By Stephanie Woodard
100Reporters

A youth-suicide epidemic is sweeping Indian country, with Native American teens and young adults killing themselves at more than triple the rate of other young Americans, according to federal government figures.

In pockets of the United States, suicide among Native American youth is 9 to 19 times as frequent as among other youths, and rising. From Arizona to Alaska, tribes are declaring states of emergency and setting up crisis-intervention teams.

“It feels like wartime,” said Diane Garreau, a child-welfare official on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota. “I’ll see one of our youngsters one day, then find out a couple of days later she’s gone. Our children are self-destructing.”

So dire is the alarm that of 23 grants the U.S. federal government awarded nationally to prevent youth suicides in September, 10 went to Native American tribes or organizations, with most of them receiving nearly $500,000 per year for three years.

A former Democratic senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for 18 years, called those efforts good but insufficient. Dorgan is founder of the Center for Native American Youth, which promotes Indian child health and emphasizes suicide prevention. He describes the Indian Health Service, which serves the nation’s 566 tribes, as chronically underfunded.

"We need more mental-health services to save the lives of our youngest First Americans,” Dorgan said. “Tribes and nonprofits may get two- or three-year grants to address an issue that cannot possibly be resolved in that amount of time. We fund programs, then let them fall off a cliff.

"The perception may be that tribes have a lot of gaming funds, but that is simply not true for more than a few,” Dorgan said.

Legacy of trauma
The suicide risk factors for Native youth are well known and widely reported. In their homes and communities, many Native youngsters face extreme poverty, hunger, alcoholism, substance abuse and family violence. Diabetes rates are sky high, and untreated mental illnesses such as depression are common. Unemployment tops 80 percent on some reservations, so there are few jobs—even part-time or after-school ones. Bullying and peer pressure pile on more trauma during the vulnerable teen years.

Native youngsters are particularly affected by community-wide grief stemming from the loss of land, language and more, researchers reported in 2011. As many as 20 percent of adolescents said they thought daily about certain sorrows—even more frequently than adults in some cases, the researchers found.

“Our kids hurt so much, they have to shut down the pain,” said Garreau, who is Lakota. “Many have decided they won’t live that long anyway, which in their minds excuses self-destructive behavior, like drinking—or suicide.”

Suicide figures vary from community to community, with the most troubling numbers in the Northern Plains, in Alaska and in parts of the Southwest. In Alaska, the suicide rate for young Native males is about nine times that of all young males in the United States, while Native females in Alaska kill themselves nineteen times as often as all U.S. females their age, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

After a cluster of suicides in 2001, the White Mountain Apache Tribe wanted to develop a prevention program. It mandated reporting of all suicides and attempts on their Arizona reservation, discovering that between 2001 and 2006, their youth ended their lives at 13 times the national rate.

The trauma behind the numbers is excruciating. “When my son died by suicide at age 23, I didn’t even know how to think,” said Barbara Jean Franks, who is Tlingit and was living in Juneau, Alaska, at the time. “I couldn’t imagine that hope existed.”

The tragedies ripple through entire communities. Reservations are essentially small towns, and tribal members are often related, whether closely or distantly, Garreau said. “People are numbed, overwhelmed. Sometimes they’ll say, I just can’t go to another funeral.”

Because suicide is so common in some Native communities, it’s become an acceptable solution for times when burdens build up, said Alex Crosby, medical epidemiologist with the CDC’s injury-prevention center: “If people run into trouble—relationship problems, legal problems—this compounds the underlying risk factors, and one of the options is suicide.”

"Is it in our blood?"
“It crosses your mind,” said Jake Martus, whose Yupik/Eskimo/Athabaskan father was born in a tiny, remote village on the Yukon River. “I’ve never acted on suicidal thoughts, but they’ve been there my entire life. It’s sad, it’s shocking, but in our communities it’s also somehow normal.”

Martus, who is 26 and a patient advocate for the Alaska Native Epidemiology Center, said suicide is so frequent among his people, he has to ask, “Is it in our blood?” Martus’ father killed himself in jail after being arrested for drunk driving. Behind his dad’s alcoholism were overwhelming memories of sexual abuse by his village’s Catholic priest, Martus said. Similar stories echo throughout Indian country, where lawsuits against the Catholic Church have detailed sexual, physical, and emotional abuse by clerics in parishes or on staff at the notoriously violent boarding schools that Native children were forced to attend until the 1970s.

The lasting effect of the abuse and the loss of land and culture is often called historical trauma. Martus calls it genocide. “They set us up to kill ourselves," he said. "The point of all the policies was ‘take them out.’”

In some communities, suicide has become so ordinary that boys in particular may dare each other to try it, said Ira Vandever, a Ramah Navajo chef in western New Mexico. He works with Music Is Medicine, a local group that brings guitars, drums and lessons from rock and traditional musicians to Native youngsters. Speaking after dinner at his restaurant, La Tinaja, he said, “Around here, some who have died by suicide weren’t depressed. They were just responding to a dare.”

Incredible as it may sound to adults, adolescents may not fully understand that shooting or hanging themselves can have permanent results, said social worker Patricia Serna, who helped develop a nationally recognized suicide-prevention program for a New Mexico tribe. “Youth who survived suicide attempts would tell us they just wanted a break from their problems, a little time off.” She explains that important decision-making parts of the brain are not fully developed in adolescents—of all population groups, not just Native youngsters. As a result, they may not foresee the consequences of their actions.

Part of the boys’ difficulty is misunderstanding the warrior tradition that makes up much of Native male identity, according to Alvin Rafelito, Ramah Navajo and director of his community’s health and human services department. “We have a prayer that describes a warrior as someone who goes the distance spiritually for his people. Nowadays, that ideal has been reduced to simply fighting and violence. In teaching kids to be modern warriors, we have to convey the term’s full, traditional meaning.”

Tradition as a life raft
Tradition is key, said Anderson Thomas, Ramah Navajo and director of the community’s behavioral health program. On his reservation, he points out, it’s typically young men who are dying by suicide, not young women. “I’d say more than 90 percent of girls here go through their traditional coming-of-age ceremony,” he said. In contrast, little is done for young males. In large part, he said, that’s because traditional male activities like hunting have diminished, so rituals related to them have dropped off as well. Though Ramah Navajo men and boys can obtain conventional therapy, they also need ceremonies, Thomas said.

“It was my tradition that brought me to safety,” Franks said. As time went on, she went back to school, got a degree and these days promotes suicide prevention statewide on behalf of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. “Now, I can move forward. Instead of saying my son died by suicide, I can say he gave me 23 years of his life.”

According to Crosby, tradition is one of the so-called “protective factors” that can counter the risk factors—even the deeply embedded ones that afflict tribes. For indigenous people, tradition is distinctive and powerful, say researchers. It incorporates family and clan relationships, reverence for elders and a deeply-held spiritual life. Supporting these traditions and ties makes Native youngsters feel valued and gives them encouragement to seek help, U.S. and Canadian scientists have concluded in study after study.

You don’t have to be a scientist to figure this out. Alaska Native Tessa Baldwin was a 17-year-old high school student when she learned that feeling connected is vital. At age 5, she had lost an uncle to suicide and in succeeding years, several friends and a boyfriend. “I finally realized it wasn’t something affecting just me,” she said. “It was a lot bigger.” In 2011, she founded Hope4Alaska, one many small grassroots suicide-prevention groups in Indian country.

Through Hope4Alaska, Baldwin traveled to schools in Alaska Native villages to tell her story and find out what other teens thought would help.

“We had youth–elder discussions, and the kids said they felt useless. They wanted to better their communities but saw no way to make a contribution. The elders were touched, and the kids felt they’d connected with them in an important way,” recalls Baldwin, who has just started her freshman year at the University of California, San Diego.

To make sure Cheyenne River’s children feel part of a community that values them, Diane Garreau’s sister, Julie, runs the Cheyenne River Youth Project, a busy after-school facility. Kids listen to elder storytellers, play basketball and tend a two-acre organic garden. They get healthy meals and homework help. They study in a library, go online in an Internet café, stage fashion shows and organize local beautification projects. In 2011, a youth-leadership group visited the White House.

“Everything we do—from serious to seemingly frivolous—is about letting our kids know we care,” Julie Garreau said.

Continuity counts
“You could define many things—a school camping trip, a traditional dance group—as suicide prevention,” said Zuni Pueblo’s Superintendent of Schools Hayes Lewis, co-creator  of the Zuni Life Skills Development curriculum, one of the first suicide-prevention programs designed for Native Americans, in the late 1980s. The school-based lesson series teaches coping skills like stress management, as well as role-playing responses to suicide threats. It was created after a rise in youth-suicide rates at Zuni—thirteen deaths between 1980 and 1987, according to a paper Lewis co-wrote in 2008.

After Zuni adopted the curriculum in 1991, youth suicide stopped almost immediately, according to Lewis’s co-author, Stanford University education professor Teresa LaFromboise. Fifteen years later, the pueblo’s schools shelved the program. Suicides crept back, and the shocked community asked Lewis to resume the post of school superintendent and re-establish the curriculum. Over the past two years, he’s done just that, he said.

When the Zuni school system ended its program, the officials there didn’t realize “how fragile the peace was,” Lewis testified to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in 2009, telling then-Senator Dorgan and other members: “Suicide prevention and intervention require constant vigilance.”

Agencies, nonprofits, foundations and others can partner with tribes in the effort to protect Native children. Ultimately, though, it’s up to the communities, Lewis said. “We adults have to practice our core cultural values of compassion, respect, cooperation and concern for our children. We have to talk to youngsters about relationships, clans, societies—all the connections they’re a part of.”

“We have to tell our kids how wonderful they are,” adds Julie Garreau. “We have to give them safe places to learn and have fun and reassure them that they can have a productive life with healthy relationships.”

Franks recently participated with grieving family members in a memorial walk. The group circled a lake in one direction to honor those they’d lost, and the other direction to express support for those who remain. “Prevention includes acknowledging the bereaved and helping them talk about what happened,” Franks said.

Rafelito was hopeful. He was standing in a Ramah Navajo community garden, surrounded by ripening squashes, corn and other heirloom crops. He noted that today’s Native people and their traditions endure, despite centuries of depredations and violence. “Look at our history,” Rafelito said. “It’s been survival of the fittest. We’re the smartest and the toughest anyone can be.

“Our message to our kids should be, ‘We’re OK.’”

Stephanie Woodard is a member of 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative news center. This article, the first in a series on preventing Native youth suicide, was made possible by grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. The series will be co-published with Indian Country Today.

State of Oregon via AP file

This undated image made available by the State of Oregon on March 18, 2010 shows Timur Dykes. In April 2010, a jury decided the Boy Scouts were negligent for allowing Dykes, a former assistant scoutmaster, to associate with Scouts after he admitted to a Scouts official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys, according to court records.

As the Boy Scouts of America prepares for the court-ordered release of records detailing accusations of sex abuse by members and leaders, the organization acknowledged in an open letter this week that its response in some of the cases had been “plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong.”

The letter comes after the Oregon Supreme Court ordered the Boy Scouts to release “ineligible volunteer” files from 1965 to 1985 that chronicle suspected or confirmed instances of child sex abuse. Media organizations had sued for the release of the files, part of a 2010 case in which a jury decided that the Scouts were negligent for allowing a former assistant scoutmaster to associate with the organization's youth after he admitted molesting 17 boys in 1983, court records show, according to The Associated Press.

Some 829 of the files from that time period (Jan. 1, 1965 to June 30, 1984) involve suspicions or confirmations of inappropriate sexual behavior with 1,622 youth, according to a report by Dr. Janet Warren, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, for the Boy Scouts. The report, released Tuesday, was completed in 2011.

“Dr. Warren’s report shows that, as part of our broader Youth Protection program, the BSA’s system of ineligible volunteer files functions to help protect Scouts,” Wayne Perry, national president, Tico Perez, national commissioner, and Wayne Brock, chief Scout executive, said Tuesday in an open letter to the Scouting community. “However, we also know that in some instances we failed to defend Scouts from those who would do them harm. There have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong.

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“For any episode of abuse, and in any instance where those involved in Scouting failed to protect, or worse, inflicted harm on children, we extend our deepest apologies and sympathies to victims and their families,” according to the letter. “While we believe the files are an inconclusive record, the BSA will undertake a similar review and analysis of the IV (ineligible volunteer) files created from 1965 to present and ensure that all good-faith suspicion of abuse has been reported to law enforcement.”

The developments were first reported by the Los Angeles Times, which noted that Warren’s team was paid $75,000 to complete the study.

Warren’s findings included:

--  The total number of alleged youth victims identified in the files was 1,622. Of these, 1,302 were involved in Scouting, for 112 it was unclear, and for 208, they were not involved in Scouting.
--  486 of the men identified in the files as suspects were arrested at some time for a sex crime. It may have occurred before they got involved with Scouting, as a result of the incident noted in their file or after they left the organization.
--  In 531 of the cases, there was information indicating alleged inappropriate sexual behavior with multiple youths. 
--  In 252 of the cases, the available information indicated alleged inappropriate sexual behavior with only a single victim. 
--  128 of the men in the files had their registration revoked within a year of signing up.
-- Police were involved in the investigation of 523 cases.
-- Six men placed on probation offended against a Scout during their probationary period, while two men were accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with a youth after their probationary period had ended.  
-- After being denied registration by the BSA, 175 men were identified as having sought to re-register with the organization, in some cases under a different name at another location many years after their initial entry into the files. They were denied entry into the Boy Scouts.

“My review of these files indicates that the reported rate of sexual abuse in Scouting has been very low,” Warren wrote in a summary of her report, in which she also said the “files broadly refute the notion that these were ‘secret files’ of hidden abuse.”

“I believe that these files show that children in Scouting were safer and less likely to experience inappropriate sexual behavior in Scouting than in their own families, schools and during other community activities supervised by adults,” she wrote.

But an attorney who has filed several suits for former Scouts said Warren’s review didn’t take into account abuse cases that weren’t in the files.

"Personally I have represented more than a hundred men abused by Scout leaders whose names were never entered in the ... files -- even after BSA paid out substantial settlements on account of these abusers," Timothy Kosnoff, a Seattle attorney, told the Los Angeles Times. "The files are only the tip of the iceberg. Most perpetrators never get caught."

The Boy Scouts said they expect the files from the Oregon case to be released soon. They said that, beginning in 2010, the organization mandated that all suspicions of abuse be reported to law enforcement authorities and that they have always required members to follow local laws on reporting of abuse.

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Courtesy of Sergio Garcia

A California State Bar committee is recommending that Sergio Garcia, an illegal immigrant, receive a law license in a first-ever case for the California Supreme Court that could affect others like him who hope to follow in his footsteps.

Updated at 445 p.m. ET -- An illegal immigrant applying for a law license in California should be allowed to receive it, the State Bar of California argues in a filing to the state Supreme Court.

Sergio Garcia, 35, of Chico, Calif., has met the rules for admission, including passing the bar exam and the moral character review, and his lack of legal status in the United States should not automatically disqualify him, the Committee of Bar Examiners said Monday.

“ … Mr. Garcia’s status in the United States, should not, ipso facto, be grounds for excluding him from law licensure. He has met all of the prescribed qualifications and there is no reason to believe he cannot take the oath and faithfully uphold his duties as an attorney,” the bar said.

Garcia's father is a naturalized citizen, according to the bar, and Garcia is waiting for a visa that would give him legal permanent residency. His application for a law license is being weighed by the court because his case is unprecedented in the state, the bar committee said.

A similar case is being heard in Florida for a bar applicant in that state, Jose Godinez-Samperio, who came from Mexico to the United States as a child with his parents and overstayed a tourist visa. How justices rule in the cases in California and Florida could affect other illegal immigrants who hope to follow in their footsteps.

Some 11.5 million “unauthorized immigrants,” as the Department of Homeland Security calls illegal immigrants, lived in the United States as of January 2011. Of that, 6.8 million were from Mexico, like Garcia, according to the department’s Office of Immigration Statistics. On Friday, President Barack Obama announced that some of the immigrants who came to the country as children – and met other requirements -- would be able to get two-year work permits. He also called on immigration officials to halt deportation proceedings against them.

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Garcia, who attended law school and college in California, does not fit in that group because he is over the age limit of 30, but he is nonetheless overjoyed for those who do. He has been waiting nearly 18 years for a visa, though his petition for it was approved in 1995, the bar said.

“That’s the state of our immigration system … our immigration system is broken,” Garcia told msnbc.com, estimating he will have to wait another five years for the visa. “It’s really painful.”

A decision on his bar application could still be at least months away for Garcia. Others now have one month to submit their own legal filings in the case, and then the state bar would have another month to reply to those, the court said.

“I have always been an eternal optimist so this (bar recommendation) does give me hope,” Garcia, who submitted his application to the bar in 2009, told msnbc.com. “I have faith that my dream of being an attorney will be realized sooner rather than later.”

In the filing, the bar committee said it was not aware of any statute, regulation or authority that would preclude his admission. It noted that Garcia’s employability in the U.S. should not determine whether he gets a license, citing the cases of foreign students who can get admitted to the California bar but may not stay in the country to practice law afterward.

“ … the grant of a law license provides no guarantee of a pathway to lawful employment in the United States for these individuals,” the bar committee said. “What Mr. Garcia, or any other foreign applicant, does with his license after licensure must comport with federal regulations and that is a matter strictly between him and the federal government.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, who supports Garcia’s application, said that the court was the ultimate authority on attorney admissions in the state and would likely establish a rule in this case that would apply to similar ones in the future.

But the possibility that undocumented immigrants could receive law licenses doesn’t sit well with some.

“I think that’s ridiculous,” said Marilyn DeYoung, chairman of Californians for Population Stabilization, which advocates for secure borders and allowing fewer immigrants into the country.  “First of all, they are defying the law of America by being here illegally so, and now they want to be a lawyer and to practice American law. I think that’s really sort of stupid that our California bar would recommend that.”

While DeYoung said she could sympathize with Garcia’s long wait for his visa and she wouldn’t be unhappy if an exception was made for him, she expressed concern that a general rule could come out of this case that would allow any illegal immigrant to get a license.

“We would definitely oppose that,” she said. “This is, we feel, is not right.”

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Police expect the burglary rate to go down in north Nashville because of the arrest of just one person – a 14-year-old boy.

Officers said the teenager has been responsible for as many as 100 break-ins across north Nashville over the last two years.

"We work too hard for what we have, and then for someone to take it or destroy it from you, I mean, that's not right," said neighbor Geri Kennedy.

North Nashville has experienced the rash of home burglaries that all share one thing in common.

"A lot of these burglaries were being committed by a juvenile," said Metro Police Lt. Horace Temple.

Read original story at WSMV.com

One juvenile is allegedly responsible for between 50 and 100 burglaries, vandalisms and thefts in the Hope Gardens, Buena Vista and Salem Town neighborhoods.

Police said the teen would kick in back doors, rush inside and steal video games, flat-screen TVs and whatever else he could grab.

"He's tested the waters and tested our resources, definitely," Temple said.

And police said the kid was creative. He apparently used a go-kart as his getaway vehicle.

Investigators said he would drive from house to house in back alleys to target the homes.

"He was an innovative individual," Temple said.

In a way, officers said they feel bad for the child. He lost both parents and needed someone to look up to.

"The child didn't have a mentor or any kind of guidance in his life, and it kind of led to the life of crime on the streets," Temple said.

Now, the teen is off the streets. Though he has been arrested and released several times before, he will now faces serious time in state custody.

"We absolutely expect our burglaries to dramatically decrease in these neighborhoods," Temple said.

Investigators said in many cases they linked the teen to the crimes through fingerprints or the items they found inside his home.

They said he also admitted to several of the break-ins.

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