“Togetherness:” the role of intergenerational and cultural engagement in urban American Indian and Alaskan Native youth suicide prevention

In this essay, an indigenous scholar traces his thinking on how best to reveal the layers of knowledge encoded in American Indian thought in terms that can be understood by non-Native peoples. Recently, resilience theory, which seeks to understand the source and role of change, particularly the kinds of change that are transforming, lead to adaptive systems, and are sustainable, seems best suited for this task. Enrique Salmón reflects on the various ecological and sustainable innovations that contemporary American Indian communities are initiating that are helping them to remain resilient as well as the important lessons that others can draw from that can have significant impacts on the practices that can help to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruptions, landscapes, and ecosystems. Among human communities, resilience results from periodic episodes when cultural capital has been built up. This cultural capital, the author explains, consists of indigenous people who still speak the language, the storytellers, the ritual singers, the farmers, and the wise elders, but also Native youth working to reorganize and develop new methods and practices based on centuries-old traditions that can be used to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge.

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Strengths-Based Assessment for Suicide Prevention: Reasons for Life as a Protective Factor From Yup’ik Alaska Native Youth Suicide

Assessment ◽

10.1177/1073191119875789 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 107319111987578 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

James Allen ◽

Stacy M. Rasmus ◽

Carlotta Ching Ting Fok ◽

Billy Charles ◽

Joseph Trimble ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Protective Factors ◽

American Indian ◽

Suicide Prevention ◽

Cause Of Death ◽

Alaska Native ◽

Suicide Risk ◽

Protective Factor ◽

Well Being ◽

Health Crisis ◽

Native Youth

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native youth, and within the Alaska Native youth subpopulation, the leading cause of death. In response to this public health crisis, American Indian and Alaska Native communities have created strategies to protect their young people by building resilience using localized Indigenous well-being frameworks and cultural strengths. These approaches to suicide prevention emphasize promotion of protective factors over risk reduction. A measure of culturally based protective factors from suicide risk has potential to assess outcomes from these strengths-based, culturally grounded suicide prevention efforts, and can potentially address several substantive concerns regarding direct assessment of suicide risk. We report on the Reasons for Life (RFL) scale, a measure of protective factors from suicide, testing psychometric properties including internal structure with 302 rural Alaska Native Yup’ik youth. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed the RFL is best described through three distinct first-order factors organized under one higher second-order factor. Item response theory analyses identified 11 satisfactorily functioning items. The RFL correlates with other measures of more general protective factors. Implications of these findings are described, including generalizability to other American Indian and Alaska Native, other Indigenous, and other culturally distinct suicide disparities groups.

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