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1 Introduction cofán possibilities This book is a realist ethnography written in a utopian spirit. its main characters belong to the Cofán ethnolinguistic group, an indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador who face a microcosm of the forces that are devastating the world’s cultural and biological diversity. After generations of dispossession at the hands of mestizo colonists, transnational oil companies , and Colombian armed factions, the Cofán nation, according to many observers’ predictions, was in danger of disappearing and its rainforest territory of being destroyed. in the early 1990s, however, the Cofán began a process of mobilization that put them at the forefront of an expanding coalition between indigenous peoples and Western environmentalists. They are now the legally empowered, scientifically trained, and increasingly ambitious caretakers of more than one million acres of forestland. on the basis of three years of ethnographic research in the lowland community of zábalo and Ecuador’s Andean capital Quito, this book explores Cofán people’s innovative struggle for indigenous rights and environmental conservation. Although a number of developments explain the surprising reversal of Cofán prospects, a key factor in their success is Randy Borman, a Cofán man of Euro-American descent who has emerged as one of the world’s most effective indigenous leaders. Blue-eyed and white-skinned, Borman was raised in a Cofán community by a pair of north American missionarylinguists . Armed with a Western education and fluency in English, Spanish, and A’ingae (the Cofán language), Borman has become a global media phenomenon. magazine articles and television documentaries describe him as a “gringo chief” who combines north American whiteness, Amazonian indigenity, and committed political activism. Employing his intriguing persona and his intercultural capacities, Borman facilitates the Cofán nation’s political struggles by constructing a creative set of partnerships with conservationist organizations, Western scientists, and the Ecuadorian state. The introduction’s subtitle refers to one of my central aims: to develop an “ethnography of possibility.” With the phrase, i hope to convey multiple elements of my object and approach. The actors and efforts that compose Cofán politics point to new possibilities of cultural survival, environmental 2 A Future for Amazonia justice, and transnational collaboration in the twenty-first century. Cofán achievements are real. nevertheless, they are undeniably provisional. Alliances , projects, and institutions change from year to year and moment to moment. They can be great successes one day, and they can disappear the next. The Cofán accomplishments i describe are a snapshot of possibility at a particular cultural, political, and historical juncture. The Cofán situation was different before my main fieldwork years of 2001 and 2002, and it changed after i left. Although i have attempted to keep track of the shifts with annual trips to Ecuador, a “final” account of Cofán politics is, by definition , impossible. in addition to the conditional nature of Cofán achievements, a second sense of possibility motivates the book: the “experimental” nature of Cofán politics. When i first became interested in working with the Cofán, Randy Borman suggested that they would be happy to have me aboard “the Cofán experiment.” The phrase refers to the shifting set of institutional forms into which Cofán people have thrown themselves: community conservation structures, ecotourism operations, partnerships with Western academics, formalized schooling projects, and the management of urban nongovernmental organizations (nGos), among others. Cofán people’s efforts profit from Borman’s political creativity. They also reflect the flexibility of Cofán social structure, which allows individuals to embrace novel institutions without becoming anxious about their initial necessity or their ultimate consequences. Cofán people are more than willing to experiment with new ways of relating to each other, their environment, and encompassing political-economic forces. if results are beneficial and conditions are sufficient , the efforts continue. if not, they become material for revised goals and expectations. most importantly, i intend the book to communicate a third sense of possibility : the conviction that narratives of unstoppable cultural and biological loss are unfounded. i was drawn to Cofán politics because of Cofán people’s triumph over tremendous challenges and terrible odds. Having worked, taught, and written on indigenous-environmentalist collaboration for years, i perceived a need to provide a story that is open-ended and optimistic rather than defined by conflict, failure, and an inability to see intercultural cooperation as anything more than a colonial project or governmental power. i believe...

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