The Alarmingly High Suicide Rates in Aboriginal Canada

Don't worry, I did not stand in front of a moving train to take this shot.

I had planned to talk about about something else today.  But this morning I learned a close friend of my husband's family had died.  And he didn't just died; he committed suicide.  This young man apparently walked to the train tracks to end his life.  I keep wondering what would possess a young man to do such a thing?  What would make a young person think that suicide is the answer?

My husband's family is First Nations (aboriginal).  In native communities suicide has reached epidemic proportions.  Some sources have numbers that say that suicide rates in native communities in Canada are anywhere from 5 to 7 times higher than in the non-native population.   The more alarming rates are those of the Northern communities.  Some say in some Inuit communities the suicide rate is even 11 times higher.  In 2009, in a town of 1000, 14 youth committed suicide.  Some experts are saying that these remote communities are the suicide capitals of the world.  I know many stories of many young people taking their lives from my husband's recollections of his growing up and now I get to see this  reality closer.  I hope it never touches my Canadian family.  But everybody agrees it started after residential schools opened their doors and native kids were taken from their families and thrown into these places were they lost their cultural identities, their languages, and it seems often times even their will to live.   Suicide was almost non-existent in native cultures before.  But the previous generations that went through so many traumas grew up and raised new generations and they passed on many of their problems.  It is certainly a difficult cycle to break. 

Native communities are closely knit and even though this is a great thing, it can also lead to suicide clusters, like Health Canada puts it.  Well, I see how that can be.  When one youth goes the others seem to have a reinforced belief that suicide is the way out of their problems and negative feelings.  Plus they also have a new heartbreak from the passing of somebody close to them.
I hope Health Canada and the native leaders get a hold of the problem and eradicate it.   I know they can do it if they launch a well thought out, country-wide campaign.  The best native communities have going for them is how they care a lot about each other and their real sense of community.  I know it because I lived among them for a short while and they embraced me like my own family.

Listen to some  leaders on their views of the problem and potential solutions