Just a little more on Native suicide

(Sam did a quickie and limited search of articles on Native suicide, coming up immediately with 558.  He aptly noted that this "has been studied a fair bit." Sam's certainly right on target.)

Studies of "Indian problems" are legion, almost infinite.  Sometimes it's been a bad joke in Indian Country.

What's frequently missing, obviously, are tangible, substantive and realistic approaches.  In the area of potential suicide, these would have to be, among other things, preventative and as curative as possible: economic, socio-cultural, educational, medical -- and certainly deeply sensitive vis-a-vis the respective tribal culture and broad pan-Indian values.

Self-determination -- always and forever a key Native goal and always in the context of continuing treaty rights and other formal Federal obligations -- has been taking good "legal" root on virtually all reservations since the latter 20th century.  And more and more young Native people are entering a variety of critically needed "professions" --  and, of course, doing so without shedding their tribal cultures and Native identities.

I think I mentioned earlier that prevention of Indian suicide, especially that among young people, is a key interest of Thomas.  (Thomas Gray Salter, a young MD, is our grandson/son -- presently in his fourth year of residency at University of Iowa Hospital.)

In the early '70s, the late Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman, had a great little song about "task forces" from DC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDH4cQvgIyc


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

"I Consider Myself a Real Red:"  The Social Thought of
American Civil Rights Organizer John R. (Salter) Hunter Gray
(from The Journal of Indigenous Thought (new material 9/12):
 http://hunterbear.org/Red%20essay%20on%20Hunter%20Gray.htm

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded, and with more photos in Fall 2012. Material on our Native
background.)

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm