Navajo Challenged To Prevent Suicides
Gary Davis never talks about his sister’s suicide.
“To be honest I’ve never shared this,” Davis said. “Everyone thinks I’m the oldest, but I actually had an older sister. And she committed suicide. What was told to me at the time was that she got shot, but that was not the truth.”
Davis was a teenager. He didn’t learn the truth until many years later.
“Even for me, I don’t talk about it,” Davis said. “I suppress it.”
Davis, who is Navajo, has made it his life’s work to stop suicide both on and off the reservation. But he said that’s tough to do when it’s taboo among the Navajo to talk about death. He said the belief is if you talk about it, you invite death upon you.
“It’s our thinking,” Davis said. “We need to get away from that type of thinking. We need to address it, because it’s happening. We can’t deny it. There will come healing from that. We have to communicate.”
Native Americans have the highest suicide rate of any ethnic or racial group in the United States — two and a half times the national rate.
On a recent afternoon at the Coconino County Juvenile Detention Center, where almost half of the kids are Native American, Davis and his colleague, Jacob Kaulaity, led a youth group in a team building exercise.
Kaulaity, who is also Navajo, admitted he was worried about taking the mental health specialist job.
“Coming into the suicide prevention program, you know, I was hesitant,” said Kaulity, a mental health specialist for Native Americans for Community Action. “How am I going to do this?”
Even Kaulaity, whose job it is to stop suicide, avoids saying the word. He said he tries to turn a negative into a positive. Instead of suicide, he focuses on promoting life and connecting youth to their community.
“Within the Dine culture, with k’é — that family — you’re not alone even with our clanships, too,” Kaulaity said. “Some of our kids they don’t understand that about extended family through their clanship.”
The recent suicides prompted the Navajo president to turn a negative into a positive. He issued an executive order declaring the third week of December and second week of June suicide prevention weeks. They have called the initiative “building communities of hope.”
In addition to environmental disasters like the mine spill, the Navajo people have dealt with high rates of unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence.
“When a person feels that they’re not safe at home that they’re not loved that if they’re not here tomorrow nobody will care that’s something we need to hit at a very personal level,” said Navajo Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty.
Crotty said this is the first Navajo administration to address suicide.
“We need to have an active voice and tell them, ‘you are loved,’” Crotty said. “‘You’re cherished. We need you here tomorrow. Yes, this is difficult but you are strong enough to make it.’”
Navajo Vice President Jonathan Nez said it’s critical that young people know they belong. He said many young people are straddling two worlds: the indigenous way of life and the dominant western society.
“Our kids are beginning to question their identity,” Nez said. “They’re feeling, ‘am I really Indian? Am I really Navajo?’ We’re at a stage now that not many of our young Navajo people speak Navajo understand Navajo.”
The issue is so sensitive that Navajo medicine men have just recently agreed to begin talking about suicide. They plan to discuss giving the tribe permission to talk about it and to stop it from happening again.
