The Cofan (A’i) are an indigenous people native to Sucumbíos Province, from Southern Colombia (Putumayo Region) and Northeast Ecuador, inhabitants of the Amazon Rainforest. They are one of the oldest indigenous tribes of the rainforest to have survived to date.

 

The Cofán are known as the protectors of the rain forests.

 

Numbering less than two thousand people (original population of twenty thousand), the Cofán have taken on the task of caring for over a million acres of rain forest throughout Colombia and Ecuador, which is only 4% of their original native lands. This land still faces the same threats that have affected the accompanying 96% of their original demarked territory, and are now increasing in severity. These threats include accelerating deforestation from illegal logging and cattle farming, overhunting and fishing, illegal poaching and trafficking of wildlife, and pollution from oil extraction and mining to name a few.

 

As one of the most knowledgeable cultures to ever emerge from the Amazon Basin, the Cofán people maintain an immense body of information regarding the preservation of nature, and are keepers of the ancestral healing wisdom found within the Amazonian rainforest.