Country: Ecuador

Group: Cofan

Date Finalized: 4/12/2020

Team: Kimberly Prete (lead), Arisha Khan, Alicia Hernandez

The Cofan are one of three indigenous groups in Ecuador located within the Amazon forest. Their way of life is dependent on the forest where they can hunt and fish. Since their first contact with Europeans in 1536, they have intermittent contact with outsiders trying to colonize and missionize the area (Borman, 1996). Since the 1960s, they have been impacted by the use of their land for oil extraction (Cepek, 2018; Cepek, 2016; Cofan Survival Fund, 2016). Recently, they were involved in lawsuits against Texaco-Chevron in order to receive reparations for environmental destruction (COHA, 2010). The environmental destruction has caused the Cofan to have to change from their traditional way of getting food into eating processed food (COHA, 2010). In 2018, this case finally made it to court where it was decided that the oil companies mined without consultation on the Cofan’s ancestral land which is a violation of their right (COHA, 2010). The data quality is a 3.

Sources

  1. Borman, R. B. (1996). Survival in a hostile world: Culture change and missionary influence among the Cofán people of Ecuador, 1954–1994. Missiology, 24(2), 185-200.
  2. Cepek, M. L. (2008). Essential commitments: Identity and the politics of Cofan conservation. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 13(1), 196-222.
  3. Cepek, M. L. (2016). There might be blood: Oil, humility, and the cosmopolitics of a Cofán petro‐being. American ethnologist, 43(4), 623-635.
  4. Cepek, M. L. (2018). Life in oil: Cofán survival in the petroleum fields of Amazonia. University of Texas Press.
  5.  O’Carroll, Eoin (2008. Enviro-Prize irks Chevron. Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2008/0416/enviro-prize-irks-chevron.
  6. Cofan Survival Fund (2016). The Cofan People. http://www.cofan.org/cofan-people
  7. COHA. (2010). The Cofan: Hope in the midst of tragedy. Council on Hemispheric Affairs. http://www.coha.org/the-cofan-hope-in-the-midst-of-tragedy/
  8. Lutz, Ellen (2008). A Man for the Cofán. Cultural Survival Quarterly. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/man-cofan