Suicide epidemic on Native American reservation calls for emergency measures

USA-A suicide epidemic on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Todd County, South Dakota has authorities alarmed. The American Association of Suicidology says South Dakota ranked 13th in the nation in 2004 in suicides per capita, with 14.5 suicides for every 100,000 people.But according to reports, Rosebud Sioux Tribe Law Enforcement officers have noticed a sharply marked upswing in those numbers. In 2006, officials responded to three deaths by suicide and 197 attempts. In the first three months of 2007, police had been called to three completed suicides and 51 attempts, a trend likely to exceed the grim numbers of a year ago.Unsure if the statistics marked a cycle or a one-time event, the elders tried to address the domestic abuse, the depression, and the substance abuse problems. And still, things seemed unchanged.One newspaper reported that tribal leaders tried to get to the heart of the despair and do some research on the situation. They distributed surveys to high school students on the reservation, trying to identify the triggers, those who are talking and those who are helping.The responses: There's too much violence on the reservation. Parents need to take responsibility for their children. Alcohol and drugs are ruining families and communities. No one cares. No one listens to us.The Sioux Tribal President declared a state of emergency in order to get some federal support for programs to address the growing instability.That's when a church leader called Ron Hutchcraft Ministries' Craig Smith to ask for help from an "On Eagles' Wings" emergency rapid response team. The team began work on the reservation Friday, October 12 and just wrapped up their last meeting Monday.The team is made up of Native young adults who serve as role models. Smith says they can get through where other non-Indian teams can't because "they've come from a lot of the pain that we see in the Native communities and yet they have found hope in Christ. We saw a very encouraging number of the folks from this community pray with our team to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ."Smith says the response to the hope of the Gospel was overwhelming. Discipleship will now form the bulk of the ministry.Smith explains it this way:"We're kind of like jumper cables.You can't run a car on jumper cables.The local ministry is the battery.We can come along and jump start and put a spark back into local ministries where it's needed.We've created some ongoing follow-up materials that we give to the local ministry leaders, but it's the local church that is the vehicle by which discipleship needs to continue."
http://www.mnnonline.org/article/10472
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