Mindahi Bastida (Otomí-Toltec) is Director of the Original Nations Program of the Fountain and until July 2020 was 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 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 (WSSD, 2002). He was director of the Original Caretakers Program at the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City between 2015 and 2020 and has been invited to partake in several advisory councils.
He has written on the relation between the state and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, biocultural sacred sites, and other topics.