Xiye Bastida
Climate Activist and Co-Founder, Re-Earth Initiative
Xiye is a teenage climate activist based in New York City and one of the lead organizers of the Fridays For Future youth climate strike movement. Xiye was born and raised in Mexico as part of the Otomi-Toltec Indigenous Peoples and holds that philosophy and value-system for caring for Mother Earth. She offered a youth activism training program in the summer of 2019 that helped youth prepare for the Climate March in September, 2019. At the end of March, 2020, on the eve of the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, she co-founded the Re-Earth Initiative. With volunteers from the five continents, they are expanding the climate justice movement by educating on how and why to pledge for personal and systemic change. Since 2018, she has spoken at conferences such as the 9th United Nations World Urban Forum, American Renewable Energy (ARE Day), COP26 and Earth X, about indigenous cosmology and its role in protecting ecosystems. She received the “Spirit of the UN” award in 2018.