Geraldine Patrick Encina

has Chilean-Mapuche ancestry and well as Scottish-Gaelic. She joined the Mapuche struggle for the free flow of River Bio-Bio in 1993 and is now a close supporter of river caretakers in the southern provinces of Chile, in the highlands of Mexico and in the state of New York. She has been immersed in the philosophy of Hñahñu-Otomi Peoples from Mexico's territorial heartland for the past twenty years, where she joined the Otomi Regional Council to carry out a biocultural diagnostic research about the headwaters of the Lerma River during the year 1999 which then produced a presidential decree to protect the wetlands where highly resilient Otomian peoples have been settled for the past ten thousand years.

Together with her husband, Mindahi Bastida, she has since been an advocate for all high basin of river Lerma, where they carry out yearly ceremonies in several points along the shore of the river and of the wetland. They are now sharing the songs and ceremonies with keepers of the headwaters of the Hudson River basin and have contributed with the Water Liturgies initiative in the Center for Earth Ethics, available in the website of the center. Geraldine has recovered the creation story of the Mayan peoples as it relates to Evening Venus and the Moon that remained s in the waters for nine days before rising on the West. That creation story speaks of the Green Turtle where the foundation of the thirteen lordships began, thanks to time-space keepers.

These caretakers praise water because it is what sustains life, so their ritual veneration for seasonal Moons and for Venus as the bringer of rains on May 3 is fundamental. Their deep knowledge of rain-calling beings is so alike with the wisdom and practice of sister cultures, that with the collective work of Earth Timekeepers, she promotes the creation of circles to talk about this. Also, ancient civilizations' principles on how architectural structures must collect water is another aspect that Geraldine is bringing forth. The recovery of the original calendar which marks the day by day expression of a day-deity will enable all healers who work the life-giving energies to reconnect with those forces that can heal watersheds, that can bring springs back to life, that can bring clarity to people's existence and purpose in their communities and in the world, and that can harmonize weather cycles and life cycles.