The FSC and The CSF

Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán (FSC)

Founded in 1999, the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán (FSC) is an organization with Cofán leadership dedicated to the survival of the Cofán indigenous culture and its Amazonian rainforest environment.

FSC was founded as a vehicle to reclaim and protect Cofán territory, primarily driven by the need to respond to oil exploitation in the region and the colonists who followed in the oil companies’ wake. Born from this very concrete “fight for our rights or disappear” mindset, FSC focuses on finding practical, on-the-ground solutions that contribute to the survival of the Cofán Nation and our forest home on which we depend, and managing the natural resources in Cofán ancestral territory in northeastern Ecuador for the long term.

Prestigious groups of international scientists have worked with the FSC and the Cofán.  In 2001, 2007 and 2008, the FSC coordinated and helped lead four Rapid Biological Inventories with Chicago Field Museum biologists and local scientists participating in month-long analyses that led to the protection of more territory. The FSC was awarded a 2013 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

CofAn Survival Fund (CSF)

The Cofán Survival Fund (CSF) is an independent U.S.-based supporting organization for the FSC.  It is an incorporated 501(c)(3) non-profit organized to raise charitable donations from North America and elsewhere in the world to support the work of FSC. The administrative costs for both FSC & CSF are extremely low, and every effort is made to channel all funding directly into our projects, whether that be training and supplies for the Cofán Ranger Program, or tuition and fees for a young Cofán studying in Quito. The Board of Directors of CSF is chaired by Micheal Cepak of San Antonio, Texas.

Mission

We are committed to biodiversity conservation and research, protecting our ancestral territory and its natural resources, developing environmentally sound income alternatives, and educating our youngest generation. FSC has received and managed grants from both government and private sources for activities directed to the conservation and management of Cofán ancestral territories in northeastern Ecuador, and for the development of strategies that will allow the Cofán people to maintain cultural and economic stability. We work closely with FEINCE, the Ecuadorian Cofán Indigenous Federation.

Leadership

Felipe Borman is the Executive Director of the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán. He serves as the on-the-ground director for Cofan land-protection and conservation work, coordinating and participating in all the fieldwork of the Cofan GuardAmazonas in the hotspots of the Cofan-Bermejo Ecological Reserve and the Río Cofanes Territory. In 2025, he was elected to serve as Director of Territory for NOA’IKE (the Cofan ethnic federation), and is responsible for overseeing his people’s territorial-protection efforts. Felipe’s father, Randy Borman, was the founding director of the FSC and CSF.

Randy Borman (1955-2025) was born in the Cofán village of Dureno and grew up hunting, fishing, and speaking Cofán. Simultaneously, he learned English and “western” values from his American missionary parents. He received the Friends of the UN 50th Anniversary Award in Forestry and Renewable Resources in 1995, and a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Conservation Merit Award in 1997. In 1998, Randy accepted the Parker-Gentry Award from the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago in recognition of his efforts to protect Cofán lands and culture.

CSF BOARD MEMBERS

CSF Board President Michael Cepek has been working with the Indigenous Cofán Nation for more than three decades as an advocate and academic. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Cepek is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he has published three books on Cofán people and politics: A Future for Amazonia: Randy Borman and Cofán Environmental Politics (2012), Life in Oil: Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia (2018), and Violent Healing: Shamanism, Dispossession, and Death in Amazonia (forthcoming with Cofán co-author Cesario Lucitante).

Hugo Lucitante is a Cofán member of Zabalo at Reserva Faunistica de Cuyabeno in Ecuador. Currently, he pursues a doctorate for Indigenous Anthropology at University of Texas at San Antonio. He is a director of ICCA a non-profit based in Ecuador (Institute for Conservation and Environmental Training) also serves as secretary for NOAIKE (Cofan Federation in Ecuador) in addition to being a board member for the Raiz Foundation USA. Hugo collaborates with scholars, scientists, activists, defends Amazonian lands, empowering Indigenous voices in both environmental and cultural advocacy.

Claire Nicklin has lived in Quito, Ecuador since 1999. She has worked on issues related to climate change, the Amazon, and indigenous rights, and first went to Zabalo and met the Cofanes in 2001. She is the Andes Regional Representative of the Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems of the McKnight Foundation. She is also a board member of the FIrst Analysis Institute, which has supported the Cofan Survival Fund since 2023.

Serena Himmelfarb is a Chicago-based painter with an M.F.A from the California Institute of the Arts, Post-Bacc Certificate from the School of the Art Institute, and a B.A from Hampshire College. Their investigations of the landscape bring together research in contemporary American survivalism, queer ecology, and conversations in the field of Art. They have been a CSF board member since 2019.

Danica Novgorodoff is an artist, writer, and New York Times best-selling illustrator. Her books include the graphic novel A Better World is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis; and the picture book Alexander von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer, and The Simple Art of Rice. She has been a Cofan supporter since 2015 and on the CSF board since 2021.

Christopher Rife is a retired environmental consultant who spent his career trying to make the world a better place. He applies that experienced-based knowledge and philosophy to assist the Cofan people in bettering their lives and protecting the Amazon rainforest.

Dorinda Rife is a lifelong learner whose career has focused on supporting children who are blind or visually impaired. Retirement has afforded her the opportunity to travel, visiting children and grandchildren in the northwest and exploring destinations near and far. 

John Himmelfarb's day job is that of a studio artist, working with visual language. In his free time, for the past 40 years, he has served on the boards of a number of environmental groups, 30 of those years with the  Cofan Survival Fund. His work is in the collections of more than 60 museums, in this country and abroad. He maintains studios in Town of Wyoming, WI and Chicago, IL.