Honor Your Life
Teens Coping with Sense of Self T Members of Tribal Health’s Community Health Programs discuss the impacts of suicide and becoming aware of the signs leading to it; the group focuses on strengthening family togetherness.
Unified Family Works
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Spending time together bridges the gaps and isolation created by depression
t is not a secret that many people who live in Cheyenne Country know first-hand the pain of depression and suicide. In homes around our community, many teens face extreme poverty, hunger, alcoholism, substance abuse and family violence. Diabetes rates are sky high, and untreated mental illnesses such as depression are common. Unemployment rates are high, so there are few afterschool or weekend jobs available to youth. Bullying and peer pressure pile on more trauma during the vulnerable teen years. In addition, the tragedies ripple through the entire community touching virtually everyone since tribal members are often related whether closely or distantly. Funerals and grief are common to children in tribal cultures where large extended families are essentially the same as the immediate family in the general population. Historically, family was the center of the Cheyenne social structure. Spending time with the family was very important because it helped to build relationships and while merging culture with life lessons. Families worked together to teach and learn day to day skills and build morals and as a result a strong sense of Cheyenne identity was born giving youth the strength of character needed to thrive and prosper. Affection was lavished on American Indian children and they were not spanked or beaten as punishment. Robbie Gondara is the director of Northern Cheyenne Tribal Health’s Honor Your Life, a suicide prevention program geared toward helping American Indian youth cope with depression, suicide, domestic violence and other extremely difficult life challenges. He says that it’s the parent’s job to be there for their children to give them the confidence and selfesteem that they need to deal with the everyday issues that occur on the reservation.
“If you have a healthy home and you have a healthy family you kind of have a safe place to go to after it’s done and over with. But if you don’t have that then it’s kind of one of those things that keeps getting piled on top of one another and eventually there’s going to be a tipping point,” says Gondara It is important to remember that even if the youth are nearing adulthood, they still require parental involvement. Just spending a little time as a family teaches children that they are important enough that the parent has chosen, out of all the things to do, to find the time for them. And if they go beyond that, and truly connect with them, through good conversation, that says even more. Children often reflect strengths, weaknesses, values, and attitudes of the family. Something as simple as eating together at the dinner table has been proven to open lines of communication between parents and their children. ther ways to spend bonding time with youth include incorporating family nights into the month as well as going to their school and sporting activities, attending cultural events like powwows together, cooking and making time for outdoor activities like fishing or hunting. It is very important to understand that relationships are not built overnight. Youth often don’t know how to express their gratitude and working around a busy schedule can be difficult at times. According to Gondara, making youth the top priority helps to strengthen their cultural identity and personal identity which is an important tool in teaching them how to deal with stressful situations. These times together are also provide an opportunity to talk to your teen about healthy relationships, morals, and learning what is going on in their day to day lives so that you can teach them how to handle everyday
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situations. “I think that we as a community have to start looking at ourselves if we want to look at change. Look at our youth. We can’t always point a finger at other agencies and what they are doing and what they are not doing. It’s not always other people’s
“If you have a healthy home and you have a healthy family you kind of have a safe place to go to after it’s done and over with. But if you don’t have that then it’s kind of one of those things that keeps getting piled on top of one another and eventually there’s going to be a tipping point.” jobs to raise or to make sure the next generation is the best it can be. It all starts with each individual. If you want to see the change then you personally have to be the person to change it. We all do. I think sometimes we like to look at all of the problems and put them off on somebody else but really if we each do our own part then I think in the long run its going to make a big difference,” advises Gondara.
eens deal with many different types of relationships throughout their school years including friendships, casual and romantic connections, and bullies. Unfortunately, many teenagers who grow up on reservations often lack the skills they need to have healthy and safe relationships. This is in part due to a lack of effective parenting role models and the lack of nurturing. The presence of abuse in boarding schools has resulted in parents who are uninvolved, non-nurturing and strict to varying degrees. The outcome of the boarding school legacy is weak Native identity and poor family affiliation resulting in adults who had no healthy relationship models. Other reasons for this occurrence is due to influences from friends as well as the media that sometimes bombards teenagers with the impression that the best way to connect is through unhealthy tactics. Director Robbie Gondara of ‘Honor Your Life’ program believes when parents don’t model a healthy relationship sometimes youth don’t know how much work it takes or how to communicate with one another. “You can’t work towards something that you just don’t know what it even looks like or if it even exists,” Gondara states. Honor your life is a program created to address depression, suicide, domestic violence and other extremely difficult life challenges in American Indian youth and to teach them how to cope with those issues. According to Gondara, young people often feel a sense of loss or abandonment and don’t have the adequate coping mechanisms in place to allow them to get past their anguish. For example, bullying is one of the leading catalysts for suicide nationwide. On the reservation, children often encounter what is known as ‘cultural bullying’. This type of intimidation occurs when the victims are targeted because of their cultural differences. Mistreatment of this kind often results in the teen feeling abandoned and different. It is important for the victim to have the ability to manage the situation without making it worse. Local schools are currently training to be able to address these needs and parents are encouraged to spend time with their children and assist them in being more involved in school and after-school activities to help boost their self-esteem. omantic relationships among youth are another type of connection that needs to be monitored to ensure they are in a healthy relationship. Often young people bypass dating altogether and ‘hook-up’ long-term right away. Dating is important because it allows the teen to learn what they want in a partner. Setting an example of a healthy relationship for them is one way to promote healthy dating skills for a teenager. Parents can also help by talking to their teen about drugs, alcohol and safety as well as setting expectations. Putting curfews and rules in place as well as meeting their dates are also helpful ideas in encouraging smart choices. August Scalpcane is the director of Healing Hearts, a program that provides free and confidential support, advocacy, and referral services to survivors of rape, sexual assault, relationship violence and stalking. He warns teenagers to look for red flags such as verbal abuse, jealousy, and controlling behaviors right away in a relationship. “[Teens] think domestic violence is normal and it almost is a norm. It’s happening over and over.” Other warnings of an unhealthy relationship are isolation, blaming the partner for problems, hypersensitivity, breaking objects and threats. Parents should watch for teens in relationships where they are breaking up and reconciling over and over again. Gondara advises “It’s very important to know more about what the warning signs are, to educate yourself to see what’s going on with this issue so that we can prevent it. Step into intervene whenever that does happen. Be there for them whenever they’re having signs of crying out for help.”
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Dr. Eduardo Duran Stresses Finer Points of Healing Boys at St. Labre Indian School watch and listen attentively as Dr. Eduardo Duran speaks to them about martial arts during a talking circle. He describes lessons he learned in martial arts where an emphasis is placed on the development of the spiritual and philosophical development rather than on fighting. The kids pay close attention as he describes the value of “inner peace”, to be achieved through individual meditation and training and that the use of physical force is only justified through defense. He makes his point reaching the youth at their level. Dr. Duran is a clinical psychologist and author of “Native American Postcolonial Psychology”, “Healing the Soul Wound” and “Buddha in Redface”. Currently, he is drawing on more than two decades of clinical experience to provide guidance to Tribal Health’s Methamphetamine
and Suicide Prevention Initiative and ‘Honor Your Life’ Program counselors working with Northern Cheyenne people. His goal is to bring awareness to the root of many reservation problems which he believes derives from historical trauma or as he calls it, “soulwounding. Soul-wounding is the belief that the spirit is injured and Duran alcoholism, high mortality rates, abuse, diabetes and other problems shared by reservations across the nation are symptoms of this phenomenon. Dr. Duran takes a holistic approach to counseling by translating theory into actual day-to-day practice. He believes people must take a positive approach to
suicide prevention and that focusing on the negative only exacerbates the problem. He is helping Lame Deer’s suicide prevention programs to understand how to treat prevalent problems common to reservations including substance abuse, intergenerational trauma and internalized oppression. His approach is to translate western metaphor into indigenous ideas that make sense to Native people. This culture-specific approach has profound implications for all counseling and therapy, providing invaluable concepts and strategies that can be applied directly to the individual’s life. “I talked about this in Africa, to the tribal people there, and New Zealand, to the Māori people there and their understanding is very similar. I think that there is a tribal way of understanding the world.”