Ecuadorian conservationist, tribal leader, April 2

Randall Borman, a tribal leader among the Cofan indigenous group in Ecuador, will give a talk, "Cultural and Ecological Survival," at 4 p.m., Monday, April 2, in Ferris Lounge, Seymour Union, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. The talk is free and open to the public.

The cultural and ecological conservation efforts of Borman and the approximately 1200-member Cofan tribe of Ecuador have been featured by media worldwide, including programs on CBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and articles in Life Magazine and Outside magazine.

While at Knox, Borman also will meet with classes in Latin American Studies, Environmental Studies and Integrated International Studies.

Borman's parents, missionaries Bub and Bobbie Borman, moved to the Cofan village of Dureno, in northeast Ecuador, in 1954, to translate the Bible into the Cofan language. Borman was born in 1955 and, according to the tribe's website, "adopted the ways of the Cofan Indians." Except for fourth grade in the U.S., Borman attended grade school and high school in Ecuador. He attended college at Michigan State University and Waubonsee Community College.

The Cofan website states that upon returning to Ecuador in the mid 1970s, Borman found that "roads had been bulldozed into the jungle," native Cofan were being displaced by newcomers, and their once pristine rainforest territory was being polluted by oil drilling.

According to the Cofan, large scale oil exploration, starting in the 1960s, followed by road building in the 1970s, brought pollution and immigration to the tribe's rainforest homeland. In the late 1970s, Borman and a small group of Cofan traveled deeper into the Amazon jungle and founded a new village, Zabalo.

During the 1980's and 1990s, Borman and the tribe successfully fended off attempts at both private and government-backed oil exploration in Cofan territory. The tribe developed numerous conservation projects, including Cofan Community Ecotourism, one of the first successful  indigenous community-based tourism initiatives.

Borman has held a number of leadership positions. He has served as the President of the Centro Cofan Zabalo. He is currently the Executive Director of Fundacion Sobrevivencia Cofan, a non-profit organization dedicated to the survival of the Cofan culture and environment, and President of its US-based sister organization, the Cofan Survival Fund. Borman is also the Director of Territory for the Cofan's representative political organization, FEINCE

Borman has received numerous honors, including the 1995 Friends of UN 50th Anniversary Award, 1997 Conservation Merit Award from the World Wildlife Fund, the 1998 Parker/Gentry Award for Conservation Biology, and the 2001 Ecotourism Award from the Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism.

Borman and his wife Amelia have three sons, one of whom, Felipe, is a first-year student at Knox.

The lecture is sponsored by the Knox College Center for Global Studies and the Caterpillar Fund for Global Studies at Knox College.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 46 states and 46 nations. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.