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WASHINGTON
More than 1,500 Native American youths from 275 tribes and 48 states across the country converged last week at the Renaissance hotel in Washington for the 2015 United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY) conference, which will continue through Tuesday.
Against a somber backdrop of rising rates of Native American youth suicides, first lady Michelle Obama hosted the White House event and delivered the keynote address. For many, the highlight of the trip had already come and gone with her speech.
“Whether it’s raising a beautiful family or taking on leadership in your community, we need you,” Obama said, her voice cracking slightly as she told the gathering they all have a destiny and a role to play.
A theme of survival echoed from Obama’s speech Friday morning.
“You’re here for a reason; you’re here for a purpose,” said Sleepy Eye LaFromboise of the Sisseton-Wopheton Dakota and Tonawanda Seneca tribes at the opening ceremony. “After all kinds of atrocities and obstacles, our people persevered, they strived, and they suffered, so that we can be here at the capital. We represent nations.”
For the nations of Indian Country, socioeconomic challenges abound. Rates of poverty, alcoholism and drug use and crime are all higher on Native American reservations. But with a suicide rate already 2.5 times higher than the national average, the disturbing trend of suicide clusters among Native American youths has placed more urgency on dealing with the issue.
The White House Tribal Youth Gathering is a part of Generation Indigenous (#GenI), a movement started by President Barack Obama and the first lady after they visited and spoke with youths in South Dakota, home to Pine Ridge and Rosebud – two of the poorest reservations in the country.
At a recent hearing on the suicide rate at the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, tribal leaders appealed to senators to honor a trust between the federal government and tribes that’s written into the Constitution by removing the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Services from the regular appropriations process.
They say programs in these departments for mental-health support and for the general infrastructure and economic development needed to stave off a sense of hopelessness on reservations should be fully and permanently funded and certainly not subject to sequestration.
But youths at the conference had more to add to the story. They acknowledge the lack of financial resources but also point to a cultural disconnect when discussing Native American suicide.
“The UNITY conference is life-changing for those who join,” said Alexander Toledo, a representative of the Southwest Native Youth Council.
Toledo is from the Pueblo tribe and didn’t become politically active until a UNITY conference took him out to the reservations of South Dakota. While he was there, an older man took his own life.
“That really opened my eyes,” he said. “Pueblo is a really culturally rich tribe. We don’t have many of the alcohol problems that so many experience.”
For Tsookie Holiday of the Navajo Nation in Round Rock, Arizona, the conference was a first. She and her sister Jessica Curley held Navajo taco sales to raise UNITY’s $200 membership dues.
“I overachieve a lot,” said Holiday, who graduated high school at 16 and at 19 already has her associate’s degree. She also has a 1-year-old daughter, Noelle.
“I feel like a lot of people are doing that because they are losing their way,” Holiday said about the suicides. “They have more access to the white man’s way with social media and ‘western’ entertainment and education. They don’t know their own language.”
Holiday said she does believe there are ways to balance western education and the Native American way.
“We’re Native first,” she said. “You have to be very passionate to make it work.”
Holiday also advises youths to pursue further education after high school instead of the seasonal jobs many take to support their families.
Both Toledo and Holiday are poster children for the Obama administration’s push to focus Native American education on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
Toledo is studying to be an aviation mechanic at a high school in Denver, and Holiday has already been accepted at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff to study electrical engineering.
Between the first White House Tribal Youth Gathering and the UNITY conference, Native youth leaders from across the country will spend five days in workshops sharing concerns such as the need for culturally responsive teaching with their peers and tribal and federal leaders.
They have already held discussions with the secretaries of the Interior and Housing and Urban Development, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the attorney general.
“I don’t see failure,” said Mary Kim Titla of the San Carlos Apache, sharing her own experience as a high school dropout with the young people crowding the hotel’s outdoor plaza. “I feel pride looking at all of you, looking at the future of Indian Country.”
mbaksh@durangoherald.com. Mariam Baksh is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.
