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News and Events NewsAugust 5, 2005 - Conference Readies Indian Youth to Fight SuicideConference readies Indian youth to fight suicide By DIANE COCHRAN Of The Gazette Staff None of Dwight Thayer's friends has talked to him about wanting to commit suicide, but the Eastern Shoshone teenager knows what he would say if any did. "We can talk about this more," Thayer said. "I can get help. There are lots of things to still do in life." Thayer, 17, of Riverton, Wyo., is one of 80 American Indian youths participating in the first Native American Youth Preventative Health Initiative in Billings this week. The three-day conference arms native youth with tools to combat suicide among their peers. The suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-old American Indians is three times as high as the national average. "It's definitely an epidemic in our communities," said Rosebud Madinger, a 19-year-old member of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne tribes. "Everyone here has been connected in some way to suicide. It's very much a part of us." Madinger helped organize the event with her father, Ernie Bighorn, who has hosted youth leadership conferences for American Indian kids for more than a decade. The preventative-health initiative is part of the 13th annual Native American Youth Leadership Conference. Bighorn, of Fort Peck, said American Indian communities have begun paying more attention to their young people, in part as a result of a shooting rampage at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota. "I think the Indian people are waking up and saying we need to solve our own problems," Bighorn said. "We can't wait for anyone else." In March, 16-year-old Jeff Weise shot to death five students and four adults - including his grandparents - before killing himself at the Red Lake community's high school. "Hopefully, this will be an awakening all through the bureaucracy because we're losing our kids right and left," Bighorn said. "We have a lot of resources, but they don't work together." Bighorn said American Indian kids are victims of generations of trauma that began when European settlers tried to "civilize" their ancestors. American Indian children were sent to white boarding schools, where their native languages and cultures were taboo, and then went home in summer unable to communicate or identify with their families, Bighorn said. That spiritual disconnect snowballed over multiple generations. "You lose your identity," he said. "You can't go someplace unless you know who you are." Clayton Small, the conference facilitator, teaches youths to use their native strengths and skills to help one another. Small, a Northern Cheyenne leadership specialist based in Albuquerque, N.M., is "a Native American talking to Native Americans," said Madinger. "He tells them to use what you are to benefit people," she said. "What we do here is we try to build them up, tell them yes, you can be a leader. You can do this." Small promotes primary suicide-intervention techniques. That means taking action before a suicide, not after. "In 80 percent of suicides that occur, friends know that a person is in trouble," Small said. "If you're a teenager, a code of silence prevents you from getting help." Much of Small's work focuses on convincing teens that it is OK to break the code of silence. "A good friend is a leader who intervenes and tries to get help," he said. Conference participants will head home to more than half a dozen reservations - including Crow, Fort Peck, Northern Cheyenne, Northern Arapaho, Eastern Shoshone, Assiniboine, Ute and Standing Rock Sioux - later this week with a suicide-prevention action plan to implement in their communities. "We're trying to give them hope," Madinger said. "A lot of people's reason for committing suicide is because they have no hope." Diane Cochran can be reached at 657-1287 or dcochran@billingsgazette.com |
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