Adam Burke

A Navajo woman who has spent 50 years sewing has now been honored with an NEA award for her unique quilts. She is unafraid to criticize the mainstream culture that's marginalized Indigenous artists.

For more than seven decades, coal and the energy made from it have become entwined with Navajo communities, culture, and the Navajo Nation economy. A recent demolition of the smokestacks on the San Juan Generating Station near Kirtland, NM, showed the complexities of the Navajo relationship to coal.

Seniors at a Durango high school who lost a friend to overdose channeled their grief into passing a law to make it legal for students to carry Narcan.

Two years ago, Zoe Ramsey and Niko Peterson lost a friend to fentanyl poisoning. Through heartbreak and resolve, they realized that more could be done to protect teens in Durango and across Colorado.

The new law grew out of a teen harm reduction movement in Durango, and several Durango teens helped write the bill. It provides good samaritan protections for teens and eliminates liability risk for schools and districts.

Ross Anderson set out to represent people of color in professional skiing. He's one of the US Ski and Board Hall Hall of Fame's 2023 inductees.

Ross Anderson has held the American speed skiing record since 2006, reaching 154 miles an hour. He's one of the few indigenous members of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.

Last year, teen harm reduction activists in Durango successfully lobbied the 9R School District to allow students permission to carry and administer Narcan. Now they've helped draft a bill to help change school drug policies across the state.

A winter festival that started as a counter-culture "cabin fever reliever" 45 years ago has become a tourist draw for city boosters and local businesses. But in the early 1990s, organizers may have inadvertently sent a few pedestrians running for the hills.

Durango loves its frontier town mythos. But was the city born through the spirit and determination of early settlers? Listen to the real story on The Magic City of the Southwest.