Teen suicide is beyond what most of us can fathom. No parent should have to bury their children. I have done it in my films and even that much was emotionally uncomfortable and draining.
American Indian teens take their own lives at more than two times the rate of any other teen demographic in the USA, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of course, these numbers are just averages, so on certain reservations the suicide rate is exponentially higher. But calculating the numbers is easy. It's the reasons that are harder to fathom.
Most are kids who do not have drugs or alcohol problems. Many come from financially comfortable families, by Native American standards. And most don't leave a suicide note, so their loved ones suffer the pain of regrets and self blame without the relief of being able to know the true reasons.Â
Imagine a 14-year-old girl coming home from school and after putting her books away, hanging herself. Shocking, I know, but this is what had become commonplace on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico (map). In 2009, they faced a true state of emergency when four teens committed suicide and one attempted suicide in the space of just two months.
For some reason the truth about this crisis is seldom publicized by the mainstream media. Maybe we find it comfortable to believe that problems on the reservation are the same as ours in the mainstream. But the situation is more complicated than that.
The American Indian nations are proud and independent people. They're not helpless and they're not seeking outside assistance. In fact -- and this is something we must take to heart in order to truly understand -- historical evidence strongly suggests that it's outside "help," in the form of European colonialism and religious missionary movements, that created this problem in the first place.
For centuries, American Indian culture has been attacked and exploited by our new dominant culture. Traditions, language and spiritual beliefs of so many of the American Indian nations are almost completely extinguished. Is it any wonder that the youth find themselves in an identity crisis?
Hearing all this, it's natural we want to help. But real healing has to come from within the Indian community. What we can do is become educated and empathetic. We can help by learning about and respectfully supporting programs founded by and for Indians on the reservations.
The Mescalero Apache reservation has created their own suicide prevention youth program, Honor Your Life, headed by coordinator Jeremiah Simmons. And the recent news are encouraging: In 2010 there were no teen suicides on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Although kids still talked about taking their own lives, they didn't go through with it.
Janice Merino -- who happens to be a direct descendant of Cochise and a beautiful generous soul whom I cherish dearly -- is a suicide prevention specialist for the Honor Your Life program. Janice says:
"Its interesting because now we are mainly seeing suicide ideation, thoughts but no plans."
This is a huge step in the right direction. I'm incredibly proud of Janice and everyone she works with. The things they accomplished in defiance of all odds and adversity are miraculous. Kudos to Janice, Jeremiah and all the precious people at Honor Your Life!
Janice goes on to say:
"Also the teen pregnancy rate has risen very high and parents are not talking to kids about sex. There have been more bullying issues in middle school. And of course drugs and alcohol issues seem to remain the same."
These are things I'll talk about more in upcoming posts.
Obviously, the greater crisis still looms, not just on the Mescalero Apache reservation, but over all of Indian country. Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation of South Dakota is another tragic example, with a suicide rate more than three times the average for the rest of the nation.
There are too many stories like these. But by learning the facts, remembering them and sharing them with others, you're a vital part of what happens next. The shift is coming!
As the Apache say: G'u Z'u D'alsh ("Let all good things happen!")
(Photo by Jay Tavare. "The Apache reservation is surrounded by four mountains that are sacred to them. White Mountain is the one seen here.")
Follow Jay Tavare on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JayTavare
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I do how ever not understand why parent's stopped talking to there kids about sex, that's also a way of talking about life, with responsobility.
If we mentally assign the past bad behavior to a race, instead of realizing it belonged to a culture that arbitrarily happened to be white, then we miss the vital lesson that every human being is potentially vulnerable to the same insidiously destructive ideas. In other words, we should be careful not to promote the idea that people of any one particular color are innately more inclined than other colors to unfair thinking on the subject of indigenous populations and their rights.
Youths.
Not to be fussy, but pretty much every iota of research says we tried to exterminate them, then tried to exile them internally and have for at least a century kept these folks in dire poverty with very little hope of finding good jobs.
I figure five hundred years of unmitigated savagery inflicted on North and South American native peoples is probably enough. Maybe we could divert the trillions we spend on foreign wars and spend maybe .05% of that incomprehensible public treasure on improving the lives of our neighbors.
Just a thought.
We need a peaceful revolution of government and laws which favor the greedy in this country, and for this Apacheland.
I applaud Coloradas Mangas for his courage in speaking up and searching for the roots and cures of the tragic suicides on his reservation. The rundown buildings say "hopeless" and even the name - "Reservation" - says where his people were forced to live. Why not call it Apacheland or whatever name has meaning to its residents, for starters?
He understands that the first and most important deterents are family, friends, and the community being on guard for problems in each teen. He understands the need for professional help as well. The best medicine is preventive - start a mutual support group for 12 year olds and including training sessions with their families. This could be called an issues and answers group of about 10 students, served by a teacher trained in couseling teens - but a trained parent with access to a professional counselor (a job for Apacheland) could also work.
The roots of suicide are universal. Suicide is up among all young people in America though much more among Native American teens. Children are so aghast by the greedy exploitation of our polluted Blue Ball and a reward system that pushes rich and poor ever further apart, that they logically opt out. We need
I agree that names can have great meaning, so I guess I do not wholly agree with Shakespeare's Juliet who states "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Words or names can render a perception of places, people, and situations - good or bad - and that is not a little thing.