Geraldine Patrick Encina

has both Chilean-Mapuche and Scottish-Gaelic ancestry. Her background includes being part of the Mapuche struggle for the free flow of River Bio-Bio in 1993 and now strongly supports river caretakers in the southern provinces of Chile, in the highlands of Mexico and in the state of New York. 

She is part of the Otomi Reginal Council that was responsible to produce a presidential decree to protect the wetlands in 1999, where the Otomian peoples have been settled for the past ten thousand years. Together with her husband, Mindahi Bastida, she continues to advocate for all high basin of river Lerma, where yearly ceremonies along the shore of the river and of the wetland are carried out. The songs and ceremonies are shared with keepers of the headwaters of the Hudson River basin.

Geraldine has also recovered the creation story of the Mayan peoples. She promotes the creation of circles to talk about these fundamentals. Ancient civilizations’ principles on how architectural structures must collect water, reconnecting to life-giving energies and forces that heal watersheds, bring springs back to life, brings clarity to people’s existence and purpose in their community and can harmonize weather cycles and life cycles are important components of her work. 

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