Randall (Randy) Bruce Borman defied conventional definitions of belonging. To an outsider, he looked like an average American white man. To the Cofán, he was one of their own. To me, he was a friend and mentor. I only wish I had met him earlier in my life.
Randy passed away on February 17, 2025, after a battle with cancer. He was one of the world’s most effective and creative activists working at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental conservation. But to those of us who knew him, he was so much more.
A Life Rooted in the Forest
Born on September 29, 1955, Randy was the son of North American missionary-linguists who lived and worked with the Indigenous Cofán Nation in Amazonian Ecuador. He spent his childhood between two worlds, occasionally attending U.S. schools, but truly growing up with the Cofán, hunting with a blowgun, speaking A’ingae (also known as A’i), and absorbing the rhythms of the rainforest.
Despite his Euro-American heritage, Randy understood early on: he was Cofán.
Although he returned to the US for university-level studies, Randy decided to commit himself fully to a life in the rainforest. In his 20s, he married Amelia Quenamá, a Cofán woman, and together they raised three children—Felipe, Federico, and Joshua.
His fluency in English, Spanish, and A’i made him a natural spokesperson for the Cofán, who elected him to key positions, including president of their ethnic federation, and entrusted him with their fight for land rights, conservation, and autonomy.
A Warrior for the Rainforest
In the 1970s, while Randy was still a young man, Texaco began extracting crude oil and dumping waste in Cofán territory. Ecuadorians looking for land soon followed, using the oil roads to enter virgin rainforests, burning them to make way for cattle pasture, and illegally expropriating Cofán land. Randy led and participated in Cofán efforts to regain, legalize, and protect over a million acres of their homeland.
He helped found two organizations to support that mission: the U.S.-based Cofán Survival Fund (CSF) and the Ecuador-based Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán (FSC). These organizations work closely together to implement land rights protections, conservation programs, healthcare access, and education initiatives that continue to impact Cofán communities today.
In 1984, Randy proposed relocating deeper into the rainforest as a way to protect Cofán culture. He led the establishment of Zábalo village along the Zábalo River in what is today known as the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, providing a sanctuary from external threats. As its first chief, Randy utilized his understanding of Cofán and Western cultures to advocate for the Zabalo community, securing legal protections and promoting sustainable practices that have preserved their way of life.
Randy understood that Indigenous lands were (and still are) key to mitigating climate change. He urged the world to listen—not just to see the Cofán as stewards of the rainforest, but as sophisticated custodians of the Earth, protecting resources that benefit all of us.
A Legacy That Lives On
Randy’s impact will last for generations.
Take, for example, the Cofán Park Guard Program, which placed territorial protection directly into Cofán hands. From 2003 to 2013, deforestation in neighboring lands became some of the worst in Latin America. But Cofán guards prevented a single tree from being illegally felled on their lands. Even with diminished funding, this important work continues today, and provides an example to other Indigenous groups in how to protect their own sacred lands, especially from colonial incursions.
Randy’s conservation efforts saved thousands of old-growth trees—not just through legal protections, but through innovation. He helped develop a fiberglass canoe for the Ecuadorian Amazon, modeled after traditional mahogany dugouts and, through the foundation, taught Cofán artesans how to build them. These new boats moved faster, used less fuel, and provided the Cofán with a sustainable income source, without cutting down 300-year-old trees for canoes that only lasted a few years.
He helped build a turtle conservation project that revived two species nearly lost to overhunting. By paying families to protect nests, the Cofán brought turtle populations from just 180 nesting females in 1991 to an estimated 2,000 a couple of decades later.
What mattered most to Randy was that his people would not be erased. That Cofán traditions, knowledge, and way of life would continue. He also understood that they needed to find ways to survive in a world with a transactional economy.
With that in mind, Randy also worked in tourism—but on Cofán terms. He refused to design experiences that would turn his community into a tourist spectacle. Instead, he focused on what he and his fellow guides loved most: navigating the river, spotting wildlife (for viewing rather than traditional hunting), and camping deep in the rainforest. Lodging was built near the village, but not within it, ensuring the community’s daily life remained undisturbed. If the right moment presented itself, visitors might gain insight into a Cofán tradition—but nothing was ever staged or performed for show. Randy believed in a kind of tourism that fostered genuine connection, offering visitors a chance to experience the rainforest as the Cofán knew it. This philosophy is what led to our collaboration.
Lessons from Randy
I had the privilege of working with Randy when designing a tour called The Sounds of Ecuador, a journey for 8 women that culminated with a camping trip in Cofán territory along the Zabalo River inside the world’s first-recognized International Quiet Park. While I carefully crafted the experience for the days on either side of our time in Zabalo, I had little idea of what to expect while visiting the Cofán. I loved corresponding with Randy. His emails, once they arrived, were full of newsy bits of information, like the too-strong batch of beer at the last celebration or the eruption of Reventador and its significance to the Cofán. I learned so much in these letters about Randy. But I struggled to understand what our time in Zabalo would actually entail. I had a rudimentary description of the day by day. But it was clear to me that Randy did not want to work with a detailed plan.
If was only after talking with Gordon Hempton —a good friend of Randy’s and a sound ecologist who brings others to Zabalo— that I was able to truly accept that Randy practiced the Cofán way of Ccaen’tsu Daja: Let it be. I needed to learn to practice it too.
Once our dates were fixed, everything in between would unfold in the way it was meant to be. I have to admit, up until the day when Randy pulled up in a big van to pick up our group in Rio Quijos, I was worried about what might (not) be. I had accepted my lack of control but I had not embraced it wholeheartedly. Yet, as the trip unfolded, I realized that my problem was me. Once Randy had us in his circle, the trip unfolded in a natural, easy way that defied explanation.
We observed as Randy interpreted the river, listened for the high-pitched call of a White-throated Toucan, and identified the whisper of a baby monkey somewhere in the rustling canopy. He showed us medicinal plants that relieve a migraine, calm a cough, and poison fish in a way that leaves them edible, a technique the Cofán have used for centuries.
He told us the story of the Laughing Falcon, whose call echoes through the jungle. The Cofán call her the Crying Falcon. She is the mother of six brothers and one sister—what we know as the Pleiades. Her children climbed a vine to the heavens, leaving her behind. When she cries, it is for them.
But Randy didn’t work alone. He listened to his team.
I remember clearly the morning Gladys spotted a small stand of chambira, a palm used to make twine. Without hesitation, she set to work, cutting the base of the best fronds with her machete and breaking down each stem into fine fibers. Within minutes, she had twisted them into twine, using her upper thigh as a work surface and one hand as a tool.
Randy guided the rest of us through the process, but while we struggled to separate the fibers, Gladys was already holding up her finished product.
If we had tried to plan that moment, it may never have happened. So many small things had to align—Gladys feeling comfortable enough to share, finding a palm with fronds at the right stage, the weather allowing us to stand in the open. It was a perfect example of Ccaen’tsu Daja—letting things happen as they were meant to.
Randy’s Greatest Gift To Me
Randy taught me many lessons—about patience, about the rainforest, about belonging, about letting things be. But his greatest gift to me was something far simpler: an opportunity to listen.
I boarded a quilla with a Cofán guide at the stern and a fellow traveler behind me. Three of us in a small canoe and a single paddle. No motors. No words. Just the gentle rhythm of the paddle dipping into the water, the quiet push of the current carrying us downstream.
At first, the silence felt forced—almost uncomfortable. I was so used to filling space with conversation, with questions, with commentary. It took willpower not to turn and ask a question or excitedly point out a bird. But as we floated, the river took over. I let it be.
A white butterfly hovered near my face. Hoatzins rustled in the brush overhanging the river, their prehistoric squawking warning of our presence. A stocky Howler monkey thrashed in the canopy as it passed over the river on a highway of trees. A Cocoi heron stood, silhouetted in a tall tree. Kingfishers flashed ahead, flying just far enough to stay out of reach before perching again, only to take flight as the canoe approached once more. Spider monkeys peered from the forest, as curious about us as we were about them. Tiny red dragonflies perched on sodden logs.
No airplanes overhead. No traffic on the road. No chime on my cellphone. Only the river and rainforest.
That day, drifting down the Zabalo River, Randy gave me the greatest gift of all – a moment of truly being present. It’s a moment I will remember for the rest of my life.
May these words bring some small comfort to those following in Randy’s footsteps, especially his son Felipe. He carries not only his father’s legacy but the weight of a future still being written—a future where the Cofán continue to protect their land, their traditions, and their way of life. May the work ahead be guided by his father’s wisdom, strengthened by his people’s resilience, and filled with the same love Randy had for the rainforest and the Cofán Nation.
