Cali Alpert:
Welcome to Dropping In, from Omega Institute, a podcast that explores the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. I'm Cali Alpert. Dropping in today, Xiye Bastida. Xiye is a Mexican born youth climate activist based in New York City and a member of the Indigenous Otomi Toltec nation. She was one of the major organizers of Fridays For Future New York City and has been a leading voice for Indigenous and immigrant visibility. Xiye is cofounder of Re-Earth Initiative, an international and inclusive nonprofit organization. In 2018, she received the Spirit of the UN Award.

Welcome, Xiye. Thanks so much for dropping in today. So you call yourself a climate justice activist, right? Can you tell me the difference between that and being environmentalist? Because that's a widely used term, but I know it's not a term that you feel applies to your type of work.

Xiye Bastida:
So for me, environmentalism, and I think for most people...  the connotation of maybe this view of the world as a lifestyle that's very personal and individual. What did I do today? Did I recycle? Did I buy second hand? It's always like, what did I do? And in an NGO structural perspective, the Greenpeaces, the Sierra Clubs, the NRDCs, environmentalism for them is going in and protecting Yosemite, going in and protecting these other national park, or maybe internationally as well. But it's always maybe disconnected from people, at a systemic level. And it's not just disoriented.

So actually, for Sierra Club, a few decades ago there was a vote in their board asking whether they wanted to put their resources to just protecting national parks or also helping communities deal with things like pollution and just systemic environmental racism. And they voted to just stay with national parks.

I think that is what traditional environmental movement is to me, the big 10 environmental organizations that have pioneered a view of the world of nature that is disconnected from people. And they, for example, don't recognize that Yosemite is Yosemite because Indigenous people shaped Yosemite. And maybe, if you want people to reconnect with nature, you shouldn't cage it in and define where an ecosystem ends and begins.

And climate justice is so different because it recognizes intersections, it recognizes injustices historically, internationally, locally. I think that is what we should all aim to pursue. Our view of our work in the environmental space, in the climate space, that takes injustice into account so we can correct those injustices so that the world that we're building doesn't replicate the same things that have put communities at the risk of being near incinerators, being near oil. There shouldn't even be oil extraction. But all of these things that put certain communities, denote communities as expendable or just as... Frontline communities shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be a term in the first place.

Cali Alpert:
Let's talk a little bit about you and your origins. You came from a small Indigenous community, a town that's near Mexico City in Mexico and raised by two climate activist parents. Do you remember your early influences of forming a relationship with Mother Earth?

Xiye Bastida:
Yeah, I think I have some very clear memories. And others were just learning to be a human on this planet, was learned in a very specific way of language, and my parents just spoke to me in that way, in the way that we are connected with nature, we must give thanks to the four directions. There's a lot of ceremony, there's a lot of deep gratitude and deep sense of responsibility as well. I actually grew up with my grandfather having to physically go to a space where he had to sit on a chair to guard it from any corporation that wanted to come and take it. There's not a more literal definition of land protector. It was just seen as a normal thing. We weren't even questioning why would the land be taken if we weren't there? What are the systems working together that I saw as so disconnected from my reality? Why are they working? Who is operating them?

And growing up, there was just a lot of naming of deities. For example, the spirit of the fire, the spirit of the water. All of this, you saw Mother Earth as alive and nature as alive. There was no other option but to see it, see us as an extension of nature.

When I was in kindergarten, I was actually named water protector. I was the one in charge of closing all of the faucets if my classmates left them open. Also a very literal definition of protecting water. And I have a very specific memory from when I was three years old, which I don't know how I remember this. But my dad took me to Veracruz, which is a state in Mexico, and we went to a little island. And the tide started rising so much that I couldn't walk on the sand and the water because it would drag me away. So he put me on his back and I was swinging off of his back, seeing the water rise and rise. And I learned later that, that island and that piece of land was suffering sea level rise. And at three years old, my dad was making sure that I was okay. I think processing this over the years, it just really makes me aware of the way that our communities have changed because of this global climate crisis that has very specific and local implications.

Cali Alpert:
I'd love to hear you talk about reciprocity. I know that's a word that you use a lot when you're talking about your work and a lot of what informed your work when you were a younger girl. Can you tell me a little bit about what reciprocity means in your culture and also how you apply it in your everyday life?

Xiye Bastida:
There is a set of principles that we follow in my community and they are very common across Indigenous communities in the world. Reciprocity is one of them. There is intergenerational cooperation. There's, like I said, the sense of purpose and responsibility for protection. And reciprocity, what it means for me is that not only in interpersonal relationships do we give and receive, learn to give and learn to receive. Because sometimes we don't think we're good at receiving, we just take, right? So there's a big difference between taking and receiving. But Mother Earth also requires that from us as humanity. We're taking and extracting so much, that's a negative relationship and a linear relationship and we have to give back to everything that Mother Earth has given us to sustain us, giving us a gift of life and wonder. So for me, it's seeing everything not only as circular but actually in a spiral way where every relationship that goes and comes around makes us grow in that consciousness. So that's how I see it.

Cali Alpert:
Were you aware of the consciousness in your culture and in your family at that age? Did you know that you were part of something that was going to inform you to the degree that it has in the work that you're doing today, or was it just normal everyday life for you?

Xiye Bastida:
Yeah, it was normal. It was just normal to see the world in this way. And I think the shock actually came from realizing that other people didn't think the same way. The shock came from seeing that people where there were decisions being made that made my community the recipient of injustice. Even talking about it now, I'm like, "How can that even happen?" How can some people decide for your community, for you and these decisions are actually harmful? I think that we are in a very different paradigm right now and especially my generation is coming in with this new vibration that Sherri Mitchell has talked about. This new vibration of being in tune with what Mother Earth is feeling. So we are bringing that new vibration and that knowledge and that wisdom already embedded in us. And I think that the role of parents is to keep that wisdom and nurture that wisdom and keep it intact so that it can actually be heard and flourish.

I do think as youth, a lot of us have been very naive as Gen Z, as we are called. We think that... You can talk about all of Gen Z around the world, you can talk about Gen Z in the environmental movement. But there is this sense that, oh, the adults ruin the world for us. And I don't think you can say that because that disrespects my elders, that disrespects my parents. It's not all elders, it's this very specific view of the world and way of doing things that is not common to every elder. Right? I think I have come into the space as a youth and said we actually have a lot to learn from people who have walked this path before. We have a lot to learn from wisdom, we have a lot to learn from movements because we also think in the climate movement that we invented the protests and we invented the sittings and we invented the good posters with the good puns, the climate puns.

But obviously, we are just a continuation of past movements. And the sooner we learn history, the sooner we learn our stories, the better we are going to be and the more strategic we're going to be in getting all of these demands met. And also knowing that the fossil fuel industry has all this strategy behind it. They are very intentional with all of the work that they do to destroy our movements, to pit us against each other. And we have to be smarter. And that comes from knowing that there's people who have had these experiences before and learning. Not only in our Indigenous communities and very small ways of relating to the earth in our individual ecosystems, but also globally in relation to Mother Earth and in relation to these systems. A lot of them are very new, but there's enough history on how we've dealt with them with past movements that we can recover that and not have to reinvent everything.

Cali Alpert:
There's also a lot of conversation in this type of work around getting so far away from our deepest essence and our ancestral wisdom and our spirituality. And I wonder if you have thought about why we've been so good at getting so far away from it. Why has it been so successful in so many cultures to move so far away from that?

Xiye Bastida:
Well, there's two forces at play here. The first one is that there's this process of forced assimilation where indigeneity and wisdom is othered and demonized. And where people decided that it was better to not teach their language to their children because they didn't want the government to come and attack, or corporations to come and attack. So this forced assimilation process that is similar in every single part of the world towards Indigenous communities is the one thing that, as a protective response, communities are like, "Maybe we should not pass on this tradition or this culture to protect our kids." So, that's one thing.

The second thing is, yes, even Indigenous communities today or for example, I'm going to talk about my own experience. Moving to the United States, going to a private university, even getting to speak at global stages like the United Nations or all of these... I spoke at the Biden summit, which is a summit that happened in 2020, where I spoke to 40 heads of state. You go up and up and up and up in accomplishments, it seems, and then where's your community? Where is your giving back to where you come from? Where have you been in your own relationship to the land?

And it's a process that is always going up and down, up and down. Even yesterday, I was in what's considered the highest fashion. I sat next to Anna Wintour while she was eating lunch and I asked her how she spent her pandemic. And I didn't even know who she was two years ago. And when I found out who she was, I was like, she sounds a little intimidating. And then I'm sitting next to her and the next day, I am with community, grounding myself and reminding myself that this is what matters.

Cali Alpert:
So you and your family moved from Mexico to New York City in 2015. I'm curious how the duality has been for you between where you came from and moving, living in a large city and also going to college in another large American city. Do you feel that duality day-to-day between your origins and your life here in the United States and how it informs your work? Do they both live inside of you equally or did it take some adjusting? I'm just curious how that gets expressed for you every day, in your work and in your life as a college student and a young woman.

Xiye Bastida:
Yeah. So there's so many layers there because I think there's so many dualities in every space that we occupy. It's like we're all multifaceted and all of our identities exist at the same time. So in Mexico, there is also a difference between being from an Indigenous community or not. So even in Mexico there's a duality. And then coming into the United States, there's a difference between being somebody from Latin America who's born in the US or not, first generation, second generation. And what unites us, for example, is maybe music, like Bad Bunny is what I feel in common with everybody from Latin America. But that might not be the same for other people who are born here, who are not from Latin America. So there's so many dualities at play all the time.
And sometimes, and I think we all do this, you shift within yourselves depending on what space you're occupying in that time. So when I'm in school, it's also a different duality because I'm a student and an activist. But I think what's the commonality in everything that I do is my principles, who I am and where I'm from. And if you have those things answered, I think it really does inform your identity so, so much that every decision becomes about who you are, where you're from, and what your purpose is. And that purpose has always been how are we protecting Mother Earth for future generations with the wisdom of past generations. So, I can inhabit all of my different multifaceted identities in all of the spaces, like another duality for example, at the UN, there's like I am representing youth and indigenous communities. You are always put into the box that they want you to fit.

Cali Alpert:
Let's talk about the climate crisis. How urgent is it, how worried are you and do you feel like it's more important and essential to educate and change the minds of individual consumers or big business?

Xiye Bastida:
Well, I can tell you how urgent it is scientifically and how urgent it feels from Mother Earth speaking through us. Scientifically, we have until 2030 to have our emissions to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming. I think anybody in the climate space can repeat that. It just rolls off the tongue, right? We are at around 416 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. The safe amount is 350 parts per million. And so we have a lot of work to do. There's a lot of urgency, there's a deadline. And I think that every single climate disaster that we see shows us that the climate crisis is here. And I remember just three years ago saying the climate crisis is here would be a revelation for people, like, "Oh, that's true. It's not coming in 50 years, it's already here." And now it's something that everybody says. But because we are seeing it more and more often. So that is the scientific space.
But for the spiritual space, you can hear, you can feel the ocean, I can feel the ocean telling me, "I am too hot." I can feel the trees rustling and saying, "I'm hurting." I can even feel the coal and the oil telling me, "We were plankton, we were plant matter, you are burning us." And so, what we need to separate ourselves from is the extractive and destructive practices so that we can preserve even the coal under the ground. Because even in the way that we speak about these things, it's like we demonize the things that we are extracting rather than the system of extraction. I think it's a very important distinction.

And whether to change the minds of consumers or businesses, I don't think it's about them doing more things, it's just about doing things differently because it matters what intention you have. So you have businesses coming in and saying, "We see that climate is trending or climate activism is trending, so let's put on a sustainability campaign." And it's 3% of their production is the sustainability campaign and they have a green seal on them and they just greenwash themselves. And it works for a lot of consumers.

So, it's the responsibility on the consumer because they were lied to, or on the business because they are lying. It's the business, by the way. Because they have all of the resources, they have all of the PR firms, they have all of the knowledge that a lot of the consumers, on a day-to-day basis, you are not necessarily thinking all of the time, "Who am I buying from? Where is my water coming from? What aquifer was sucked? What water was sucked out of what aquifer for me to have this water?"

And the supply chain has become so fragmented and entangled that a lot of the times, the businesses themselves don't know where their things come from. There's this thing in oil production called the idea of modularity, which basically says the more you can break every single step of the production of oil, the better it is for each individual company because you cannot assign responsibility to any one of them. And that is called frictionless profit. The idea of generating profit without any friction, social issues, environmental issues, workers' rights issues. So frictionless profit in this modular context basically makes it so that every single industry can blame it on somebody else. And so business, as a whole, becomes just unsueable-

Cali Alpert:
Lacking accountability.

Xiye Bastida:
Exactly. The lacking of accountability and lacking of transparency and everything else. So what's broken or actually, what's working well, is the system of extraction that makes it so that only a few people can profit. Because we say the system is broken, but if the system was broken, then nobody would win. But there are people winning off of extraction. So the system is wrong. It is working well, but it's a wrong system, a system based on elevating certain ways of looking at value rather than others. So my community, for example, under any GPP things like that, would be designated as poor because we don't meet the standard of minimum wage. But are you going to tell me that I am poor if I have access to the most beautiful lagoon and the most beautiful knowledge and the most beautiful and delicious food that there exists? I don't feel poor. Just you're describing me that way because it suits your economic vision of the world. So even the way in which we measure things has to be changed for the system to change.

Cali Alpert:
And now, a word about Omega Teachers Studio. Get ready to be inspired from your very own cushion, yoga mat or couch. Omega Teachers Studio brings your favorite teachers direct to you live and online from their studios for one plus hour classes on topics that matter the most. They're easy to fit into your schedule and affordable too. Learn more at eomega.org/studio. To receive a 10% discount on any teacher studio tuition, enter the code, DI10, when registering. That's the letters D and I and the numbers 1 and 0. Now, back to our episode.

So this question might feel very mundane to someone like you, and yet a lot of people that are less aware and are starting to catch up and try to get with the program of this crisis would ask a question like, "What can we do?" I know I've heard you talk about how just going to the recycling bin is certainly not enough. But for some people, that's all they know. So is there a way to bottom line or streamline the top three to five things that people can do when they feel powerless to help?

Xiye Bastida:
Well, that's actually the hardest question that I'm ever asked. It sounds like the easiest question, but it is the hardest question because I don't know everybody's situation and not one solution works for everyone. And sometimes I just give up and say, "Buy secondhand, buy your own reusable cup or try to eat less meat," the things that we all hear over and over again.
But it is the hardest question because I just know that the answer is in our minds and our way to relating the world. So not doing more or less things, but doing everything differently, carrying yourself differently. And I think a lot of times, when people ask this question and they do feel powerless because they don't feel like anything that they're doing is enough, is also coupled with this climate grief and climate anxiety layer. And my answer to that is, if you are feeling any type of emotion because of the climate crisis, know that any grief comes from love. You cannot feel grief if you don't love first. So if you are feeling these things, it's because you have just discovered your innate love to Mother Earth. And once you discover that, what do you do with things that you love, you protect. So I think that is really the answer. And it's more emotional and mental and spiritual.

Do everything that you can to protect the world around you. Do everything that you can to protect future generations and that stability. And that is going to look differently for everyone because everybody has different institutions, systems, sectors. Somebody who works in fashion versus somebody who works in photography, in graphic design, food, agriculture, da, da, da, da, da, you can list 1,000 different ones. Architecture is actually a very interesting one too because architects do decide how we live, where we live, how efficient our buildings are, which is also crazy to think that a profession like architecture is seen as so weird, not weird, but so much less than doctor or medicine or lawyer. And it's like building the whole world is their job, as we know it as people in cities.

So I think that in that sector that you occupy, if you carry that responsibility and that purpose that you've discovered out of discovering that love, then you can change things. Because if everybody recycled in the world, only 9% of it would only be recycled either way. So why don't we shift our thinking to why do we even produce plastic in the first place?

Cali Alpert:
Your work spans so many different aspects of our thinking and of societal practice. So I'd like to just talk about a few of them and how they're so significant and the role that they play in your mission. So can we start with gender equality and how that plays into the whole idea of climate awareness?

Xiye Bastida:
So, in Mexico, and in many Latin American countries, the movement that is shaking everybody up is a feminist movement. And people ask, "So why aren't the protests in Mexico as big as a protest in Germany? Why aren't the protests in Chile as big as the protests here, the climate protests?" And I find it hard not to ask people, "Don't you see the feminist protest?" Taking care of and protecting women's rights is taking care and protecting Mother Earth rights because it's that thinking of extraction and submission. That is related towards women and towards that patriarchal thinking. And if you think of one of my first classes that I took in college was international relations, and I always reference this, but it just really, I cannot believe somebody sat down and wrote this and then influenced the way the whole world worked.

But Morgenthau thought wrote the six principles of political realism to outline how international relations should be carried out. And one of his points is that emotions cannot be in decision making. And we know that the feminine energy is emotional. Even saying emotional feels like it has a negative connotation, but what is bad about being in touch with your feelings and being empathetic and knowing that your actions have a repercussion on somebody else? So the feminist response to Morgenthau's principles of political realism was how can you not have emotions in decision making? You are okay then with people suffering in wars? You're okay then with people suffering from extractive industries?

And so really finding everything that the West knows even about relationship with other countries is a feminist and environmental rights issue. So I don't know if that answers the question, but you can talk about gender in a micro way, and we hear this example a lot too, in communities that have water scarcity, women are usually the ones who walk the farther miles every single time to get water because of water scarcity. And there's a lot of danger that goes into those walks and that journey. And it also takes away from any other thing that the women in the community can be connected to, which can be education or educating themselves, educating their children.
So there's a lot of social aspects to gender and how the climate crisis is affecting women's roles as protectors of the family. But then there's the macro level, which is all of these more philosophical, I guess, ways that have very material repercussions. And actually, one of the solutions from Drawdown, they have the 100 solutions to address a climate crisis. One of the top solutions is educating women and girls. And it's because of many reasons, but I think one of the main ones is so that we can get into decision making spaces and make sure that our innate feminine energy that is connected to Mother Earth's protection is always heard everywhere.

Cali Alpert:
I'd like to hear you talk about intergenerationality, the idea of you holding all of this space that you hold as a 20-year-old woman representing Gen Z and also the reverence and appreciation you have for your ancestors and ancestral wisdom. How important is it for generations to learn to cooperate and bond more with each other in the name of helping with this problem?

Xiye Bastida:
I think from an Indigenous perspective, it is so obvious that the elders talk to the youth and the youth talk to the elders. And I think the reason why elders are so wise is because they're listening to how youth, who are the closest to life, to the start of life, they're listening to their perspectives and they actually think about them through their experience to create wisdom. I think that's how wisdom is created, through storytelling and conversations with youth. And in turn, we learn so much from that storytelling and we learn so much from that experience and that resilience. But in the western world, I think we are so detached from our grandparents, we as Gen Z I'm saying, detached from any adults. Even your parents. I have friends whose parents give them money and they're like, "Okay, we won't be back till three weeks," or whatever. It's just so crazy to me how you just leave your kid with no support system.

And I said this in one of the panels that I've been having that sometimes one of the only ways in which youth actually come in contact with elders or with adults is through internships or things like that, like very structural, commodified ways of relating to structures. And it shouldn't be that you have to get an internship in order to have a mentor or in order to have knowledge. So yeah, I think there's a lot of work to be done. But one of the things that is very concrete is just for that intergenerationality to be questioned by every single person. So even me, as a young person, there's somebody younger than me too who needs my mentorship as well. And so always thinking, there's always people coming up and there's always people in front of you and you have to respect both.

Cali Alpert:
You are a college student and an activist holding a lot of responsibility. Do you feel pressure? What does it feel like just to be in your shoes every day? Do you feel like you hold a lot of pressure and responsibility that might get in the way of you just remembering to be a young adult and a normal young adult, for lack of a better expression?

Xiye Bastida:
Yeah. I think my relationship with my activism has changed a lot since I first started, in the sense that at first, I thought that I had to leave everything behind and that nothing else mattered, but everything that you are doing for the cause. And I think even now, I still feel that, in terms of maybe you feel a little guilty not organizing or not working or missing an organizing call. But then, at the same time, I've done a lot of reflection and I love this one quote that says, "How you spend your days is how you spend your life." So knowing that nothing is going to come, it has to happen as you go through your day-to-day. So if I want a life that is fulfilling and happy, I have to practice that in my day. So when I wake up in the morning and I write my to-do list, I cannot just have five meetings and three classes, I have to have breakfast, I have to-

Cali Alpert:
Breakfast is good.

Xiye Bastida:
... Go to the gym. I have to make sure that I'm taking care of myself and my relationships. So not forgetting, calling my friend or my mom or my brother and just practicing that. A day at a time is, at the end of your life, how you spend your whole life. And that also means that for me, it's an opportunity for people who think they are not doing enough, is just doing enough today and thinking the same way every day is going to build a legacy for you. I'm thinking of balancing not just my life but balancing my days. And I think through that, I can grow more into a full person rather than just a very one-dimensional facet of myself. And yeah, I still haven't gotten back into gymnastics, but I've done a lot of yoga. So that's similar and I like it.

Cali Alpert:
How do you connect with Mother Nature every day, if you do every day? What does that look like for you, if I may ask?

Xiye Bastida:
Well, I think there's the very, very literal way where you go out and you sit on the grass and you just lay down and you just allow yourself to be with nature, noticing the little things, finding the wonder in that little petal and all of the different things that have to happen for that petal to exist. It's just so beautiful. Looking at the bees or the butterflies that sometimes were coming during the spring, for example, or the leaves fall in the autumn or the snowfall in the winter. All of these things are so amazing and every single time I think of everything that had to happen for us to exist in this time. I find so much deep gratitude.

I was thinking of water earlier and the fact that the water that we have today is the same amount of water that we had at the beginning of time. But not only that, every single water that we have today has also passed through every single living being in the history of earth. We are connected in such intricate ways to the history of the planet. And knowing those little things just sitting outside, it's crazy. I don't know how every single human being on the planet cannot allow themselves to feel that. So that's a literal way.

But there's also other ways where sometimes I'm sitting in a building, like this one, and I think this was somehow tied to the earth and this was also, and some hands made this. So even in the things that might not seem natural, they still come from the earth. So finding that connection even when you think it's not possible or so accessible.

Cali Alpert:
Finally, here are three rapid fire questions that I like to ask everybody on Dropping In. First one is, I'd like to grant you one wish for our listeners and our viewers, what would it be?

Xiye Bastida:
I wish that you find a way to connect what brings you joy to the protection of the planet.

Cali Alpert:
And if you were to grant yourself one wish, what would you wish for?

Xiye Bastida:
I wish to finish my four assignments before Monday.

Cali Alpert:
Every great activist still has to deal with their schoolwork, right? And finally, if you were to have our viewers and our listeners take away one thing from our conversation today, what would it be?

Xiye Bastida:
If you take away one thing from what I said today, I want it to be that yes, the world is complex and yes, we are living through a crisis. But the best thing that we can do is to build a world with love and joy. Because if we are angry in building a new world, the world that we build is not going to be the world where you want to live in. So, in the process of transformation from the era of fossil fuels to this new era, never forget to always come back to love and always come back to those more positive things that can actually make a difference and shape everything around us.

Cali Alpert:
Xiye, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure talking with you today. I could go on for days. If people would like to find out more about you, where can they find you?

Xiye Bastida:
You can find me on Twitter, @XiyeBastida, or Instagram, @xiyebeara.

Cali Alpert:
Thank you so much.

Xiye Bastida:
Thank you.

Cali Alpert:
Thanks for dropping in with Omega Institute. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps new listeners find us. If you'd like to see what we look like, watch the video version of Dropping In on Omega's YouTube channel. Dropping In is made possible in part by the support of Omega members. Omega members enjoy a host of beneficial experiences when they donate to help sustain Omega's programming. To learn more, visit eomega.org/membership. And check out our many online learning opportunities featuring your favorite teachers and thought leaders at eomega.org/onlinelearning. I'm Cali Alpert, producer and host of Dropping In. Our video editor is Grannell Knox. The music and mix are by Scott Mueller. Thanks for dropping in.