Tami Graham, KSUT Four Corners Public Radio executive director, will join other Colorado creative leaders in Trinidad on Thursday to be recognized by Gov. Jared Polis for her contributions to the state’s arts and culture scene.
While Graham’s long list of achievements may seem like multiple lifetimes worth of work, she wants to clarify: this is not her swan song.
“I still got lots of juice in me,” Graham said.
The 60-year-old is celebrating a decade at the helm of KSUT this summer and 42 years supporting public media and community spaces for artists in Southwest Colorado. She is one of four of this year’s winners of the Governor’s Creative Leadership Award, with her specific achievement centering around arts and community action.
The award celebrates individuals responsible for using the arts to provoke meaningful change in their communities.
“This award typically would go to someone who, I think, very much defines themselves as an artist and a community activist,” Graham said. “That I was recognized as a public media professional for this award really is heartening to me, because I think that means there's a recognition of the threat that public media has been under the last few years.”
Graham has seen KSUT through some of its darkest hours. In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stripping PBS and NPR of federal funding. KSUT lost more than $300,000 and joined two other Colorado stations in successively suing the Trump administration. A judge ruled the order violated the First Amendment protecting free speech.
“We've seen around the world autocratic regimes or governments shut down the public, the free and independent media as a means of controlling the message,” Graham said. “And so it's absolutely crucial that these institutions remain strong.”
Despite a favorable ruling, the future of government funding remains murky. KSUT continues to rely upon the listener support it pushed for after the funding fell through. Luckily for Graham, KSUT’s audience is a strong and supportive community, bound together by the collective experience of listening to a good story.
“The so-called driveway moment, where you can't get out of your car because you have to finish listening to this story – that creates community on the air. It's almost magic,” Graham said. “I've really resonated with public radio.”
Graham began her love affair with the radio medium at Fort Lewis College in the 1990s managing the college station KDUR. She was responsible for bringing up-and-coming artists – some now household names – to perform in Durango.
“I was talking to a booking agent that represents a bunch of different musicians that we had worked with,” Graham recalled. “And he said, ‘Hey, there's this young, new emerging artist that I think you'd like. She's coming through. Her name's Ani DiFranco. Are you interested?’”
She was gleeful.
“I went out to the airport to pick her up. And she was standing there next to her guitar case, which was taller than her,” Graham said with a laugh. “But it was just so great to be part of catching an emerging artist right at the beginning of their career.”
From there, Graham engaged with a smattering of local arts and culture institutions in Southwest Colorado, organizing concerts and the restoration of the Mancos Times Tribune building.
“It was a dilapidated building, and the presses weren't working, and it was just shuttered, and kind of an eyesore in downtown Mancos,” Graham said. “And it's now a thriving artist community.”
She added that as oil and gas revenue in the region dried up, arts and culture have emerged as crucial drivers of economic activity, which lends the arts further significance in the state’s lower corner.
“That's just an example, I think, of the role that arts and culture serves and especially in small, rural communities throughout Colorado,” Graham said.
Her community work, however, is not limited to the creation of vibrant and bustling community spaces for artists.
Two years ago, Graham’s partner of 13 years, Armida Huerta, died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 56 years old. She worked for Alpackaraft and held a deep love for river rafting, a financially restrictive passion she would not have been able to pursue if not for her job.
Graham, through the Armida Huerta Adventure Fund, is working to honor Huerta’s memory and legacy as a female rafter of both the LGBTQ and Mexican American communities.
“We wanted to increase accessibility in her honor because she just thrived on the rivers,” Graham said.
The fund offers scholarships and travel and gear stipends to LGBTQ+ and women of color rafters throughout the U.S. While it’s in its early years, Graham said she’s already witnessed a positive impact.
“We had a trans woman do a course in Durango on the Animas last summer, and what an incredible difference she said it made for her to feel safe – to feel supported, to feel she could just be herself on this trip,” Graham said. “It's really, really heartening to see that it is making a difference.”
Despite her external commitments, her passion for KSUT remains unwavering as she prepares to make further strides for the station’s coverage.
“At some point, I'll be looking at retiring, but I'm still fully engaged,” Graham said.
On the docket for the radio’s future is expanded programming featuring Indigenous voices through its Native Lens project which showcases Indigenous films and videos. Additionally, the station is developing the Tribal Media Center which aims to teach broadcast and technical skills to native journalists seeking to provide information and coverage to their communities across the nation.
“One thing I look forward to is just really continuing to evolve those training opportunities and storytelling and first-person storytelling from our Indigenous community members,” Graham said. “I look forward to more partnerships across local media in terms of bringing more local news and information to our region because, again, that's a cornerstone of a healthy democracy.”
As Graham prepares to travel to Trinidad to receive her award in a ceremony featuring Colorado Poet Laureate Crisosto Apache, musical performances and discussions on Colorado cultural movements, it seems she has come full circle.
“Public media has kind of been the bookends in my career,” Graham said. “It's a place that I feel so much passion, obviously, because of all the ways it ties together my interests, and my recognition of the value that public media brings to any community that it's in.”
avanderveen@the-journal.com
