Native youth suicide: Epidemic affects Tribal communities across the US
By Talli Nauman, Health & Environment
Editor, Native Sun News; originally
published Aug. 26, 2015
PINE RIDGE VILLAGE, S.D. –
Oglala Sioux Tribal member Amanda
Carlow brought home new hope and sup-
port for survivors of youth suicide when
she returned recently from a weeklong
symposium for mental health profession-
als in Oxford, England.
Her presentation at the 2015 Oxford
Symposium in School-Based Family
Counseling sparked the formation of an
international collaborative of counselors,
social workers, psychologists and other
mental health professionals like herself
who want to empower Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation youth to rise above suicidal
thoughts and feelings, Carlow told the
Native Sun News.
The presentation was entitled Open
Heart, Open Mind: Working Together to
Vanquish Youth Suicide and it “opened up
a lot of eyes,” she said.
“Suicide’s really a sensitive topic and
during the presentation there were sev-
eral other symposium participants who
had shed tears. They didn’t know the full
impact it plays for Native American youth.
Other members of the symposium wanted
to know what they could do,” she said.
Suicide is the second leading cause
of death for Native American youth in the
15- to 24-year-old age group. That’s 2.5
times the national rate, according to the fed-
eral Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration, or SAMHSA.
Carlow gave the presentation along
with pediatrician Nancy Iverson, director of
the PATHSTAR Annual Swim from Alca-
traz, in which Carlow participated for the
first time in October 2014, making her one
of dozens of Native American and Alaska
Native health ambassadors in the San
Francisco-based organization’s national
fitness and nutrition outreach program.
“Originally, it wasn’t the topic we
were going to present,” Carlow said. “We
were going to present on learning the
Lakota language.”
Then a spike in youth suicides
occurred on the reservation, with 12
between January and May 2015.
“It was tough to talk about but with
everything that happened, I figured it was
a topic we could cover,” she said.
No sooner had she arrived in Lon-
don for the transfer to Oxford when she
switched on her mobile telephone to find
a voice message about another suicide that
had happened back home. Two days later
another occurred there.
Participants of the 25-member sym-
posium held a brainstorming session and
Courtesy photo from PATHSTAR
A presentation by pediatrician and PATHSTAR Director Nancy Iverson (l) and Amanda
Carlow (r), Red Cloud Indian School guidance counselor, at the Oxford Symposium in
School-Based Family Counseling in England triggered the formation of an international
team to help combat youth suicides on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Courtesy photo from Team One Spirit/Facebook
Amanda Carlow wears the Oglala Sioux Tribal flag at the 2013 New York City marathon.
asked Carlow to send them information,
in order to follow up with conferences
and consultation on ways to provide long-
term, ongoing professional help, she said.
“One of the hardest things is how the
kids are younger and younger each time –
12- and 11-year-olds. Some really bright,
intelligent kids are stopping their lives.
They are just beginning or just graduated
high school. They don’t get to experience
that. They take all that away from them-
selves,” Carlow said.
Most of the recent self-inf licted
deaths on the Pine Ridge Indian Reser-
vation did not involve suicide notes, she
said. However, research shows that mental
disorders or substance abuse are found in
90 percent of people who die of suicide.
Common challenges for most local
youth are bullying, cyber-bullying, poverty,
drugs, alcohol and sexual abuse, according
to Carlow. However, she cautioned, “We
will always ask why, but you can’t ever say
why they did it because they are gone.”
It’s important to neither glamorize nor
sensationalize the suicides, Carlow noted,
adding that suicide survivors are not only
the youth whose suicides miscarry but
everyone else in the community.
“That’s one thing that was talked
about at the symposium,” she said. “Every-
one is trying to survive.”
In Lakota culture, common watch-
words are “We are all related” (Mitakuye
Oyasin): “That is one of the reasons if
someone takes their life and others can’t
really understand it,” she said.
“In our belief, if you take your own
life, your spirit just wanders this earth and
you don’t go anywhere,” she added.
To help prevent more wandering souls,
Carlow, who is a counselor at Red Cloud
Indian School, trusts in a multidisci-
plinary approach. The Lakota language
program at the school is one element,
she noted.
She coaches high school basketball and
middle school cross-country running. How-
ever, she said, “Sports may not be for every-
body. There are so many different avenues.
“We have to keep giving kids oppor-
tunities,” she said. There’s a lot of differ-
ent ways that we can empower our youth:
Through college readiness, life skills and
teaching kids to exercise prayer instead
of suicide.
“For myself, I really practice our
traditional beliefs and ceremony, such
as Sundance and things of that nature,”
she added. “So I don’t force them but I
encourage them, knowing how powerful
that is in my life.”
Hers is the most recent of several
efforts to focus prevention and healing
on at-risk reservation youth, she noted. It
involves professionals from Israel, New
Zealand, Canada and various U.S. states.
Their collaboration is sponsored
by the Institute for School-Based Fam-
ily Counseling and co-sponsored by the
University of San Francisco Center for
Child and Family Development. The
institute exists to “promote the develop-
ment of school-based family counseling
as a discipline through multi-culturally
sensitive programs of both intervention
and prevention.” Its 2015 symposium took
place at Brasenose College.
The Oxford Symposium in School-
Based Family Counseling was made pos-
sible in part by a grant from Trust Funds
Inc. in San Francisco. However, Carlow had
to raise travel expenses herself.
“We had a hard time fundraising to
pay for the entire trip, but it was worth
going,” Carlow said. “Sometimes I can’t
believe the opportunities that I get. I’m
really thankful for it.”
Contact Talli Nauman Health and
Environment Editor for NSN at talli.nau-
man@gmail.com
Copyright permission Native Sun News
© Native Health News Alliance
Jewell announces BIA’s largest land-into-trust acquisition for Tribal nations
ISLETA PUEBLO, N.M. – As part of
President Obama’s goal of placing half a
million acres of Tribal homelands into trust
for the benefit of Tribal nations, U.S. Secre-
tary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced
Jan. 15 that the Bureau of Indian Affairs
has placed 89,978 acres of land into trust
status for the Pueblo of Isleta.
The administration’s single largest
trust acquisition to date brings to nearly
400,000 the total acreage placed in trust
on behalf of federally recognized Tribes
since 2009.
Jewell made the historic announcement
at a formal signing ceremony in Isleta with
Isleta Governor E. Paul Torres, acting Assis-
tant Secretary-Indian Affairs Lawrence S.
Roberts and U.S. Senator Tom Udall.
As part of Obama’s pledge to work
nation-to-nation with Tribal leaders to
strengthen their communities and build
their economies, this administration has
taken a total of 397,268 acres into trust
during the past seven years. That total rep-
resents almost 80 percent of the adminis-
tration’s goal of placing 500,000 acres into
trust by the end of the president’s term.
The secretary of the interior is autho-
rized to acquire land in trust for federally-
recognized American Indian Tribes through
the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
Under federal law, lands held in
trust for American Indians and Alaska
Natives cannot be sold or transferred
to non-American Indians and can ben-
efit from federal programs for business
development, housing, environmental and
cultural protection.
Typical uses of trust land include gov-
ernmental operations, cultural activities,
agricultural/forestry activities, housing,
economic development, social and com-
munity services, health care and educa-
tional facilities.
February 2016
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Siletz News
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