Dear Cofan Survival Fund Supporters,

Hello, friends. Our work at the Cofan Survival Fund (CSF) never ceases. Our U.S. branch is an entirely volunteer-run organization, which is a testament to our dedication but also the reason for our occasional communication delays. I want to let you know about all the work we’ve been doing over the past two months--beware, the list is long!

Our effort to remove hundreds of illegal gold miners from the Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve proceeds apace. Our Ecuadorian team just ran a four-day training session for 17 Cofan park guards from the communities of Chandia Na’en and Avié, who are suffering the brunt of mining-related violence and contamination. Now, they’ve acquired all the practical, logistical, legal, and first-aid knowledge—and equipment—they need. Their work is supported by the Azimuth World Foundation, which has also produced multimedia materials to share the Cofan’s story. Please go to the WEBSITE they created for our partnership and send its beautiful videos to everyone you know! Special thanks go to Indigenous photographer Kiliii Yuyan and Cofan elders Mercedes Quenamá and Etalvina Queta for the images and songs on the site. As our partnership continues, Azimuth will create more communication materials for us; expect a series of podcasts with Randy Borman, Felipe Borman, and myself (Michael Cepek) in the coming weeks.

Our collaboration with All Peoples Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Louisville, Kentucky, is also strengthening. An All Peoples team traveled to Ecuador in October to work with Cofan women’s organizations. They provided needed healthcare goods and information to the communities of Dureno and Zábalo. Cofan women were ecstatic with All Peoples’ efforts, and they’ve already asked for a repeat visit. All Peoples has also begun supporting our Seguro Campesino Project, which aims to provide healthcare and eldercare to Ecuador’s entire Cofan population. So far, All Peoples has funded the enrollment of 50 Cofan families in the program. The Cofan are battling illnesses associated with mining, oil extraction, and the onslaught of the Western world, yet they lack access to high-quality healthcare. The Seguro Campesino Project will solve that problem.

We have a new initiative to share: the Cofan Cultural Transmission Project. This effort is funded by the First Analysis Institute and involves a multigenerational team of Cofan women creating content for Cofan schools based on traditional cultural knowledge. Our team is interviewing Cofan people to understand what elements of their heritage they fear losing. The team is then collecting the necessary information from elders and using it to formulate a Cofan-centered bilingual curriculum, which we will present to Ecuador’s Ministry of Education for approval. Ecuador has long supported the concept of bilingual and bicultural education, but it has struggled to put the idea into practice. Our Cofan Cultural Transmission Project promises to change that. We are convinced our team’s methodology and curriculum will become a model for all Indigenous Peoples who want future generations to maintain their way of life in a rapidly changing world.

An especially promising development for the Cofan Cultural Transmission Project is that Raúl Queta—a participant in our Cofan Higher Education Project who is finishing his MA degree—recently began working for the Ministry of Education. Raúl’s example shows why higher education is a core CSF mission: we want a cadre of Cofan individuals with the best degrees available to become the Cofan Nation’s own teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, environmental scientists, and anthropologists. The Betty Lou Smith Fund is supporting our first group of Cofan undergraduate and graduate students, who will soon finish. Now it’s time to find a new donor to fund the next group of students. Without globally capable leaders who know Western and Cofan ways and can speak Cofan, Spanish, and English, the Cofan Nation will not have the defenders it needs.

Randy and our Ecuadorian team continue the legal battle to sustain Ecuador’s Socio Bosque Program, which provides Cofan communities funding to protect segments of their ecologically intact territory. Randy is also spearheading the effort to create a new protected area at the far southwestern edge of the Cofan homeland. The area is filled with Andean spectacled bears and mountain tapirs. If Randy succeeds in securing the area, it will be a massive victory for global conservation. In addition, it will represent an important opportunity for ecotourism, an environmentally sustainable activity that has supported Cofan families for decades.

Despite the good news, serious challenges remain. Our Ecuadorian team is still without the all-terrain vehicles it needs to work in the remotest parts of Cofan territory; many of their efforts are delayed as a result. If any of you would like to help purchase a 4x4 truck as a Christmas gift for our Ecuadorian team, please let us know. Even more importantly, though we’ve been able to secure funding for individual projects, our core Ecuadorian staff continue to go months without paychecks. Theirs is a labor of love, but they cannot do the work or survive economically without funding. Now that a group of young Cofan individuals have acquired their graduate degrees, it’s time for a new generation of activists to lead the CSF. Randy is as committed as ever, but he’s getting close to a well-deserved retirement. He’s dedicated his life to protecting the Cofan homeland, and it’s time for him to return to the life he always wanted: hunting, fishing, and gardening in the Amazon rainforest.

We would like to pay our Ecuadorian team’s Cofan Executive Director what amounts to a poverty wage in the U.S. but is a sufficient salary in Ecuador: $2,000/month. Ideally, we’d like to offer this salary not just to one Cofan director but to two or three, as the CSF’s workload is immense. We have the candidates, now we just need the funds. These leaders will be putting much of their paychecks right back into CSF projects to buy equipment, maintain vehicles, and make emergency trips to the far corners of their homeland. At the same time, they’ll need to support their spouses and children, most of whom will have to live and attend school in Quito, which is incredibly expensive for Cofan families, who are used to depending on the forest to grow and harvest nearly everything they need. If we cannot find the money to provide our Cofan staff a living wage, our long string of victories for Indigenous rights and environmental conservation might come to an end. Please keep this need in mind when considering your giving plans this holiday season.

You can help us protect Cofan culture, health, and territory 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. As a professor of anthropology who has worked with the Cofan for nearly 30 years, I don’t get paid to serve as President of the CSF, but it’s the most important thing I do. I’m always happy to hear from our supporters. It’s not just about helping the Cofan; it’s about giving them the tools to protect the forests that our global climate—our entire future—depends on.

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.