Evon Peter: Reaching out to each other to prevent youth suicide

Monday, January 10, 2011  

"It's 5:45 p.m. The single-engine plane bounces to a landing on the hard packed snow-covered runway in a remote Alaska village. It is 15 below zero. There are no trees, just a vast frozen ocean, ice, snow drifts, small hills in the distance, and what would look like a suburb of homes if it were not in such an isolated location. The land and horizon are majestic and still. The bounty of sea and land animals have provided for generations. And for a moment I feel the relief of being away from the stresses of city life, of being home on the land.

But as the plane slows to a stop on the runway and the snowmachines pull up, my mind is drawn back to my mission: healing, wellness, prevent suicide.

Although we deal with many kinds of losses, suicide is one of the hardest tragedies to face, because there is rarely a straightforward answer to the question: Why? What brought them to decide that suicide was an answer? Unlike many tragedies, suicide is not an accident. It is not forced upon someone. And it is clearly preventable.

Suicide is a reflection of social suffering. The pressures and complexity of life indigenous people face on a day-to-day basis are astounding. We often navigate personal trauma, communal dysfunction, unresolved grief, family losses, and addictive behaviors, while having to also deal with oppressive and assimilative parts of imposed systems (governance/education) and behaviors (racism/indifference) from a dominant culture. After generations of intentional actions to break down a people's spirit and take control away from them, it is no surprise that social illness takes hold. Even though there is cause for hardship felt by so many indigenous people, this is not the end of the story."

Get the Story:
Evon Peter: Reach out to others and make a difference (The Anchorage Daily News 1/9)