Suicide Crisis Among Native American Youth Prompts Federal Action

[Shotgun_Sammy]

And for the record I don't wanna see anyone's children commit suicide.

the natives need to sort out their own problems and the biggest problem they have is not going to be solved by the goverment. They can solve their troubles or their troubles will sort them out

 

[Michelle420]

So take yourself there then. Butt hurt much? Insults and general paint stroke statements suit you well

I would like to be able to have discussions where people would talk about the topic and not just troll.

I care about the issue, my sister committed suicide and I understand the pain it brings to families.

Is there something wrong with wanting to talk about the topic? This is a discussion board.

 

[mdk]

Send them Rat Poison, all they do is steal anyway.

There is something terribly wrong with you.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

I am not referring to you drifter. I like to debate as well.

I'm referring to the ones throwing a temper tantrum because someone doesn't agree with them so they are taking their ball and going home.

Complains about insults while insulting complains about broad stroke statements while making broadstroke statements

 

[Michelle420]

I am not referring to you drifter. I like to debate as well.

I'm referring to the ones throwing a temper tantrum because someone doesn't agree with so they are taking their ball and going home.

I just think we can help. I hate to think anyone would want kids to kill themselves. It just makes me feel bad.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

I think the natives need ( and I stress NEED ) to sort it out themselves. Let their communities see that they can fix their troubles without the govament coming in and ' helping '. The goverment is half their damn problem.

Maybe give their kids some pride in themselves and their communities.

 

[Esmeralda]

I think the natives need ( and I stress NEED ) to sort it out themselves. Let their communities see that they can fix their troubles without the govament coming in and ' helping '. The goverment is half their damn problem.

Maybe give their kids some pride in themselves and their communities.

You don't have any concrete ideas to offer. You just keep repeating they should fix it themselves. You know nothing about the problem or how they could 'fix it themselves.'

They were pushed off onto reservations, reservations that have no land that can be reasonably used as agricultural land. Land that in general doesn't have it's own water. Land where the government has not put in electricity connections because it is 'Indian land'

The government has helped you by putting in roads, water, electricity, etc. By building schools and cities. They don't do that for the Native Americans because it is reservation land.

There are obstacles in place in every direction to prevent the Native American from fixing the problems themselves.

Your government helps you in a myriad of ways, help you are not rejecting but taking advantage of. The Native American has the right to have that help too. To ignore them and say 'do it yourself' is about as ignorant as you can get. You think like a 7 year old.

BTW, I insult you because your posts are deeply insulting toward this topic: you don't realize that because you are a bigot. You also do not have a clue about what real debate is.

 

[flacaltenn]

I've been following this thread all afternoon. Kinda appalled that at a time when the lead news story is about a Middle School dropout racist moron who believes he can start a race war -- that there isn't a bit more sensitivity to the OP questions.. How much do you trolling haters really know about the quality of education on the reservations? Whether those kids EVER had a chance to leave and get a job -- or whether the EXPECTATIONS are so damn low -- the bureaucrats were just getting them by..

It's true that government CONTINUES to steal from the Indians, not the other way around. And my personal bet is that when the government comes "to help them" it's with the lowest of estimates of their potential..

Not a genetic thing. It's a DEPENDENCE thing. Made worse now by the possibility of big casino money as an incentive to stick it out.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

I think the natives need ( and I stress NEED ) to sort it out themselves. Let their communities see that they can fix their troubles without the govament coming in and ' helping '. The goverment is half their damn problem.

Maybe give their kids some pride in themselves and their communities.

You don't have any concrete ideas to offer. You just keep repeating they should fix it themselves. You know nothing about the problem or how they could 'fix it themselves.'

They were pushed off onto reservations, reservations that have no land that can be reasonably used as agricultural land. Land that in general doesn't have it's own water. Land where the government has not put in electricity connections because it is 'Indian land'

The government has helped you by putting in roads, water, electricity, etc. By building schools and cities. They don't do that for the Native Americans because it is reservation land.

There are obstacles in place in every direction to prevent the Native American from fixing the problems themselves.

Your government helps you in a myriad of ways, help you are not rejecting but taking advantage of. The Native American has the right to have that help too. To ignore them and say 'do it yourself' is about as ignorant as you can get. You think like a 7 year old.

BTW, I insult you because your posts are deeply insulting toward this topic: you don't realize that because you are a bigot. You also do not have a clue about what real debate is.

I liked it better when you were leaving.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

Your last two paragraphs are the epitome of arrogance.

Please be true to your word and go away. Your just mad cause I don't agree with you.

 

[Esmeralda]

Your last two paragraphs are the epitome of arrogance.

Please be true to your word and go away. Your just mad cause I don't agree with you.

I never said I was leaving. So, apparently you not only have other limitations, you have reading issues too. Not surprised. And, you also do not understand the definition of arrogance. What a loser.

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, is in a state of crisis. Over the past year, 14 school-age children on the reservation have killed themselves.

At the time of their suicides, four of those children were attending Pine Ridge School. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that the Bureau of Indian Education school, which has some 800 K-12 students, has received $218,000 in emergency funds to help its students deal with that trauma.

The school requested the grant money through the Education Department’s Project SERV (School Emergency Response to Violence). With the funds, Pine Ridge will be able to hire an additional counselor and social worker for the next 12 months, better implement a Lakota-based healing program and bring in cultural teachers to provide monthly lessons on healing processes, according to information provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The 183 Bureau of Indian Education schools nationwide, which are overseen by the federal government, face a number of daunting challenges. Suicide rates among young Native Americans are disproportionately high, while high school graduation rates are disproportionately low. Many BIE school facilities are old and in poor condition.

Between August 2014 and April 2015, Pine Ridge School saw a "significant increase" in suicide attempts and counseling referrals, according to the Education Department. But currently, the school has only two counselors on staff, said Nedra Darling, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior.

"During the end of the School Year 2014-2015 the mood was somewhat in a mourning state," Darling wrote HuffPost, adding that school personnel were spending "a great amount of time" providing mental health counseling to students and staff.

"However, as graduation approached the mood lifted and many believe it is time to move forward to teach these children to celebrate life," Darling wrote.

The Education Department touted the grant as part of the Obama administration's overall push to improve life for Native youth. The White House launched its Generation Indigenous initiative in February in an effort to remove barriers for this population through new investments and opportunities to engage.

“We are heartbroken about the tragic loss of life and are committed to working with the Pine Ridge community as it heals. These funds will help Pine Ridge School’s continued efforts to restore the learning environment in the face of these great tragedies,” said William Mendoza, director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, in Wednesday's press release. “This Administration is committed to supporting tribes in their work to meet the needs of their students. We all must do more to address the challenges across Indian Country.”

John Yellow Bird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, declared a state of emergency on the reservation in response to the youth suicides in February.

More: Native American School Mourning 4 Student Suicides Gets Emergency Federal Aid

Poverty and suicide are common among Native Americans. They aren't all rich Injuns with casinos.

Very sad.

Why is it sad? Evolution strains out the backward the retarded and the idiots. It's natures way of cleaning the gene pool.

You know--or probably you don't because you are obviously very intellectually limited--those who are lacking in sensibility and self esteem are those who are the biggest bullies: which means that's you buddy.

The social problems of the Native Americans are complex and something that goes back to the conquering of this country by European settlers, invaders actually. Just because you are where you are does not mean it has anything to do with you as an individual human being being superior to anyone: it's very clear you are not. If you had a brain of any worth, you would be able to put this situation in perspective and with other intelligent and perceptive people, try to think of a solution to the problem.

But, indeed and truly, you are a knuckle dragger and incapable of seeing anything past your big fat nose. The pathetic one, the one on the way out as far as evolution is concernedd is you. Yep. The Native Americans are evolving and will evolve, though it is tough, but they are in the process. You have had every opportunity to be a better person, but you are nowhere near being one.

You are the one who is "backward ... retarded and [an] idiot."

Somebody else was here before the Indians so they are no less guilty than European settlers. And I'm a native American as I was born in the US. People need to stop arrogantly misusing that term.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Why not just put the Sioux, Cheyenne and Crow and Pawnee back within the same vicinity as each other and let them have it out like in the old days. They can cut each other's heads off, steal each other's women, kill each others children and food stores.

The strongest survives. The winner can ride off on the horses that irreversibly change their culture.

I love irony.

While I dont ascribe to dark furies cold hard truths, it is a cold hard truth of our existence. The winner wins and the loser loses.

A conquered people pains and miseries still echo through time. Only they can solve their problems. Sympathy is free but it won't do them much good.

And how exactly did the hunger games turn out for the fat, lazy overlords in the end?

 

[Derideo_Te]

It's arrogant to think you know what's best for them.

Ironic since you just posted what YOU "know what's best for them" in post #44 above.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Send them Rat Poison, all they do is steal anyway.

Kindly refrain from spewing your poisoned soul all over the pain and suffering of others.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Somebody else was here before the Indians so they are no less guilty than European settlers.

Really?

Who would that be, dances-with-ignorance?

Current day native Americans are descendants of both the original pre-Clovis and subsequent European settles according to their DNA.

Native Americans were actually European - BEFORE the Europeans arrived The Register

The investigating scientists write in hefty boffinry mag Nature:

Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans.

So it appears that the Native Americans were in part merely an earlier wave of European colonisation, later to find most of their conquests taken away by Johnny-come-latelies from across the water.​

 

[Esmeralda]

Somebody else was here before the Indians so they are no less guilty than European settlers.

Really?

Who would that be, dances-with-ignorance?

Current day native Americans are descendants of both the original pre-Clovis and subsequent European settles according to their DNA.

Native Americans were actually European - BEFORE the Europeans arrived The Register

The investigating scientists write in hefty boffinry mag Nature:

Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans.

So it appears that the Native Americans were in part merely an earlier wave of European colonisation, later to find most of their conquests taken away by Johnny-come-latelies from across the water.​

 

[Luddly Neddite]

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, is in a state of crisis. Over the past year, 14 school-age children on the reservation have killed themselves.

At the time of their suicides, four of those children were attending Pine Ridge School. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that the Bureau of Indian Education school, which has some 800 K-12 students, has received $218,000 in emergency funds to help its students deal with that trauma.

The school requested the grant money through the Education Department’s Project SERV (School Emergency Response to Violence). With the funds, Pine Ridge will be able to hire an additional counselor and social worker for the next 12 months, better implement a Lakota-based healing program and bring in cultural teachers to provide monthly lessons on healing processes, according to information provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The 183 Bureau of Indian Education schools nationwide, which are overseen by the federal government, face a number of daunting challenges. Suicide rates among young Native Americans are disproportionately high, while high school graduation rates are disproportionately low. Many BIE school facilities are old and in poor condition.

Between August 2014 and April 2015, Pine Ridge School saw a "significant increase" in suicide attempts and counseling referrals, according to the Education Department. But currently, the school has only two counselors on staff, said Nedra Darling, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior.

"During the end of the School Year 2014-2015 the mood was somewhat in a mourning state," Darling wrote HuffPost, adding that school personnel were spending "a great amount of time" providing mental health counseling to students and staff.

"However, as graduation approached the mood lifted and many believe it is time to move forward to teach these children to celebrate life," Darling wrote.

The Education Department touted the grant as part of the Obama administration's overall push to improve life for Native youth. The White House launched its Generation Indigenous initiative in February in an effort to remove barriers for this population through new investments and opportunities to engage.

“We are heartbroken about the tragic loss of life and are committed to working with the Pine Ridge community as it heals. These funds will help Pine Ridge School’s continued efforts to restore the learning environment in the face of these great tragedies,” said William Mendoza, director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, in Wednesday's press release. “This Administration is committed to supporting tribes in their work to meet the needs of their students. We all must do more to address the challenges across Indian Country.”

John Yellow Bird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, declared a state of emergency on the reservation in response to the youth suicides in February.

More: Native American School Mourning 4 Student Suicides Gets Emergency Federal Aid

Poverty and suicide are common among Native Americans. They aren't all rich Injuns with casinos.

Very sad.

Why is it sad? Evolution strains out the backward the retarded and the idiots. It's natures way of cleaning the gene pool.

You know--or probably you don't because you are obviously very intellectually limited--those who are lacking in sensibility and self esteem are those who are the biggest bullies: which means that's you buddy.

The social problems of the Native Americans are complex and something that goes back to the conquering of this country by European settlers, invaders actually. Just because you are where you are does not mean it has anything to do with you as an individual human being being superior to anyone: it's very clear you are not. If you had a brain of any worth, you would be able to put this situation in perspective and with other intelligent and perceptive people, try to think of a solution to the problem.

But, indeed and truly, you are a knuckle dragger and incapable of seeing anything past your big fat nose. The pathetic one, the one on the way out as far as evolution is concernedd is you. Yep. The Native Americans are evolving and will evolve, though it is tough, but they are in the process. You have had every opportunity to be a better person, but you are nowhere near being one.

You are the one who is "backward ... retarded and [an] idiot."

It's genetics okay? They are going the way of the Dodo bird for a reason. Let them go peacefully.

Although he is WAY too dumb to know it, DarkFury is accidentally correct in his comparison.

It was the combination of massive slaughter and moving into their habitat that killed off the Dodo bird.

Exactly like Native Americans.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

Yes, my solution is to let the natives sort out their troubles for themselves.

This is the same goverment the has shafted them for the last couple of centuries.

No, I wouldn't want that very same goverment anywhere near me or my kin. The goverment can build roads and infrastructure and the basics a goverment is there for.

Social engineering is not anything I want the government involved in because time and time and time and time again they have shown how to completely screw it up and make it worse.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

I was born in the USA so I'm native to this land.

The politically correctness says I'm a invader and I should feel guilty about it and blah blah blah blah.

Save all that shit.