Suicide Rates in Native American Communities
by Elliana Polyak
** Warning: this article may contain upsetting information about mental illness and suicide
Yesterday I arrived home from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, an American Indian reservation, after a week of service and cultural exploration. Towards the end of our second day, like the days before, we gathered together to listen to a speaker. His Native American name was Inila Wakan, founder of the Santana House and summer math camp for the girls of the reservation, Wicincala Wiyawa Wounspe Wicoti. Inila spoke to his story and first-hand account of his experience with youth suicide within the Lakota community. As an attendee of an American Indian boarding school, he was subject to the horrors the government would enforce to "kill the Indian, save the man." But despite all the efforts, Inila Wakan returned to his home in South Dakota to aid his people, the Lakota. He founded his math camp, Wicincala Wiyawa Wounspe Wicoti, to educate, give hope, and fuel girls of the reservation with a love for their culture and people. One of the girls was no other but Inila's granddaughter, Santana. She came from a poor home, like many of the youth on the reservation, with a split household and more than a handful of children in a two-bedroom trailer. Santana commonly slept on the floor, packed in like sardines with her family's children. She had had enough. Santana had told a girl of her plans, but the girl didn't alert an adult. Out on a separate cabin on the property, a wood cabin with no heat, Santana stayed. Santana was tall for a twelve-year-old girl, but yet she still managed to commit suicide by tying her shoelaces together, hanging them around her neck, attaching them to clothes rack and leaning forward. She was found the next morning, standing. Dead.
Santana is one of 32 children out of every 100,000 in a national suicide epidemic. Suicide is the second leading cause of death within American Indian communities. "One of the most difficult things to hear is when the community says, 'We can grieve no more. We're cried out,'" Inila said, "It really does have an impact." Inila has become more attuned to this sense of being too exhausted to grieve with each new call to an American Indian community that is facing an unusually high rate of suicide.
Suicide looks very different in Native communities than it does in the general population. Nationally, suicide tends to fall into the middle aged and white community; but among Native Americans, 40% of those who die by suicide are between the ages of 13 and 24, and among young adults ages 18 to 24, Native American have higher rates of suicide than any other ethnicity, and higher than the general population. Suicide among Native youth is a crisis, and one that is not receiving the attention it needs.
The youth suicide rate can vary wildly from one tribe to another. While some tribes may have a youth suicide rate three times the national average, another tribe's rate might be ten times the average, states The Washington Post.
The causes of suicide are complex and include a range of factors, not all of which are always apparent. Mental illness plays a role in almost 90 percent of suicides, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and such conditions are often treatable. In the case of the American Indian community, mental health resources are in short supply and don't always reach them.
The Indian Health Services department, which cares for 2.2 million American Indians, is severely underfunded. The average IHS per-person spending is around $3,000 compared to the $8,000 spent on healthcare per-person for the general population.
These relatively small communities are also at a much higher risk than the national average for other health issues: Native Americans are more likely to die of alcohol-related causes, and the incidence of diabetes and tuberculosis are higher than average. As a group, they also have the highest rate of intimate partner violence in the U.S., while American Indian children are at double the risk for abuse and neglect.
American Indian communities are working to combat some of the contributing factors. This includes advocating for the power to prosecute non-Indians for crimes committed on a reservation (crucial for domestic violence cases) and confronting social forces like bullying and sexual abuse. Evidence-based practices on this issue are still emerging.
All these factors, including high rates of poverty and unemployment, help foment a sense of loss and despair among Native youth, Walker said. And he suggested piecemeal intervention tactics to stop youth suicides just aren't going to cut it anymore. These rates more than likely contribute to the growing percentages of children in the Native American communities attempting and or committing suicide. Suicide as a whole is a terrible, destructive wave destroying our communities, but the fact that for some people there struggles are being overlooked or ignored is despicable. No matter the history and background, people, let alone children, can never be overlooked.
Visit these sites to see what you can do to help or reach out to Inila Wakan:
Re-Member: Volunteer Organization on Pine Ridge Reservationhttps://www.re-member.org/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/santanahouse/