#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
People & Places
Posted inDecember 2025: Wild Harvest
He makes bows — and bow makers
Joshua Hood is decolonizing traditional bow-making and archery education from his Portland backyard.
Posted inArticles
The strange loneliness of Charlie Kirk’s funeral
Photos and reflections from the memorial in the Phoenix suburbs.
Posted inArticles
Denver’s storied tradition of sex work, then and now
In her new book, Michelle Gurule reveals her experience as a sugar baby and just how little has changed about the industry in the last century.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
Felonious foxes, mischievous marmots, dog meets wolf and a chat with the tooth fairy
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
‘How many bricks of colonization do we sit under?’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
Posted inArticles
In rural New Mexico, kids paint a sonic portrait of their ghost town
Madrid was once a booming coal town. At radio camp, its youngest inhabitants had big questions about its past — and present.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
A hotshot’s search for belonging among the flames
A wildland firefighter reckons with the male-dominated culture found on the fireline.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
Chicken buckets, baked beans, liters of coke: the final meals of death row inmates
Julie Green painted the last meals served to people sentenced to die in an attempt to humanize capital punishment.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
‘My vision was to build a healthy ecosystem for all who live in it’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
Posted inArticles
An Oregon law tries to tackle garbage gases
Surveys of U.S. landfills showed emission rates were, on average, 40% higher than reported.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
The seeds remember
Reclaiming Chinese culture through cultivation.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
‘I see no reason to compromise my value system’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
Posted inArticles
The Trump administration is asking park rangers to rewrite history
And some national park site staffers are pushing back.
Posted inArticles
Indigenous filmmakers get support from Sundance
Santa Fe’s Sundance Native Lab has evolved to embrace the multihyphenate artists of today.
Posted inJune 2025: The Promised Land
Where the garbage goes
Amid massive rollbacks of federal environmental protections, a community battling the expansion of a local landfill seeks to safeguard its own backyard – and everyone else’s.
Posted inJune 2025: The Promised Land
The promised land remains elusive for asylum seekers
Some people stuck at the U.S.-Mexico border are forced to risk their lives attempting to cross the desert.
Posted inJune 2025: The Promised Land
The enduring appeal of nude desert self-portraits
Posing as rocks and trees, photographer Laura Aguilar influenced others by becoming one with the landscape.
Posted inJune 2025: The Promised Land
‘Learn whose land you are on’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.