Focusing on environmental impacts, Toltec elder Mindahi Bastida shares wisdom on biocultural diversity and protecting all forms of life.
This time on The Four Sacred Gifts, Anita and Mindahi discuss:
- The impact of industrialization and over-exploitation of water in Mexico
- Spiritual and material destruction
- Wetland restorations and a mermaid entity
- Why Indigenous wisdom is so important
- The earth as our first mother
- Learning how to live in a sacred relationship with all beings
- Listening to nature and realizing our oneness
- Sacred sites around the world that contain special energy
- Making an effort to protect sacred areas
- Taking care of all life sources so that the earth can thrive
- Planting seeds for a better future
- Interrelation and the collective way of ancient peoples
“We have worked with science, with culture, and with spirituality. It is possible to work in that way everywhere around the world. That’s the only way we can protect life, protect species, biocultural heritage, biocultural memory, and biocultural diversity.” – Mindahi Bastida
About Mindahi Bastida:
Mindahi Bastida (Otomi-Toltec) is the director of the Original Nations Program of the Fountain and was the director of the Original Caretakers Program at the Center for Earth Ethics, Union Theological Seminary in New York until 2020. He has done general coordination of the Otomi-Toltec Regional Council in Mexico, is 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 a consultant with UNESCO around Sacred Sites and Biocultural issues and for other UN programs. Mindahi has served as a delegate to various commissions and summits on Indigenous Rights and Sustainability, including the 1992 Earth Summit and the World Summit on Sustainable Development. He has written on the relation between State and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated Traditional Knowledge, bicultural sacred sites, and other topics. Mindahi is the author of Ancestors: Divine Remembrance of Lineage Relations and Sacred Sites. For more information, visit theearthelders.org.
