The Youth Suicide Prevention Walk : 2005

I am a couple days late posting this, but I wanted to make sure to get the word out about “The Youth Suicide Prevention Walk“.

Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Walk is a group of youth walkers and their support staff and volunteers who walk from Nanaimo, BC to Ottawa, Ontario each year (starting in 2003). In 2003 we walked for the Red race. In 2004 we walked for the Yellow race. In 2005 we will walk for the Black race and in 2006, our last year, we will be walking for the white race and our circle will be complete. Our objective is to raise awareness on the tragic problem of youth suicide on our reserves and in our communities across Canada. In 2004, these youth carried their message to at least 50 reserves across Canada: we spoke at junior high schools, high schools, juvenile detention centres and Friendship Centres, and we spoke to over fifty chiefs across the nation. We were on radio and television broadcasts, including A.P.T.N. and in newspapers across Canada. We even went into caucus in both Alberta and Saskatchewan.

They started walking on March 28th, but I am sure it’s not too late to head on over to Stageleft and sponsor these ambitious young people, who are raising awareness for a very serious issue. (Click on the PayPal link on the left sidebar).

The staggering rate of suicide among First Nation Youth is at epidemic highs. The Nunavut region alone is at a high of seven times the national average. Between 70 80% of all Canadian youth consider suicide before graduation from high school. More than 25,000 youth attempt suicide each year and of those, 250 are successful.

This is their third year and they hope to reach their goals by the end of their final walk, in 2006.

For those of you thinking, “oh, this is a Canadian issue”, think again… Here is a clip from an article about the school shooting in Red Lake, Minnesota:

The deaths, conspicuous in their senselessness, highlight the problems that American Indian teenagers have been quietly suffering in greater numbers than most adolescents: suicide, violence, depression and pregnancy.

By themselves, the numbers for the Red Lake Indian Reservation are staggering. A state survey conducted last year of 56 ninth-graders showed that 81 percent of the girls, and 43 percent of the boys, had considered suicide.

Nearly half the girls said they’d actually tried to kill themselves. Twenty percent of boys said the same numbers about triple the rate statewide.

While The Youth Suicide Prevention Walk” may be designed to raise awareness for Canadians, I think we should all take notice of the troubles these youths face, and do something about it. Before they become nothing more than another statistic on some government report no one wants to read.

Go on now. Donate. It won’t hurt as bad you think it will. It’s Canadian dollars. :wink: