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In this article, I explore the history, logic, and practice of capture among the Cofán people of Amazonian Ecuador. Rather than acting as the subjects of capture, Cofán people have primarily been its objects. Centuries of pre-Conquest, colonial, and postcolonial violence have exposed Cofán communities to repeated seizures by indigenous and non-indigenous aggressors. Although capture by enemy others is a feared prospect that typically brings disaster, it also serves as the Cofán nation's central means of acquiring violent powers, which are essential to its defence. By investigating the uncertainties of capture as a productive process, I question dominant representations of native Amazonians as wilful participants in a cosmos of generalized predation, and I issue a plea for openness when considering the diversity of the region's peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s and 1970s, anthropologists began modern ethnographic research in lowland Ecuador and Colombia. At the time, Cofán and Siona people there lived in apparently remote forests with a diverse subsistence economy based on hunting, fishing, and gardening. It was difficult to imagine that traditional indigenous territories often coincided with old rubber outposts, derelict haciendas, missionary stations, and abandoned oil camps. Nor did researchers envision the maelstrom that had taken place fifty years earlier, when native families were forced to collect rubber throughout the western Amazon. It seemed more reasonable to think that they had somehow avoided the cataclysmic impacts of rubber extraction that led to enslavement and ethnocide along the lower Putumayo River. But the story turns out to be much more complicated, as new historical research shows. Since 1930, the resurgence of Cofán and Siona communities presents a compelling story of survival and reconstruction, not isolation. It bears directly on current discussions of ethnicity, citizenship, and indigenous rights in contemporary Amazonian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effects of colonization and oil drilling in the lands of the indigenous Kofan or A'i peoples of Colombia. It examines the oil companies Texas Petroleum Company and Ecopetrol, commenting on indigenous legal protection and the Santa Rosa Reserve. The author reflects on Columbia's guerilla war involving the the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The policies of Colombia's Institute for Agrarian Reform, or the Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria (INCORA), are also considered.

This article reports inter- and intra-ethnic patterns of time allocation for five ethnic groups in the Ecuadorian Amazon--the Huaorani, Quichua, Shuar, Cofán, and Secoya--to test for general cross-cultural differences as well as the idea that females and males occupy the private and public sphere, respectively. The concept of public versus private spheres posits that women have less economic and political power and occupy the domain of domestic and individual affairs, while men occupy the public sphere that correlates with civic affairs and work at higher social scales and in spaces outside the home. The research team collected almost 24,000 spot-check time allocation observations in eight indigenous communities from February to June, 2001, representing a large cross-cultural data set. Unlike many previous studies of time allocation, which use standard significance testing to detect differences in means, our description of time allocation among these ethnic groups utilizes confidence interval graphs to interpret the statistical significance of differences observed. We find remarkable consistency in time spent in categories such as "social," "individual," "domestic," and "subsistence" among these groups, despite the variation in their social organization, histories of contact, integration into the market, and population size. A few consistent gender divisions of time use were found that support the private/public sphere characterization, namely that for all groups, females spent significantly more time in domestic activities, and males spent more time in commercial production (except in the case of the Cofán). However, other time-use categories corresponding to the private (i.e., individual and subsistence) and public (i.e., social and outside the community) spheres did not support a gender division, nor was support found for the hypothesis that the relegation of females to the private sphere would be more apparent for gender hierarchical groups and less so for more egalitarian groups. We posit that dichotomies of male/female, public/private, and political/domestic oversimplify boundaries that are varied, dynamic, and often indistinguishable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I investigate the sociocultural grounding and sociopolitical position of Randy Borman, the “gringo chief” of the indigenous Cofan people of Amazonian Ecuador. Born to North American missionary-linguists, Borman grew up in Cofan communities, attended school in urban Ecuador and the United States, and developed into the most important Cofan activist on the global stage. I consider him alongside other ethnically ambiguous leaders of Amazonian political movements, whom anthropologists have described as “messianic” figures. The historians and ethnographers who write about Amazonian messianism debate the relationship between myth and reason in indigenous political action. Using their discussion as a starting point, I propose the concept of “mythical politics,” a type of transformative action that concentrates enabling forms of socio-temporal mediation in the shape of individual actors and instantaneous events. I develop my approach through a discussion of the work of Georges Sorel, Georg Lukacs, and Antonio Gramsci, three theorists who debate the role of myth in political mobilization. By applying their insights to the case of Borman, I explore the relationship between myth, mediation, and rationality in Cofan politics and political movements more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their encounters with a globalizing political landscape, indigenous peoples enact and transform long-standing social relations. This article explores the struggle of Amazonian Ecuador's Cofán people to relate their socio-existential values to the challenges of political mobilization. I argue that distinct conceptions of ‘fearlessness’ structure the complex relationship between the majority of Cofán people and those morally ambivalent individuals, including shamans and federation leaders, who mediate the threats posed by impinging sources of violent difference. By employing a value-based approach to analyse this relationship, I seek to connect studies of indigenous social movements to investigations of indigenous socio-cosmological orders. Résumé Dans leur rencontre avec un paysage politique globalisé, les peuples autochtones pratiquent et transforment des relations sociales anciennes. L'auteur explore ici les efforts des Cofán d'Amazonie équatorienne pour lier leurs valeurs socio-existentielles aux défis de la mobilisation politique. Il avance que différentes conceptions de « l'intrépidité » structurent les relations complexes entre la majorité des Cofán et les individus moralement ambivalents, notamment les chamans et les chefs de fédération, médiateurs des menaces exercées par les sources de différence violente. En utilisant une approche basée sur la valeur pour analyser cette relation, l'article cherche à faire le lien entre les études des mouvements sociaux autochtones et les investigations des ordres socio-cosmologiques indigènes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RESUMEN En este artículo, exploro las implicaciones de los discursos ambientalistas indígenas a partir de una investigaciòn sobre el papel del ambientalismo en la vida cotidiana y proyectos políticos del pueblo Cofán de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. En mi análisis de los discursos y prácticas Cofánes, me pregunto sobre el valor de una perspectiva “anti-esencialista”, en la retórica ambientalista de los pueblos indígenas como producto instrumental de la política transnacional de identidad. En este sentido, trato de superar las falencias del anti-esencialismo con una presentación etnográfica del sistema de valorizaciones propias de la gente de Cofán frente al ambiente Amazónico. Sostengo que la apreciación de las conexiones substantivas entre su cultura, identidad, y territorio tradicional determinan la orientación de su participación política en un proceso de auto-determinación y que consideran compromisos de conservación en base a derechos políticos. En conclusión, las implicaciones más amplias de las propuestas políticas Cofán se encuentran asociadas a una nueva forma de relación entre la gente indígena, el estado, y los movimientos globales de conservación ambiental. In this paper, I explore the meaning of indigenous environmental discourses by investigating the role of conservationism in the everyday lives and political projects of the Cofán people of Amazonian Ecuador. In my analysis of Cofán discourse and practice, I question the productivity of “antiessentialist” approaches, which portray indigenous peoples' environmentalist rhetoric as an instrumental product of transnational identity politics. I seek to move past the blind spots of antiessentialism by constructing an ethnographic account of Cofán people's shifting valorizations of the Amazonian environment. I argue that Cofán actors' appreciation of the substantive connections between their culture, their identity, and their traditional territory orients their participation in a process of self-determination that bases political rights on conservationist commitments. I conclude by considering the broader lessons of Cofán political proposals, which envision a novel form of interaction between indigenous peoples, nation-states, and global environmental movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on efforts to protect biodiversity. Background on the Cofán, indigenous people of Ecuador who fought to protect the rainforest; Role of the Cofán in managing an ecological reserve in the Ecuadorian Andes; Designation of 2002 as the International Year of Ecotourism by the United Nations; Challenges of ecotourism; Launch of the World Heritage sites project linking biodiversity conservation and sustainable tourism.