Northern lifelines: Aboriginal youth reach out to peers to address suicide
CrossCurrents
by Andrea Zoe Aster
Advice is most powerful when it comes from someone who's been there. Darlene Noreen Gazayou has been there. First she was
raped by a cousin. Then, at 15, her best friend committed suicide. When Gazayou's stepfather told her the news, she rushed
over to her friend's house. She saw the rope around her friend's neck. She hadn't seen it coming. "Every night we talked,
but I didn't know how hard she was struggling," says Gazayou, now 19. Then, just two weeks later, another friend killed himself.
All teenagers have their trials and their own ways of dealing with them. But in some Aboriginal communities, suicide is often
the solution - about six times the rate of that among non-Aboriginal youth, according to research cited in Aboriginal Youth: A Manual of Promising Suicide Prevention Strategies, published by the Centre for Suicide Prevention in Calgary, Alberta. Aboriginal males aged 15-29 have the highest suicide
rate of any group in Canada.
But innovative suicide prevention programs for Aboriginal youth are working to chip away at the grim statistics. It's one
thing for a non-Aboriginal counsellor to fly in to a remote Aboriginal community, conduct a brief suicide prevention workshop
and fly back out. It's quite something else to train youth who live in the community to be leaders in community education
initiatives around suicide.
Calgary-based White Stone, with which Gazayou is a youth leader, does just that. In partnership with the RCMP's Aboriginal Policing Branch and the
Centre for Suicide Prevention, the program runs suicide prevention and education workshops tailored specifically to Aboriginal
youth across Canada. But more critically, the program then trains these youth to conduct such presentations for peers in their
home communities.
The efficacy of such a culturally relevant, community-based approach to suicide intervention is well documented. A 2001 study
in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior stresses the importance of community involvement; community members are better positioned to understand the complexities
of the problems that affect them and should thus be authors of their solutions, the study recommends. Likewise, the 2003 Health
Canada report Acting on What We Know: Preventing Youth Suicide in First Nations stresses the need for community-driven approaches.
A community-driven approach that seeks solutions from within is a key reason for White Stone's success. Its youth leaders
have often experienced suicide, family violence and substance abuse in their own lives, earning them credibility and trust
with their peers. "Teens don't go to adults to confide; they go to friends," says Scott Rodda, a lead trainer with White Stone.
Rodda isn't Aboriginal but he had a suicide in his own family and has worked with at-risk youth for 20 years. "Friends keep
secrets; it's no different for Aboriginals," says Rodda. "We try to teach youth that there are no secrets with suicidal ideation;
it's better to have a mad friend than a dead friend."
Based on their leadership potential, two youths, aged 18-25, from each Aboriginal community attend a five-day training program.
They're the type of people their peers already look up to, says Rodda. One older community leader, for example, a teacher,
youth worker or nurse, also attends. Topics include self-esteem, goal-setting and coping skills. Youth are trained to recognize
warning signs and risk behaviour, but are cautioned against direct intervention. Youth leaders also learn about the role of
culture as a risk factor for suicide. The long-term goal is to get a program going back home and to sustain it, says Rodda.
"The real tragedy is that often a community has no other [mental health] resources besides us."
The reasons for the high rates of suicide among Aboriginal youth are complex. Centuries of systemic inequity certainly don't
nurture self-esteem. "There are the common reasons like mental illness and drug abuse," says Rodda. "But there are also specifically
Aboriginal reasons, like loss of culture and language and discrimination experienced outside the reserve."
As an Ojibwe, Dave Jones has made it his life's work to ignite a spark of self-esteem in Aboriginal youth. He co-ordinates
empowerment workshops for Aboriginal youth through Turtle Concepts: Options for People, in Garden River, a community of about 2,050 people in northwestern Ontario. Jones has visited more than 250 Aboriginal
communities to conduct workshops with titles like "It's Okay to Walk in Both Worlds," "It's Okay to Succeed" and "It's Okay
to Feel Good About One's Self." Jones always includes a youth co-facilitator from a community he has recently visited. Typical
workshop activities are often as simple as having a participant sit in the "hot seat" in the centre of a circle, learning
how to give or take a compliment.
"The compliment can be anything, even 'I like your pants,'" says Jones. "The problem is that so many of these young people
have never had praise. No one tells them anything; the only feedback they get is when they're disciplined. We do one activity
where we ask 'What would be your eulogy?' An overwhelming number don't know because they never get positive feedback," says
Jones. In another workshop called "Esteemed Extravaganza," youth walk down a fashion-style runway, strutting their stuff.
Some members of the professional mental health community criticize the program for being too basic, says Jones. But the activities,
basic though they may be, are ingeniously designed to uproot a harmful dynamic in Aboriginal culture, says Jones. "The trouble
is, say a community brings in a non-native [mental health] worker to teach youth to celebrate their talents," he says. "As
soon as the youth start to demonstrate confidence publicly, the parents and Elders take them down and negate their confidence.
They're not validated for their confidence; they're perceived as trying to be better than everyone else." In a culture where
respect for Elders is a chief value, confidence is often viewed as brash conceit.
Jones calls it the "crab in the bucket" theory. "The crabs want to crawl out, but others pull them back down. We do that in
Aboriginal communities out of insecurity. But then youth start to feel they're caught between a native and non-native world,
that they won't belong if they start to aspire."
Youth mentors from Aboriginal communities who are proud of their ambitions and comfortable to say so publicly can take a powerful
step toward crushing this habitual and harmful dynamic. "We teach youth to achieve, aspire, succeed - all the things a parent
would," says Jones. "Through youth mentors, youth in the community realize their reserves aren't the only ones going through
this, that there is a huge majority their own age who want more, who are going on to college, completing high school, feeling
good and succeeding."
Gazayou is a perfect example of this new "huge majority." In addition to being a successful youth leader and peer mentor in
her Lac Broché community in northern Manitoba, she aspires to work with the rcmp, helping youth. "People trust me," she says.
"They see a girl who doesn't do drugs or smoke. They say, 'I can tell you anything.' Often they don't even trust their parents
because they're fighting or drunk."
In fact, Gazayou is so good at winning the respect and trust of her peers that they are often banging on her door at 1 a.m.,
eager for someone to talk to. She always lets them in. "These youth are natural leaders; people gravitate toward them," says
Rodda. But it's a lot of responsibility for a teenager to be a confidante for a community of peers. Rodda stresses the need
for the youth leaders to develop clear boundaries around their duties. "They can't do it all alone. The trouble is, they have
hearts of gold."
Rodda's respect for the youth he trains is obvious. He offers this key insight for mental health professionals working with
youth who have lost friends to suicide: "I see health professionals doing it all the time - minimizing a youth's experience
as 'adolescent.' They shrug it off as something a youth will get over. But if you've lost a boyfriend to suicide, it's as
profound as an adult loss. Young people have a lot of wisdom. They're incredibly resilient."
Centre for Addiction
