughter Mia and his son Max— writes:

“I want to thank each one of you for the support you’re providing to the Cofan Higher Education Project, which is helping me and my two elementary-school children. The project pays for our enrollment, tuition, and living expenses in Quito.

“My name is Raúl Quieta, and I’m from the Cofan community of Duvuno. Working toward my degree is the most challenging time of my life. I’m completing an MA program in the “Rights of Nature and Intercultural Justice” at the University Andina Simón Bolívar. The program lasts two years and is divided into seven modules. Six modules consist of classes that last three months each, and the last module includes six months of fieldwork. I began my classes in October 2020, and I will finish them in March 2022. My fieldwork will be completed in October 2022, when I will graduate with my MA. My thesis project in my home community will focus on ecological and social threats. I’ve entitled it ‘Large-Scale Logging of Primary Forest and Challenges Associated with the Planting of Taro Cash Crops in the Ancestral Cofan Community of Duvuno.’

“In addition, I want to thank you for the support you’re providing for the primary educations of my daughter and son, Mia and Max. They’re also receiving economic help from the CSF. It’s an important form of aid for my family. The only way to make my education work is to have my wife and children with me, and my children need to be in school, too.

“Having a family shouldn’t impede one’s educational progress; with effort, determination, and dedication, we can overcome all the obstacles standing in our way. Financial aid is essential, as the principal limitations for Cofan people studying in the city are economic. This aid permits Cofan students to reach their dream: obtaining degrees from prestigious universities. I hope that the Cofan Higher Education Project will continue to help even more Cofan students in the future.

“When I finish my MA degree, I’m committed to helping Cofan communities. I plan to create community-development projects that will involve all village residents in environmental conservation efforts, which will benefit them directly and also ensure the welfare of the entire Cofan population.

“With sincere thanks, Raúl Quieta, Cofan MA Student”

As they witness the success of the Cofan Higher Education Project, more and more Cofan youths hope to enter the program to get their degrees and become the skilled leaders their communities need. The CSF is absolutely committed to helping them on their educational paths. Unfortunately, we need more funding to do so. Having six Cofan students with high-quality educations—our current number in the project—will be a tremendous asset for the Cofan Nation. But 20 students with BA’s and MA’s would help to create even more innovative solutions to protect Cofan people and their rainforest territory. Increasing resource extraction and devasting climate change are not slowing down, and the Cofan need to take steps to combat them now. We at the CSF are doing our best to confront these problems, but many Cofan people in Ecuador are eager to join the fight. Only university educations will allow them to become truly effective global activists.

To support the Cofan Higher Education Project and our other work, please consider donating to the CSF or increasing your existing donation. A gift to the CSF directly aids the Cofan Nation; we have no overhead, and all your contributions go directly to where they’re needed most. You can contribute online by credit card by clicking on our website:  www.cofan.org. Or you can mail a check to: Cofan Survival Fund, 53 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302. Another way to give, if you shop at amazon.com, is to go to smile.amazon.com and select the Cofan Survival Fund as your designated charity. Then, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of every one of your purchases to the CSF.

 

Sincerely,

Michael L. Cepek, CSF President

CSF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. For gifts of $250 and larger, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.