Geraldine Patrick Encina

Geraldine Patrick Encina was born to Chilean parents with Celtic and Mapuche ancestries. She is an Indigenous Relations advisor to One Earth, the Executive Director of Earth Timekeepers, Advisor to the Grand Council of the Eagle and the Condor, Member of the Otomí Council of the High Lerma River Basin, Member of the Academic and Technical Committee of the Biocultural Heritage Network sponsored by the National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico (CONACYT), Member of Land Healers, Member of the Interamerican Society for Astronomy in Culture (SIAC), Board Member of the Pre-Columbian Society at UPenn Museum, and Board Member of the American Renewable Energy Institute.

She earned a PhD in Social Sciences with a concentration in Ethnoecology at El Colegio Mexiquense, A.C. and was a two-year Post-Doctoral fellow at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), specializing on Mesoamerican Conceptions of Time-Space. She has developed a framework for the collective recovery of the original versions of the Otomí, Maya and Mexica-Aztec Calendar Systems, working with cultural leaders in Yucatan and Central Mexico to repair the time-space fabric that organizes original peoples’ lives in biocultural territories.

Between 2007 and 2014 she was professor of Ethnoecology and related topics in two renowned universities in Mexico: the Intercultural University of Mexico State and the Autonomous University of Mexico. Between 2015 and 2020 she was a Scholar in Residence at the Center for Earth Ethics-Union Theological Seminary, NYC, developing and offering courses for UTS and also for Teachers College graduate students.

Together with leaders of the Otomí Council they carried out a socioecological resiliency assessment of the historical impacts of industrial corridors and aquifer exploitation on the wetlands of the Higher Lerma Basin and designed a management plan using an ethnoecological framework.

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