Portraits Wisdom Keepers of Original Nations

Here we would like to introduce you to the group that visits and documents the ley places. It represents the ancient cultural lines of the continents and it is about sharing their history, experiences and projects. They work there together with the Original Nations of the respective places, hold ceremonies in which they connect their souls and thus symbolically also stand for the new global humanity, which recognizes the current problems and solves them together. This also serves the international understanding promoted by the TAO Foundation. You will be able to see these Wisdom Keepers in the film TRANSFORMATION – which is expected to be released in December – and there also hear their show about the current situation of the environment, the people and the places and what each one of us can do and experience for it.

Rutendo Ngara, South Africa

She has an M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering and will soon receive her transdisciplinary Ph.D. from the DST/NRF South African Research Chair at Unisa.
Her research focuses on the synthesis between Western and Indigenous medical knowledge systems and her dissertation is titled “Science, Culture, Cosmology and Paradigms of Healing – Towards an Integrated Approach.”
In addition to her professional work, Rutendo sits on a number of Indigenous councils and advisory committees, including as chair of the Credo Mutwa Foundation.
Passionate about the integration of science and spirituality for the healing of the Collective Consciousness and the restoration of holistic ways of living, she works as a spiritual sangoma master, guide, shaman, priestess, and facilitator of various types of healing for people and sacred sites. This work is guided by her ancestral, water and lion spirits.

Mindahi Bastida, Mexico

Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz has a PhD and is the Director of the Original Nations Program at The Fountain and a member of the Delegation for Mother Earth. He is an executive member of the Alliance Guardians of Mother Earth and spokesperson for the recently formed Grand Council of the Eagle and the Condor. He is also the General Coordinator of the Otomi Regional Council of the Lerma River Basin in Mexico, which advocates for the rights of nature and Mother Earth and for the right of self-determination of the original peoples.
Mindahi has participated as a delegate in various commissions and summits on indigenous rights and sustainability, including the 1992 Earth Summit and the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD, 2002). From 2015 to 2020, he served as Director of the Original Caretakers Program at the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and was invited to participate on several advisory boards.
He has published on the relationship between the state and indigenous peoples, cross-cultural education, collective intellectual property rights and related traditional knowledge, biocultural sacred sites, and other topics.

Whaia Whea, New Zealand

Whaia, of the Ngati Kahugnunu tribe, has walked the Australian outback desert since she was six years old. The land and her Aboriginal grandmother of the Yindjibarndi people in the Pilbara have shaped her story from an early age. A Maori and Whale Wife who travels with traditional First Nations instruments and crystal singing bowls, Whaia weaves her healing phonetics. With her traditional Koauau Whales Tooth Flute, she preserves the ancient whale songs of her ancestors. Singing in her native language of Te Reo, the language of the sun, Whaia combines intuitive melodies of wood, bone, clay and stone with the currents of the crystalline frequency field that forms the sound bridge between worlds. For over two decades she has performed professionally at festivals, sacred gatherings and retreats throughout Australia and New Zealand.
She discovers new pathways of integration and understanding in today’s world and builds bridges for these transitional rights to reawaken women across borders and races. She founded Kurawaka Australia – Empowering Women Through Culture & Arts, a branch of her whakapapa lineage and mentor Wheae Te Raina Ferris.

Pooven Moodley, India

He is a human rights lawyer and social justice activist now living in South Africa. Before founding Natural Justice with other lawyers, he was Oxfam GB’s Associate Country Director in South Africa and Global Head of Campaigning for Action Aid International.
Most recently, he led the successful Campaign for a Just Energy Future to stop South Africa’s proposed nuclear deal with the Russians against all odds. He has contributed to a range of indigenous resistance around the world, beginning with the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa when he was 14 years old.
He began his career at the Center for Legal Resources, where he helped set precedents for pro bono human rights trials based on the high levels of of brutality and repression in South Africa. Pooven has worked in over 20 countries and has campaigned with a range of communities and activists from the local to the global level on issues including women’s right to land in Africa, the fight against large mining companies destroying indigenous communities and the environment.
He is a Sangoma initiate and scholar in the knowledge of his Indian ancestors, so as to advocate for Indigenous peoples and their sacred sites.

Edith Soto, Mexico

Jacob Johns, USA

Jacob Johns is from the Akimel O’Otham and Hopi nations. He is a community supported organizer who operates as an autonomous change agent. His work focuses on strategic ways to implement new paradigms into outdated systems of oppression. Visual artist as well as organizer Johns uses a multitude of ways to shift political will as creatively as possible. From front line direct action to structural organizing for campaigns, including digital content creation, Johns uses dynamic innovative ways to convey messages to humanity .
He currently leads design at studio 1 eleven a movement to counteract the effects of cultural genocide by the American government. Johns works to remind humanity of forgotten truths so that we can move forward together, into a healthy livable future.

Galina Angarova, Siberia

Galina is a representative of the Ekhirit nation of the Buryat Peoples, a Russian Indigenous group. Before joining Cultural Survival, she worked in local and global advocacy organizing direct actions and campaigns against large natural resource extraction projects including oil and gas development, mining, and hydro-dam development in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Thereafter, she served as a representative of the Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group at the United Nations on issues of Sustainable Development Goals and the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Furthermore, Galina led a team of Indigenous experts to represent the Indigenous Peoples constituency to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Green Climate Fund. Galina served as a policy and communications advisor for Tebtebba Foundation, and later transitioned to working as a program officer for the Swift Foundation. There, she managed a portfolio of 75 grantee partners in British Columbia, Canada, regions of the Amazon and the Andes in South America, and parts of the United States and Africa. Galina holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of New Mexico. For over seven years she served on the board of International Funders of Indigenous Peoples (IFIP), the only global donor affinity group dedicated to Indigenous Peoples issues worldwide. In 2019, Galina joined Cultural Survival as the Executive Director.

Don Alvaro Diaz, Mexico

Don Alvaro is the guardian of the pyramids of Teotihuacan and for 25 years a founding member and co-organizer of the Sun and Moon Dances in front of the corresponding pyramids. He has received several awards for this, including from the City of Mexico City.

He works as a traditional doctor on the foundations of the Mesoamerican peoples, especially the Maya, Olmec and Toltec. This traditional medicine is about healing not only the body, but also the mind, the psyche, the emotions, as well as the energy body.

He led many ceremonies to heal Mother Earth and Sacred Sites, such as Path of the Jaguar in many pyramids and temples, Path of the Eagle and Condor in Tiahuanaco and Puma Punku in Bolivia, Activation of the 1000 Drums in the Jalisco ceremonies, and he also worked in different places in Europe, Switzerland, Italy and France.

Juan Carlos Kaiten, Mexico

He holds a master’s degree in “Strategic Leadership toward Sustainability” from the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, where he began his research on social bio-mimicry and co-developed the “Magic Canoe” model for large-scale collaboration. This model reveals the principles and DNA of a global co-creative community.
He is a social architect and alchemist specializing in evolutionary leadership, collective intelligence, social networks, and organizational transformation. He is a co-founder of the School of Social Alchemy and a member of the One Ancient Future initiative, which aims to map, protect, and reactivate sacred sites across the planet. He has also been deeply involved in Mayan and Native American traditions for more than 25 years, participating in sacred rituals and activation ceremonies in Mexico, the U.S. and Egypt. He has also studied Egyptian alchemy and spagyric (alchemy of sound) as well as spiritual knowledge and traditions around the world.

Fernando Ausin, Mexico

Fernando holds a BA in Latin American politics from Dartmouth College and has worked extensively as a consultant, educator and healer around the globe. 
He is an international social entrepreneur with a strong passion for social justice and global sustainability. For the past 15 years, he has been studying the promise of survival for humanity from an indigenous perspective, travelling across 48 states in the US and most of Mexico to learn from these teachers. Through his non-profit organizations, he teaches their lessons to younger generations. His most recent book, “Messages from the Elders” describes the cosmovision and wisdom of a man of knowledge from a remote indigenous community in the highlands of Mexico.

Erika Sylven, Sweden

Erika lives in Stockholm and is in the Sami connection. She sees her a spiritual seeker who is dedicated to travelling and have for many years been drawn to explore ancient places of wisdom. She has been all around Asia from China, Pyramids in Xian, Mongolia, Monasteries in Tibet, temples in Bhutan to the sites in Turkey; such as Cappadocia, Nemrut and Göbekli Tepe. She also went on initiation trips to Egypt, where she visited the 3 pyramids in Giza, as well as the 3 pyramids in Teotihuacan in Mexico, because both places are aligned with the constellation Orion. She has been doing voluntary work in South Africa, at the White Lion Trust Foundation, as well been travelling within South Africa, and visited the stone circle Inzalo ya Langa among few other special places.
Erika is also passionate about mediations, dedicated to the work of different healing and trauma modalities in order to come back home to the true sate of being – conected in the heart. She is also passionate to bring Ceremonial Cacao to Scandinavia and hold and create loving and heart opening cacao ceremonies.

Rick Ferguson, Hawaii

Rick has been an active environmentalist all his life. He spent the first part in the technical field as a geological engineer, studying the science and physical nature of the of the earth. The second part of his life set him on a spiritual path as he learned to deepen his relationship with the spirit of water and the spirit of trees – which earned him the name Spirit Walker and gave him the guidance to help humanity find a better way by leaning into love. Rick is the co-founder and organizer of the successful WWD World Water Day and he runs a non-profit organization in Kauai, Hawaii to spread these messages and bring us into better balance with the natural world. To this end, he works with indigenous leaders and has published several books.