TALK DESCRIPTION:
Mindahi Bastida will open our conference with a blessing and share how ancestral sacred sites play a key role to elevate the capacity of Mother Earth to restore healing and systemic balance. Mindahi will also share how he and others through the power of ceremony invoked the sacred deity of the waters, the Atlanchana (The Mermaid) to reclaim the dwelling place of her children and heal the waters in the Valley of Toluca, Mexico.

SPEAKER BIO:
Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz is the Director of the Original Nations Program of the Fountain and until July 2020 has been the Director of the Original Caretakers Program, Center for Earth Ethics, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (2017- ) and General Coordinator of the Otomi-Toltec Regional Council in Mexico, a caretaker of the philosophy and traditions of the Otomi-Toltec peoples, and has been an Otomi-Toltec Ritual Ceremony Officer since 1988. He is consultant with UNESCO around Sacred Sites and Biocultural issues.
Born in Tultepec, Lerma, Mexico, he holds a Doctorate of Rural Development from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Mexico. He has written on the relationship between the State and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, among other topics.