"Elyssa Sierra Celine tried to kill herself last spring. As if it was her turn to do it. Within two years of her moving to the Pine Ridge native American settlement in 2009, she had been seeing her peers do the same.

“The first very good friend I made at [school] committed suicide that November [2009]. After that two more of my friends attempted suicide due to guilt. In the summer of 2010, my younger cousin committed suicide as well,” 17-year-old Elyssa, from the Red Cloud High School at Pine Ridge told The Hindu in an email interview. She is a descendant of the Lakota, Ojibwa and Taos Pueblo tribes.

When she attempted suicide, she “was sent to a hospital for three days to recover and receive help.”

For many native American youths like Elyssa, life on the Pine Ridge Reservation holds little promise. An alarming rate of teen suicides is evidence of the hopelessness that has gradually grown in tribal communities on the reservations over the years and through repeated political injustices."

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Where teens date death (The Hindu 4/16)