The Gila River Indian Community of Arizona saw eight youth suicides over the course of the year, a situation that's all too common throughout Indian Country.

To combat the problem, the tribe is holding suicide prevention courses for youth on the reservation. Tyler Owens, 18, will participate in the program.

“We’re not really open to conversation about suicide,” Owens told The Washington Post. “It’s kind of like a private matter, a sensitive topic. If a suicide happens, you’re there for the family. Then after that, it’s kind of just, like, left alone.”

The rate of suicide among young American Indians and Alaska Natives is more than three times the national average. In some communities, it is 10 times greater.

“The children bear the brunt of the misery,” former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), who founded the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute in part to address youth suicide, told the Post. “But there is no sense of urgency by our country to do anything about it.”

The situation might be changing with the help of Dorgan, who co-chairs the Advisory Committee of the Attorney General's Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence. The panel held its second meeting in Arizona last month and went to the Gila River Reservation to hear directly from Owens and other youth.

When the youth were asked how many were directly affected by suicide, all of them raised their hands.

“That floored me,” it, Associate Attorney General Tony West, the third-highest-ranking official at the Department of Justice, told the Post.

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The hard lives — and high suicide rate — of Native American children on reservations (The Washington Post 3/10)