Croatian Peace Heroes
Colombian Peace Heroes
Iranian Peace Heroes
Indigenous Peace Heroes
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is a young American environmental activist and hip-hop artist. Martinez was born in Colorado but spent a large part of his life raised within the community of the indigenous Mexica. He was youth director of Earth Guardians until 2019 and has spoken to large crowds, including the United Nations, about the effects of fossil fuels on indigenous communities. Through his family, Martinez inherited the Mexica traditional knowledge of seeing an individual as part of a greater whole and of emphasizing a connection between all aspects of the natural world. It is through the inspiration of his indigenous upbringing that he become an environmental activist as he strongly believes the abuse of nature is "the tearing apart of a fragile and revered system.”
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an environmental activist and geographer from Chad. She advocates for the greater inclusion of indigenous people and their knowledge and traditions in the global movement to fight the effects of climate change. She is the President of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), in addition to that she is also co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) and a member of the Executive committee of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC). Ibrahim comes from the nomadic Mbororo community in Chad. Her parents settling in the capital, N’Djamena, allowed her to go to school which caused a lot of conflict between her mother, her father’s family, and her mother ́s own family.
Amelia Telford
Amelia Telford is a young Aboriginal and South Sea Islander woman from Bundjalung country, who is currently the National Director of the Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network. In 2012 she developed a program through the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and helps them to build sustainable projects in their area in order to protect their land and their communities from the impact of Climate Change. Also, Amelia was awarded National NAIDOC Youth of the Year 2014, Bob Brown's Young Environmentalist for the Year 2015 and Australian Geographic Young Conservationist of the Year 2015 for her commitment to building a more sustainable future for all young people.
Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi
Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi is a Finnish researcher and a member of a reindeer Saami family. He is greatly focused on Saami culture, language, environment and biodiversity. Näkkäläjärvi also worked as Sami parliament’s president in Finland which is the highest political organ of the Saami people in the country. He influenced a concept of prohibition of regression that serves to prevent the realisation of projects which would considerably impair the potential of the Saami people to exercise their indigenous peoples' rights. Näkkäläjärvi also assisted in implementation of Akwé: Kon guidelines in Finland - ‘’guidelines for the conduct of cultural, environmental and social impact assessments in developments proposed to take place on, or which are likely to impact on, sacred sites and on lands and waters traditionally occupied or used by indigenous and local communities.’’
Rigas Zafeiriou
Rigas Zafeiriou is a Greek cross-disciplinary researcher, consultant and manager on organic and sustainable agricultural systems, food networks and sustainable rural development. As a Project Manager for the Mediterranean Institute for Nature and Anthropos (MedINA), he developed and successfully implemented an innovative monitoring and certification system for high-quality, added-value olive oil production, which conserves biodiversity, maintains traditional agricultural landscapes and supports farmers' livelihoods. Moreover, among his many achievements in the field of agrobiodiversity conservation, he is part of the Integrated Nature Culture Approach (INCREAte) which promotes the interconnection of culture and nature by focusing on and designing more efficient conservation projects while also addressing human wellbeing.
Nemonte Nenquimo
Nemonte Nenquimo is an Indigenous activist and member of the Waorani nation from the Ecuadorian Amazon. As an avid environmental and indigenous activist, she was the Plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government, which culminated in a 2019 ruling that protects half a million acres of Waorani ancestral land in the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling. In 2015, Nenquimo co-founded Ceibo Alliance, an Indigenous-led non-profit to protect Indigenous lands from resource extraction. She was elected the first female president of the Waorani organization of Pastaza province (CONCONAWEP) in 2018 and in recognition of her work, in 2020 the United Nations Environment Programme gave her the "Champions of the Earth" award in the category Inspiration and Action.
Jennifer Corpuz
Jennifer Corpuz is a lawyer from the Kankana-ey Igorot People of Mountain Province in the Philippines. She is the Global Policy and Advocacy Lead for Nia Tero, a US-based foundation that works alongside Indigenous Peoples to secure Indigenous guardianship and rights to traditional environmental knowledge. Corpuz is passionate about developing capacities of Indigenous leaders and was involved as negotiator and expert for the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), representing indigenous peoples, at the negotiations leading to the adoption of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Through her legal advocacy, Corpuz has managed to protect the biodiversity of the land of indigenous communities around the world.