New Mexico In Depth

New Mexico PBS and New Mexico in Depth are collaborating on a new series highlighting Indigenous joy while also discussing challenges like how Native Americans are portrayed in the media.

A look at the state’s first competency diversion program for people charged with misdemeanors who have a mental illness and may be unable to understand legal proceedings or participate in their own defense.

Many in New Mexico lack adequate food, secure housing, affordable healthcare, and fair-paying jobs. But by the numbers, so gradual it’s difficult to detect, changes to state tax policy are softening the bite of poverty.

For the third straight year, lawmakers are trying to raise taxes on alcoholic drinks, in an attempt to reduce New Mexico’s worst-in-the-nation alcohol-related death rate.

There are 194 Indigenous people listed as missing from New Mexico and the Navajo Nation on a portal run by the state Department of Justice. But click on any entries and you'll mostly just find info like age, sex, and the agency the person was reported to. There are no photos attached to any of the entries.

The public won’t be allowed to make comments at a state-run meeting this week about a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

The June killing of a 17-year-old Mescalero Apache boy by an Otero County sheriff’s deputy has sparked protests and demands for Deputy Jacob Diaz-Austin to be criminally charged.

Kim Wright, a retired nurse, volunteers with the Cimarron Watershed Alliance. A year ago she learned that the federal government was awarding more than $8 million to the alliance to help nine northern New Mexico communities better defend themselves against wildfire. Those communities are still awaiting signs of on-the-ground wildfire preparedness as fire season fast approaches.

New Mexico has the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths in the nation and the situation has gotten even worse since the pandemic. Despite this, state lawmakers this session failed to pass any substantive measures to curb the crisis. Public health reporter Ted Alcorn has long covered the issue for New Mexico in Depth. He spoke with KUNM about a debate over whether and how to change the way the state taxes alcohol. Democrats filed competing bills this year, neither of which got to the governor.

Five New Mexico lawmakers want the state attorney general to establish a task force focused on missing and murdered Indigenous people.