Project Censored
  • Support Our Work
  • Store
  • About
    • Mission
    • Who We Are
    • Media Freedom Foundation
    • Classroom
    • History of Project Censored
    • Our Work
    • Project Censored Summer Internships
    • Endorsements
    • The Newest Project Censored Movie
    • Events
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
  • Radio Show
    • The Project Censored Show

      Global Civil War: Capitalism Post Pandemic

      May 16, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      PayPal, US/NATO, Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, Roe vs….

      May 9, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Book Banning on the Rise in the US

      May 6, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Special Guests Valena Beety, Geoff Davidian, and Dr….

      April 25, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Special Guests Leonardo Flores and Jacquie Luqman Discuss…

      April 19, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Big Tech Censorship With Special Guests Chris Hedges…

      April 12, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Code Pink’s Panel on Media Censorship of Voices…

      April 6, 2022

  • Notebook
    • All Newsletters
      Censored Notebook

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER April 2022

      April 16, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – March 2022

      March 25, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – February 2022

      February 21, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      Arrests Aim to Silence Kashmiri Journalists and Human…

      February 5, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      Cal State Poly, Pomona Professor Accused of Anti-Semitism

      January 31, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      The Project Censored Newsletter—January 2022

      January 26, 2022

      Newsletters

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER April 2022

      April 16, 2022

      Newsletters

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – March 2022

      March 25, 2022

      Newsletters

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – February 2022

      February 21, 2022

      Newsletters

      The Project Censored Newsletter—January 2022

      January 26, 2022

      Newsletters

      The Project Censored Newsletter—December 2021

      December 11, 2021

      Newsletters

      The Project Censored Newsletter—November 2021

      November 6, 2021

  • News
    • Validated Independent News

      State of the Billionaire Press: Concerns over Media…

      April 21, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      McDonald’s Dodged Millions in Taxes with an IOU…

      April 21, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      Donor-Advised Funds Take Advantage of Tax Loopholes

      April 21, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      Book Donation Bans in US Prisons Restrict Prisoners’…

      April 20, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      St. Jude Hoards Billions While Running Misleading Advertising…

      April 20, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      US Transportation System “Fuels” Inequality

      April 20, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      Former Neo-Nazi Leader Now Holds DOJ Domestic Counterterrorism…

      April 20, 2022

Project Censored

  • Support Our Work
  • Store
  • About
    • Mission
    • Who We Are
    • Media Freedom Foundation
    • Classroom
    • History of Project Censored
    • Our Work
    • Project Censored Summer Internships
    • Endorsements
    • The Newest Project Censored Movie
    • Events
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
  • Radio Show
    • The Project Censored Show

      Global Civil War: Capitalism Post Pandemic

      May 16, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      PayPal, US/NATO, Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, Roe vs….

      May 9, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Book Banning on the Rise in the US

      May 6, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Special Guests Valena Beety, Geoff Davidian, and Dr….

      April 25, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Special Guests Leonardo Flores and Jacquie Luqman Discuss…

      April 19, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Big Tech Censorship With Special Guests Chris Hedges…

      April 12, 2022

      The Project Censored Show

      Code Pink’s Panel on Media Censorship of Voices…

      April 6, 2022

  • Notebook
    • All Newsletters
      Censored Notebook

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER April 2022

      April 16, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – March 2022

      March 25, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – February 2022

      February 21, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      Arrests Aim to Silence Kashmiri Journalists and Human…

      February 5, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      Cal State Poly, Pomona Professor Accused of Anti-Semitism

      January 31, 2022

      Censored Notebook

      The Project Censored Newsletter—January 2022

      January 26, 2022

      Newsletters

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER April 2022

      April 16, 2022

      Newsletters

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – March 2022

      March 25, 2022

      Newsletters

      THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER – February 2022

      February 21, 2022

      Newsletters

      The Project Censored Newsletter—January 2022

      January 26, 2022

      Newsletters

      The Project Censored Newsletter—December 2021

      December 11, 2021

      Newsletters

      The Project Censored Newsletter—November 2021

      November 6, 2021

  • News
    • Validated Independent News

      State of the Billionaire Press: Concerns over Media…

      April 21, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      McDonald’s Dodged Millions in Taxes with an IOU…

      April 21, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      Donor-Advised Funds Take Advantage of Tax Loopholes

      April 21, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      Book Donation Bans in US Prisons Restrict Prisoners’…

      April 20, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      St. Jude Hoards Billions While Running Misleading Advertising…

      April 20, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      US Transportation System “Fuels” Inequality

      April 20, 2022

      Validated Independent News

      Former Neo-Nazi Leader Now Holds DOJ Domestic Counterterrorism…

      April 20, 2022

#15. Indigenous Trauma and Suicide an Enduring Legacy of Colonialism

by Project Censored December 1, 2020
December 1, 2020

From evidence of neglect at government-run clinics in Canada’s northern reserves to the tragic loss of lives in remote villages in Alaska and on reservation lands in Montana, independent news coverage helps to frame the otherwise underreported issue of Indigenous mistreatment and suicide in historical terms, against the backdrops of settler colonialism and systemic racism that affect Indigenous people and their communities in Canada and the United States.

Indigenous suicide is a serious public health issue throughout the United States, Devon Heinen reported for the New Statesman in January 2020. In 2017 the combined suicide rate for US Indigenous peoples was 22.15 per 100,000 people, compared with an overall national average of 16.3 per 100,000 people, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, Heinen reported. In Alaska—where 229 of the 573 federally-recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages in the United States are located—the Indigenous suicide rate from 1999 to 2009 was 42.5 per 100,000 people. 

In Montana, Native youths aged 11 to 24 are five times more likely to die by suicide than non-Natives, according to data from the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, Mountain West News reported in July 2019. The suicide rate for Native youths in Montana is 42.82 per 100,000 people, compared with eight suicides per 100,000 people for all people in the same age range. Mountain West News reported that, over a period of three months, the Fort Belknap Reservation had experienced a “suicide contagion,” with three suicides and an estimated fifteen additional suicide attempts prompting the Fort Belknap Indian Community Council to declare a state of emergency.

As other reports documented, suicide has devastated First Nations communities in Canada. In June 2019, Claudette Commanda and Louise Bradley reported that suicide and self-inflicted injuries are “the leading cause of death” for First Nations youth and adults up to age 44. In November 2019, the Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation declared a state of emergency after a rash of suicides, and the deaths of four Indigenous men by suicide on Ochapowace First Nation led Ochapowace to declare a state of emergency in December 2019. While affirming “the resiliency and strength of Indigenous peoples,” Commanda and Bradley wrote that “high rates of suicide, homicide, incarceration and substance abuse born of colonial trauma illustrate the pain and suffering that Indigenous communities continue to experience.” The impacts have been especially stark for First Nations male youth, for whom the suicide rate is 126 per 100,000, they noted.

“The challenge that we face collectively,” Commanda and Bradley wrote, “is to draw a narrative thread through numbers that point to pain and hurt and give it a human voice.”

Devon Heinen’s January 2020 report for the New Statesman shows how independent investigative journalism can contribute to this aim. Heinen reported in detail on the experience of one Iñupiaq family in the aftermath of the death by suicide of Rosie Hadley, at age twenty. Drawing on extensive interviews with Hadley’s family and those who knew her—Heinen conducted 27 separate interviews over four months with Rosie’s father, Nathan Hadley—Heinen’s report provided a vivid, detailed account of Rosie’s life and the community of Buckland, population 400, in Alaska’s remote and sparsely populated Northwest Arctic Borough. [Note: As one of Heinen’s sources—Bree Swanson, a social services administrator—explained, the Northwest Arctic tribal health region was the worst region for Indigenous suicide in Alaska from 2012 to 2015. Swanson identified generational trauma as one risk factor. Noting that colonization in the mainland United States was “hundreds of years old,” Swanson said it is “more recent” in Alaska. “We’re talking grandparent generation,” Swanson told New Statesman.] Through its intimate investigation of one family’s experience in the context of their community, the local lack of necessary social services, and the living legacy of the region’s colonial history, Heinen’s report provides a stark insight into one aspect of Indigenous suicide as a public health issue—how, in his words, “to help people heal after losing someone close.”

[Note: For another instance of the power with which in-depth investigative journalism can convey the challenges faced by determined Indigenous families and communities confronting violence, see Eilís Quinn, “Death in the Arctic,” Eye on the Arctic, December 14, 2018, https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic-special-reports/death-nunavik-quebec-arctic-canada/#home. Quinn reported the story of the violent death Robert Adams, a nineteen-year-old Inuk from Northern Quebec, and his father’s struggle for access to mental health services, coroner’s services, and the Inuit justice system. In January 2020, “Death in the Arctic” won the silver medal at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. “Eye on the Arctic report Death in the Arctic Wins Prize at Canadian Online Publishing Awards,” Eye on the Arctic, January 13, 2020, https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2020/01/13/eye-on-the-arctic-report-death-in-the-arctic-wins-prize-at-canadian-online-publishing-awards-copa-justice-journalism-nunavik/.]

An October 2019 report by Reuters documented how government-run or -sponsored health clinics in Canada are failing to provide Indigenous communities with necessary services. For more than nine years, the Canadian federal government has not consistently tracked, let alone investigated, poor outcomes at clinics on Indigenous reserves, Allison Martell reported. These clinics, known as nursing stations, are charged with providing basic and emergency care to about 115,000 people. Through analysis of documents, including internal reports and meeting notes obtained through public records requests, Martell reported that record-keeping on deaths and other “critical incidents” at the clinics has been “erratic and fragmented.” Reuters documented at least two cases—one in Ontario, and another in Manitoba—in which nursing station officials turned away apparently intoxicated patients who subsequently died. Lack of adequate official records made it “difficult” to determine whether this “has been a widespread practice,” Martell reported, but a coroner’s verdict on one of the deaths described it as the “northern protocol.”

“We are treating members of the First Nations communities as second-class citizens,” Emily Hill, a senior staff lawyer with Aboriginal Legal Services, told Reuters. Martell wrote that Reuters’s findings on deadly negligence in Canada’s nursing stations came as Canada is “in the midst of a public reckoning with the legacy of settler colonization.”

Recent corporate news coverage on Indigenous suicide and other trauma associated with the destructive legacies of colonization has not been proportionate to the scope of the crisis—with only a few notable exceptions. In August 2019, for example, U.S. News & World Report published a brief Associated Press report on the Fort Belknap community’s response to suicides. This seven-sentence article drew heavily from previous, more substantial local reporting by the Billings Gazette. In June 2019 USA Today reported, in more detail, on Native Americans’ “increased risk of suicide,” in light of the experience of Shelby Rowe, the executive director of the Arkansas Crisis Center, after she experienced a suicide crisis herself. In April 2018 the New York Times published a powerful, detailed story about the Arlee Warriors, a state championship high school basketball team from Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation, and its team members’ efforts to help their community deal with suicide.


Devon Heinen, “Nobody to Call: The Plight of Indigenous Suicide in Alaska,” New Statesman, January 10, 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/12/nobody-call-indigenous-suicides-alaska.

“Tribe Faces Suicide Crisis,” Mountain West News, July 23, 2019, https://mountainwestnews.org/rockies-today-for-tuesday-july-23-99e8bc80babc.

Claudette Commanda and Louise Bradley, “We Must Not Forget Men When We Talk about Indigenous Trauma,” The Globe and Mail, June 16, 2019, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-must-not-forget-men-when-we-talk-about-indigenous-trauma/.

Allison Martell, “Deaths, Bad Outcomes Elude Scrutiny at Canada’s Indigenous Clinics,” Reuters, October 24, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-health-insight/deaths-bad-outcomes-elude-scrutiny-at-canadas-indigenous-clinics-idUSKBN1X3152.

Student Researchers: Danna Henderson (First Nations University of Canada), Olivia Page (College of Marin), and Alicia Morrow (University of Regina)

Faculty Evaluators: Patricia W. Elliott (First Nations University of Canada), Susan Rahman (College of Marin), and Kehinde Olalafe (University of Regina)

Review Article with Credder
1
FacebookTwitter
previous post
#14. The Case for a Public Pharmaceutical System
next post
#16. International Law Could Hold US Accountable for Violating Detained Immigrant Children’s Rights

You may also like

A Note on Research and Evaluation of Censored...

December 1, 2020

#25. Studies Document Links between Education, Incarceration, and...

December 1, 2020

#24. Silenced in Savannah: Journalist Abby Martin Challenges...

December 1, 2020

#23. “Global Gag Rule” Continues to Compromise Women’s...

December 1, 2020

#22. An Emergency Wealth Tax to Confront Coronavirus...

December 1, 2020

#21. The Scourge of Human Trafficking in Yemen

December 1, 2020

#20. A Comprehensive Framework for Transforming the Criminal-Legal...

December 1, 2020

#19. Antibiotic Abuse: Pharmaceutical Profiteering Accelerates Superbugs

December 1, 2020

#18. Trump Labor Board Assaults Workers’ Rights

December 1, 2020

#17. International Plasma Market Profits from US and...

December 1, 2020

Become a Monthly Supporter For Only $10 and Get the Newest Book for Free!

Become a Monthly Supporter Here!Project Censored 2022 Top Censored Stories Book

We depend on member support to continue our research on news censorship, media literacy education, maintain our websites, and to write our annual book!

 

 

 

 

Help Support the New Censored Press!

Censored PRess

Support the Launch of the Censored Press

6% funded
$
Select Payment Method
Personal Info

Credit Card Info
This is a secure SSL encrypted payment.

Donation Total: $25.00

Donate With Cryptocurrency

Donate to Project Censored

The Latest Project Censored Show

Global Civil War: Capitalism Post Pandemic

https://www.projectcensored.org/podcast-player/25765/global-civil-war-capitalism-post-pandemic.mp3

More Information

  • What is Modern Censorship?
  • Contact Us
  • For Teachers
  • Workshop For Educators

Partner Websites

  • ACME
  • EmpireFiles
  • GCMLP
  • KBBF
  • KPFA
  • Mass Media Literacy
  • Media Roots
  • The Memory Hole
  • MintPress News
  • National Coalition Against Censorship
  • News Enlightenment Initiative (Project Censored Germany)
  • Open the Gov
  • Random Lengths News
  • The RealNews
  • Society of Professional Journalists
  • WPOV – From a Woman’s Point of View

More

  • The Top 25 Archive
  • Nominate a Story
  • Project Censored in the Classroom
  • Independent News Sources
  • Fair Use Statement
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Youtube

All Rights Reserved by Media Freedom Foundation. No part of the content on this website may be republished without written consent by Media Freedom Foundation


Back To Top
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
Cookie SettingsAccept All
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT