Earth Guardians’ Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is a 19-year-old indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of the global youth-led environmental movement. Xiuhtezcatl began speaking internationally on these issues at the age of 6, including at the United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the UN General Assembly in New York.
Since then, he has worked at the local level to get pesticides out of parks, to reduce coal ash pollution, and to initiate fracking moratoriums in his home state of Colorado. He is currently a plaintiff in Juliana v U.S., a youth-led lawsuit against the federal government for the government’s inaction around the climate crisis and its failure to protect their essential public trust resources.