Suicide rates among native youth are alarmingly high and seem only to be increasing. If you asked pretty much any random native person above the age of 9, they could name at least one, but probably more than one other native person they know personally, who has committed suicide. While saying so might be criticized as a gross assumption, I challenge you to try it. Ask any random native person if they know of another native person who has committed suicide. I personally know four.
So how does such a phenomenon come to be?
Recently, a very close personal friend of mine passed away because of suicide. In the wake of this tragedy, accusations were flying wildly. Family members and friends were each and all blaming one another. The mother blamed the father for not watching this very young person carefully enough. At the same time, this person, who shall remain anonymous for the purposes of this article, was 20 years old and being the age of adulthood, how could you morally justify “watching over” her? All of this person’s sisters and brothers blamed one another for one reason or another. Yet, in the end, I believe that her suicide and every suicide like hers was, is and remains, all of our fault.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjo4Icj-J3E
At one time, natives in this country lived as a community. Everything was everybody’s business because no matter what was happening, it affected the community as a whole. One could argue that the typical community has grown atypical and it is inappropriate to live as a “community” any longer. However, is this really so? Yes, modern life has become like a great beast which seems to only consume every semblance of human connection with other human beings. There is the inherent postulate that western civilization dictates that the survival and prosperity of the individual is more probable than either of these for the social collective.
Yet, I’ll never get the past the belief that social collectives can tangibly assume the role of the individual in all of these respects. After all, corporate businesses exist and exuberantly prosper, don’t they?
My point is natives must somehow find a way back to the communal way of living.
This very young and very beautiful and very kind and very friendly and very gentle soul who took her own life need not have done so. I can’t tell you how many times she set aside her own agenda to sit and listen to other people’s problems and such. She was always there for all of us. She was one of the most ready to laugh and make others laugh individuals I have ever known. She was so strong... Yet, when she needed someone to tell her things would be okay, there was no one. When she needed someone to just sit her down and allow her to have a moment to really think about what was happening, we were all too busy dealing with our own lives. That’s one of the biggest problems with modern western civilization and I can’t believe more people don’t realize it: we are way, way too wrapped up in ourselves to even notice another’s pain; not even one of our own family member's suffering. This really upsets my faith in the idea that somehow humanity will evolve into something better than what we are today.
I conclude by saying that I and a great many other people around me lost a very, very good soul on May 15, 2010. Whether you bother to look up from your life to notice or not, the loss is still evident. Her poor mother cries for her every night. Her sisters’ and brothers’ hearts are forever broken. Nothing is really the same anymore. If it can happen to her, she who was one of the strongest personalities I have ever known, then I know it can happen to any one of us.
You can’t wish solidarity into reality. You must go out into your community and find the initiative to bring people together. Somehow.