The climate crisis threatens not only the Earth’s environment but also our survival as a society, according to nationally recognized activist and musician Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. In this fight for humanity, artistic expression can be a powerful tool, he said.
Martinez delivered a message of alarm, and hope, to a crowd of 275 during Illinois State University’s Latino and Sustainability Cultural Dinner on Tuesday, October 22, in the Bone Student Center’s Brown Ballroom.
Hosted by University Housing Services, the dinner featured a variety of Mexican fusion cuisines catered by Event Management, Dining, and Hospitality. During his hourlong talk, Martinez, 24, said his activism and the rap music he creates is deeply connected to his Indigenous Xochimilcan and Mexican heritage.
“Many Indigenous communities have come to understand the climate crisis as not just an environmental issue, but as an existential threat to our cultural survival as Indigenous people,” Martinez said. “And what I’ve come to learn and understand by being in the climate and environmental justice movement for the majority of my life is that it actually applies to all of us, not just Native communities. Everything about how we exist on the Earth right now is threatened by the climate crisis.”
Named to Rolling Stone’s “25 under 25” when he was 15, Martinez was introduced to environmental activism by his mother, Tamara Roske, the co-founder of Earth Guardians. This nonprofit organization aims to empower youth around the world to be leaders at the forefront of the climate movement.
“The limitations that are oftentimes applied to young people didn’t exist for me, not because I was any different than anybody else in my peer group, but the support system that I had around me showed me that your voice is really important and you should trust it,” Martinez said.
From a young age, Martinez gave presentations and performed award-winning music inspired by the “rage” he felt about environmental injustice. Born and raised in Colorado, his motivation became personal as he witnessed climate-change driven wildfires destroy friends’ homes and natural landscapes that he loved.
When he was 12, Martinez and his younger brother, Itzcuauhtli, who was 9, began using their voices to challenge the fossil fuel industry. They gained widespread community support by calling for an end to coal-fired power plants and fracking.
“We were seeing that across class, race, and political lines, when the safety and the well-being of our children and our clean water is threatened, we can build coalitions that strengthen our ability to protect our communities,” Martinez said. “And although we didn’t win the fight at that time in Colorado to get a statewide moratorium on fracking, what we learned is that this approach to finding commonalities that can bring all of us together is crucial for so much of the work that we do.”
As a 15-year-old, in 2015, Martinez spoke in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl (an Uto-Aztecan language) before the United Nations General Assembly on Climate Change. He’s also given TED Talks and was invited to join former President Barack Obama’s Youth Environmental Council.
Martinez has led numerous climate change rallies and was a plaintiff on two climate-related lawsuits—one against the state government of Colorado and another against the U.S. Federal government—arguing that the government’s climate policies and reliance on fossil fuels is harmful, jeopardizes young people’s futures, and violates their constitutional rights.
“This set in motion a domino effect of different lawsuits and cases being filed in different states across the United States and different countries across the globe where young people faced with the immensity of the climate crisis are trying to leverage these different systems to work in our favor, to fight for a more just future,” Martinez said.
In recent years, Martinez has been encouraged by the results of organized climate activism, such as suspension of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Native American groups in South Dakota and Montana warned that the pipeline would jeopardize their land and water.
“Across North America, you can see the Indigenous resistance movements have been at the forefront, reminding us that the people who have been on these lands living symbiotically are the ones that can help guide us into a state where we can continue to be in symbiosis with the land,” Martinez said.
He credited a “mass mobilization of people from across the country” for protesting and, ultimately, stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
“Seeing the mobilization of young people fighting for the stability of our planet, for our future, for our well-being, has been something that has really reshaped my understanding of where we can prioritize how we organize ourselves as a movement,” he said.
Matrinez’s message to students at Tuesday’s dinner was that everyone can contribute in their own way to support large-scale, systemic change—whether that’s by attending rallies or by supporting climate activism through personal artistic expression.
“There are these ideas of what activism looks like,” Martinez said. “Moving outside of the traditional spaces that people would expect to find has been really pivotal to understanding where I can be most effective with my voice, with my story, and with the work that I do.”
Martinez is amplifying his voice as a Los Angeles-based recording and touring hip-hop artist with lyrics “anchored by the Mexican roots on his father’s side and the environmental justice work his mother raised him in,” according to his website.
“All of us have a part to play in these spaces and these movements, and it can look as simple or as great as integrating your creative expression or your professional practice to serve these movements,” Martinez said. “For me, the music has been a vehicle that has launched my voice and my platform into a very different space.”
Martinez encouraged students to make their voices heard as our world faces an important turning point in the climate crisis that he said requires courage and strength from the next generation of leaders.
“Getting to meet other young people who have aspirations and dreams and stories and struggles in their communities that they’re fighting for and ideas about what it actually can look like to build a more sustainable, just, and equitable future,” Martinez said, “has helped me understand that the world in front of us doesn’t have to look like the world that we inherited.”
The Latino and Sustainability Cultural Dinner was sponsored by the Office of Sustainability; Office of the Provost; the Association of Residence Halls; Event Management, Dining, and Hospitality; Latin American and Latino/a Studies; Association of Latinx American Students, and the Organization of Latino Employees.
