Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (his first name is pronounced ‘shoe-tez-caht’) is a 14-year-old indigenous environmental activist, hip-hop artist and public speaker from Boulder, Colorado. He has spoken at over 100 events around the world. He is also the youth director of Earth Guardians, an international, youth-based environmental nonprofit organization that is committed to protecting the water, air, earth and atmosphere. At the early age of 6, Xiuhtezcatl began speaking to crowds at conferences and demonstrations from the Rio+20 United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro to the United Nations in New York. Locally he has worked on successful campaigns to get pesticides out of parks, regulate coal ash and achieve bans and moratoria on fracking in Colorado cities. He has traveled across the nation and to many parts of the world educating his generation about the state of the planet they are inheriting and inspiring them into action to protect their future. His work has been featured on PBS, Showtime and HBO. Bill McKibben of 350.org calls Xiuhtezcatl ‘an impressive spokesman for a viewpoint the world needs to hear.’