Posted inEconomy, Growth, Housing, News

“It’s scary”: The housing shortage has reached a crisis point in southwest Colorado

DURANGO — Pagosa Springs paramedic Matt Robison was living with two friends in a 1,200-square-foot house until this summer — when his rent would have leapt 60%, to $2,400 a month. Robison hit the road, working wildland fires and living out of his truck.   Sixty miles west, professor Rebecca Clausen has heard from faculty at […]

Posted inClimate, Culture, Education, Environment, Equity, Health, Housing, News, Water

On the Navajo Nation, “putting seeds in the ground is our greatest act of resistance,” Fort Lewis students learn

SHIPROCK, NEW MEXICO — From foraging sweet berries in slickrock canyons to harvesting corn and fresh veggies from manicured fields and gardens, Kayla Yazzie learned about land from her great-grandmothers. Her childhood memories span the eastern portion of the Navajo Nation, from Tocito and Shiprock in New Mexico with her mother’s family, to St. Michaels, […]

Posted inColoradans, Education, News

After years of calls to correct its whitewashed history, Fort Lewis College is owning up to its Indian boarding school past

By Paolo Zialcita, CPR News The origin of Fort Lewis College in Durango is a dark stain on American education and the state of Colorado. The school’s own leaders have said as much. Once a post-Civil War army post, the land was converted into a federal, off-reservation Native American Boarding School, which forced tribal students […]

Posted inColoradans, Education, Equity, News, Politics and Government

A new Colorado law granting Native Americans in-state college tuition is already attracting students

About 200 Native American students enrolled in state colleges and universities should each see their annual tuition slashed by about $15,000 this year under a new law that provides in-state status to members of 48 tribes with historical ties to Colorado. While the number of students immediately impacted is small, education officials and proponents of […]

Posted inBusiness, Economy, Housing, News, Outdoors

Students who kept Colorado’s resort-town economies alive during COVID are now headed back to school

A sign outside Butte Bagels advises customers that this popular breakfast stop, in the alley behind the Crested Butte post office, is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. A gaggle of tourists gathers close to peer at the sign, at the “help wanted” sign next to it, and through the darkened windows before they give up and […]