Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz is the Director of Original Nations Program at The Fountain and until July, 2020 was the director of the Original Caretakers Program, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (2017- 2020). He is also the 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. Bastida Muñoz is also the President of the Mexico Council of Sustainable Development, a member of the Steering Committee of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative, and has served as a delegate to several commissions and summits on indigenous rights and the environment including The Earth Summit 1992 and The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, 2002).

Born in Tultepec, Lerma, Mexico, he holds a Doctorate of Rural Development from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. He has written on the relationship between the State and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, among other topics.