Xiye Bastida

Youth Climate Activist

Image credit: Xiye Bastida, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Xiye Bastida is a youth climate activist and member of the indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec nation. An outspoken critic of environmental exploitation and injustice, Bastida fights for equity and inclusion within the climate movement. That involves highlighting the link between climate justice and indigenous rights an fighting to ensure that “a rainbow of diverse voices,” including indigenous voices, are included in decision-making. Motivated by the belief that people should “leave everything better than you found it,” Bastida is a lead organize for Fridays for Future (a global school strike movement for climate), a coordinator of the Re-Earth Initiative, and sits on the administrative committee for the People’s Climate movement – intersectional organizations that promote equity and inclusion in climate advocacy. Bastida writes, “Being an activist means lending your skills toward a cause that furthers justice. And all these voices must be uplifted equitably.”

Reproduced from Carrie Booth Walling, Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World (Routledge 2022).