Discovery of oil in their South American territory changed tribal life, and they've asked the Field Museum to help
An amused smile spread across the face of Martín Criollo as the 30-year-old Cofán Indian from a remote South American reserve looked over a collection of artifacts in the anthropological storage area of the Field Museum.
He had spotted one of his own shirts, a loose-fitting traditional garment called a cushma.
"I literally took it off his back when we were in Ecuador last year," sociologist Daniel Brinkmeier said. "It was a good example of typical but traditional clothing, so I asked Martín if we could buy it."
The Cofán are a rain forest tribe that barely had contact with the outside world until an American company struck oil on their land in 1966. Since then, members have struggled to hang on to their lands, traditions and culture in the face of the invading 20th and 21st Centuries.
Tribal leaders have enlisted the Field Museum in their effort, inviting Brinkmeier and two other museum scientists to Ecuador last year to gather and preserve about 100 Cofán artifacts, including beadwork, feathered shamanic headdresses, wooden flutes, ceramic griddles, blowguns, darts and spears.
"We were looking for handicrafts that the Cofán might not make in the future, everyday things that might go out of use and disappear," Brinkmeier said.
Last month the museum brought Criollo and two other tribal members to Chicago to explain the objects more fully and to edit hundreds of hours of videotaped interviews with Cofán elders that the men helped capture during the museum's visit.
From the information they gathered, the three are helping make detailed maps of more than 1,000 square miles of Cofán land that will be distributed to villages and schools, as well as DVDs to educate Cofán families.
"There is real political power when people can map out a wilderness area and show in their native language their names for all the geographical and historical landmarks," Brinkmeier said. "It tells the rest of the world that this place is known by and is owned by these people, who can say, 'This land has always been ours,' when they are confronted by outsiders wanting to move in and take over."
Traditional Cofán land comprised millions of acres of rain forest straddling the Aguarico River from southern Colombia across northern Ecuador into Peru.
In 1966 Texaco and Gulf Oil struck oil in the center of Cofán territory, and the aftermath left tribal life traumatized. Long stretches of the river and its tributaries were poisoned from toxic wastewater and petroleum spills, killing fish. When oilmen built supply roads into the forest, thousands of poor settlers followed, cutting swaths of jungle for farms.
Cofán land was reduced to two sizable chunks on either end of their former territory and two small reserves set aside in the middle. Some members abandoned Cofán life, finding jobs and marrying into settler communities. Others retreated deeper into the forests to maintain what tradition they could.
But the tribe's traditions are fading, zapped by access to electricity even in the most remote villages, where generators power lights, radios, TVs and DVD players bought with proceeds from eco-tourism.
"In the days before electricity, when the sun went down at 7 or 8 o'clock people went to bed," Criollo said. "But they weren't tired, so fathers told their families the stories of the Cofán people, our oral tradition.
"People don't go to bed when the sun goes down anymore, because they have electric lights. They listen to their radios or watch Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Damme kickboxing DVDs on their TVs. When they go to bed at 11, they are too tired to listen to stories."
Only an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Cofán speakers are left, and the fear is that much of the oral history and the history of Cofán territory will be lost as members now in their 60s or older die.
So, while in Cofán territory to collect objects, Brinkmeier and two Field anthropological research associates, Mike Cepec of the University of Texas at San Antonio and Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania, trained tribal youths in interview techniques and videography.
The younger Cofán took elders into canoes, traveled through traditional tribal lands, and taped the older people as they named the places they came to and told stories in Cofán. These interviews have been transcribed and preserved.
Criollo, a village high school teacher, came to Chicago last month with Hugo Lucitante, 21, a university student in Quito, Ecuador's capital, and Felipe Borman, 20, a student at Knox College in Galesburg.
They are working with the museum staff to produce detailed maps with names in Cofán and with Art Institute students trained in video editing to produce six hours of DVD programs.
"The Cofán kids in the villages love those kickboxing movies," Lucitante said, "but there is almost nothing available to show on video that is in the Cofán language, so we think they will watch our videos."
Until he was 10, Lucitante lived with his parents in Zábalo, one of the most remote Cofán villages. A visiting scholar from the University of Washington offered to take him to Seattle to learn English.
Lucitante stayed in Seattle until his graduation from high school, coming home every summer for visits. When he was 12, he spoke before the United Nations in New York on indigenous people's rights and the plight of the Cofán.
But staying in the U.S. is not in his plans.
"Western life is go, go, go from the start of every day, every morning," Lucitante said.
"At home in the jungle, you do what you have to do to survive, but you also have time to relax and enjoy life with your family. I prefer home to the city life.
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