Suicide among the descendants of the First Peoples of nations with relatively recent colonial oppressor histories has reached humanitarian crisis levels with arguably the Australian experience the worst. The sense of hopelessness among descendants of First Peoples in middle and high income nations such as Australia, Canada and the United States has reached catastrophic crisis levels. But it is nothing new, only that at long last the fact of the suicides is being covered by the mainstream media.
The crisis is the world over, from the Guarani people of the Brazilian Amazon to the Lakota Indians, to the Attawapiskat people of Ontario. The sense of hopelessness is not just among young adults but is washing through to children – suicides of children aged 9, 10, 11 and 12.
Last week, journalist Ian Austen of The New York Times reported that since September, 101 Attawapiskat had attempted suicide. The Attawapiskat community has around 2,000 residents. In eight months five per cent of the population attempted suicide. On the Saturday of April 8, there were eleven suicides in the community. Last September, a 13-year-old girl took her life.
In Australia, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, the divide between the descendants of the continent’s First Peoples and the rest of the population is wider than anywhere else in the world. Where five per cent of Attawapiskat people attempted suicide during an eight month period, and on an annual basis on that trend that translate to around 7.5 per cent, in Australia, over five per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths are registered as suicides. One in 19 of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths are accounted as suicide. However, many believe the suicide rate is higher and I estimate that it is between one in 10 to one in 12. There are under-reporting issues. All these statistics are staggering and the statistical narrative is important because in the end these numbers are people. The statistical narrative describes a crisis that is appallingly extensive and that suicidal ideation is pernicious. The narrative is a damning indictment of the Australian nation.
Suicide is the leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders aged 15 to 35 years. Nearly one in three deaths within this age group is suicide. The highest risk group are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in their twenties. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 14 years and less, suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death – at nine times the suicide rate of non-Aboriginal children.
The Attawapiskat community has declared a state of emergency. Canada’s parliamentarians are speaking to the crisis. Austen quoted Nishnawbe Aski Nation chief, Alvin Fiddler, “You see right across the territory a lack of proper housing, a lack of proper health care, the lack of access to clean drinking water.” Fiddler said of the emergency call, “I hope it gets the governments to react.” But it is not the first time that a state of emergency has been declared in a Canadian First Nations community. What occurs is that governments do not actually listen. This is what has been happening right around the world in nations with relative recent colonial oppressor histories – they have sat idly by as the sense of hopelessness increases, as the suicide numbers increase each year. Australia is a case in hand.
In Australia, the suicides have continued in a tragic upward trend for more than a decade. For every suicide there are at least a score or more attempted suicides. Where between five to ten per cent of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders take their lives, it is reasonable to estimate that at least one in four ideate suicide.
One in four of Australia’s homeless are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. One in nine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living have been to prison – in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, it is one in six. The issues that predispose people to a sense of hopelessness are intertwined.
A Canadian parliamentarian, Charlie Angus said, “Unfortunately, suicide attempts are quite prevalent in many of our communities.”
“I’ve lost count of the states of emergency.”
We have all lost count of the inaction of governments – not just in Canada but in Australia, in the United States, in many nations with recent colonial oppressor histories. This is genocide in the strict definition of the systematic destruction of peoples. In Australia, there is once again chatter in our parliaments but if we refer to the track record nothing good will eventuate – just a betrayal of expectations for those who choose to hold out hope.
The Attawapiskat community is only 100 kilometres from an open pit diamond mine. But the Attawapiskat people remain corralled in grinding poverty. This is a theme the world over. In Australia, we have the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander regional and remote communities in proximity or living alongside of affluence. Mining companies reap the resources of the lands that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities call home but ever so little is returned holistically to the communities. There is no equality. Racialised economic inequalities prevail.
In a Western Australian community in the Kimberley in March, international media paid attention after the suicide of a 10-year-old girl. The media attention spawned a flurry of responders and mental health workers. The government felt it had to be seen to be doing something. After the state of emergency in Attawapiskat, the government of Ontario, as did the Western Australian government, flurried mental health workers and responders. But the problems facing Attawapiskat and the Kimberley remain after the health workers leave.
There are no words imaginable to describe the loss of a 10-year-old child to suicide, or for that matter of an 11-year-old, 12-year-old, 13-year-old, of any child. We were not put on this earth to bury our children, but tragically it happens. I have often despaired at the sense of hopelessness that many young people feel. Recently, I was in a large regional community where we buried three young people in five days, the youngest a 15-year-old girl, and another was 17. Their graves in a row, an image bent into my memory that will never leave me. I wailed on the inside, that each of these young ones surrendered more than a half century of potential life years.
The contributing factors are multifactorial and intertwined however, they are underwritten by acute poverty, disadvantage and marginalisation the like that should make no sense in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. The majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander regional communities are denied an equivalency of social infrastructure and services and opportunity that regional non-Aboriginal communities enjoy. This denial of the suite of infrastructure and services that the non-Aboriginal communities enjoy as a natural right translates toxically as racism. Racism has many veils and layers and indeed this incongruous disparity is racism. How are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people supposed to navigate their cultural settings – that of their own and that of mainstream Australia – when they are denied the instruments needed?
Understanding difference and unfairness dished out to the descendants of the First Peoples in nations with recent colonial oppressor histories is a first step in suicide prevention. The high rates of suicide are founded in the sense of hopelessness and in the resistance to one-stop-shop assimilation, in the powerlessness and in its chronic pain and trauma. Situational trauma as a constant narrative degenerates to multiple and composite trauma, and for many ruins lives with aggressive complex traumas.
Suicide prevention should not be focused alone on reducing risk factors, but just as focused, if not more so, on increasing protective factors. The point is that suicides, the leading cause of violent deaths, are the most preventable violence. We cannot continue to hide in silences and dangerously internalise this tragedy. This humanitarian crisis needs to translate from a pressing issue to national priority. There is no greater legacy than to improve the lot of others, to the point of changing lives, saving lives.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child suicides are on the increase but childhood is a protective factor. The high rates of suicidal ideation, high levels of psychological distresses and acute depressions among these children play out dangerously as they leave behind whatever protective factors there were in their otherwise train wreck childhoods. Once they get to their twenties life becomes an accumulation of life stresses and family building they need to navigate. The twenty-something-year-olds are the most vulnerable and the majority of the suicides.
The Canadian landscape has moved on from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He appears to be listening but we will find out if his government will actually listen and bring on the equality. Time will soon tell. With the Australian political landscape, I am despairing. I do not know what it will take to get governments to actually listen. One government after another has failed so many people, failed so many children, failed in advance generations unborn. These governments are indeed responsible for filling the prisons with the most marginalised and they are responsible for one in four Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders ideating suicide. They are responsible for the one in ten taking their lives. Silence and inaction continue to make certain the lot of generations unborn. What does this say about the Australian nation?
– Gerry Georgatos is a suicide prevention researcher and campaigner, a human rights advocate with the Institute of Social Justice and Human Rights
Lifeline’s 24-hour hotline, 13 11 14
Crisis Support and Suicide Prevention Beyond Blue – 1300 22 4636
Listen to: ABC interview with journalist Nadine Maloney – spreading the love
Other articles and media on the extensiveness of suicides and on suicide prevention by Gerry Georgatos:
Black led, Black owned conference
Three youth suicides, buried next to each other – we were not put on this earth to bury our children
From my father’s death bed to the must-do to end the suicides | The Stringer
Risk of death high after release from prison
Child suicides higher than reported
40 million life years lost to suicide
Hidden truths – it is worse, not better
Some want to portray things on the improve
Suicide in people numbers instead of comparative rates Oppression is the cause of the majority of the suicides
It is not a competition but suicide is the leading cause of death
Do not play with peoples’ lives
Catastrophic suicide crisis will escalate “unless”…
One in ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been to jail
An eleven year old suicides – nine months later his mother takes her life
Understanding the abominable jail and suicide rates
The issue of our time – 1 in 3 deaths by suicide
When the right people lead then lives will be saved
Truth, not lies on Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention rates
A moral abomination – a narrative that is racialised; of human suffering and misery
Plato said engage with our politicians or risk being governed by the dumb – the suicide crises
Another misguided reductionist plan to reduce rates of suicide self-harm
The leading cause of death – for 15 to 44 year old Australians – is suicide | The Stringer
People strengthening people focus on suicide prevention
Understanding difference and unfairness is a first step in suicide prevention | The Stringer
Taboo, stigma and shame need to get out of the way for suicide prevention | The Stringer
Suicide is heading to a humanitarian crisis – it is a leading cause of death | The Stringer
Suicides are preventable – here is what we must begin to do | The Stringer
The extensiveness of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander suicides – 1 in 20 | The Stringer
Preventing suicide – “no greater legacy” | The Stringer
Understanding Australia’s suicide crises
Shame job Australia – they came through the gate with my boy’s body
Suicides, high among overseas born and second generation Australians
Child suicidal ideation on the increase
It is racism killing our people – suicides born of racism
Kimberley suicide rate – one of the world’s highest – Yiriman is the way to go
My Country – But look how I am forced to live
What will it take to end Aboriginal disadvantage, the inequalities and the various crises?
What sort of Australia is this? Seven homeless children in an asbestos slum
Six homeless children fighting for a better tomorrow
Quality of life for Australians 2nd only to Norway but for Aboriginal Peoples 122nd
Dumbartung convenes suicide crisis summit
Suicide attempts among women on the rise
Australia’s Aboriginal children detained at the world’s highest rates
Culture should not be denied – change needs unfolding, not impost
Everyone in the Territory doing well, except for Aboriginal Peoples
Australia’s Aboriginal children, the world’s highest suicide rate
Wes Morris slams government suicide prevention programs
How many more suicides will it take? How many more deaths?
Hopelessness in suicide riddled communities
More government neglect of Aboriginal children
In identity lay the answers – ATSI suicides
$25.4 billion spent on Aboriginal disadvantage is a lie
Beagle Bay to State Parliament – Farrer speaks out on suicides
Government to address Aboriginal suicides
996 Aboriginal deaths by suicide – another shameful Australian record
996 deaths by suicide – one in 24 die by suicide
Australia’s Aboriginal suicide epidemic – whose child will be the next to die?
77 Aboriginal suicides in South Australia alone
Kimberley’s Aboriginal peoples old at 45 years
Australia, the mother of all jailers of Aboriginal people
Tumult of death – 400 suicides in last three years
30 suicides in the last three months as we wait for promises to be kept
Suicide crisis – genocidal numbers
Suicide crisis – from tragic to catastrophic
Suicide crisis needs real funding and actions
Hundreds more will suicide if we wait for 2015
Nothing will be done about suicides crisis
Elders across Australia say governments need to listen to them on how to address youth suicide
Suicides – western society and ancient cultures clash
If we are serious about suicide prevention
Australia’s suicide crisis should not be played down – the media must highlight it
From my father’s death bed to the must-do to end the suicides
Governments promise on ending suicides must come good now
More confirmation of what everyone knows, was suicide prevention inadequate
The must-do need to listen and trust if suicides crisis is to end
Working together – mental health and suicide prevention roundtable
Break the taboo around suicides, we reduce suicides
Suicide crises born of Australia’s inhumanity
Suicides crisis linked to incarceration
Wes Morris urges funding for cultural methodologies
The betrayal of our children – the Northern Territory
New project offers hope to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides
Depression and suicide prevention must be top of the agenda this century
World Suicide Prevention Day – suicide takes more lives than war
Western Australia – 1 in 13 in a jail, a bullshit state of affairs
Yiriman saving lives in the midst of the Kimberley’s suicide crises
The smaller a community, the less likely a suicide
Overcoming disadvantage report shows disadvantage not overcome
600 Black deaths in custody by 2025 – jail numbers to soar
Get out of the way – Aboriginal suicide rates will drop
A nation shamed when the solution for its children is homelessness
Christmas, a period of vulnerability for many
Stop peddling lies $30 billion spent on Indigenous disadvantage is a lie
To end our trauma government must stop the assault on our people and our culture
In Australia there is the Aboriginal rights struggle
Kirstie Parker, Mick Gooda say enough of fine words – close the gap a big fat lie
Highest child removal rates in the world worse than Stolen Generations
Stop examining the oppressed – instead examine the oppressor
CAAMA Radio – Speaking out on Aboriginal suicide
CAAMA Radio – We need to be there for them
ABC News Breakfast – Suicide prevention – Christmas period a vulnerable time
Gerry is on the mark and he nails it again. If this crisis can’t generate a royal commission then I fear our nation’s values need to be visited. The statistics tell it all. Thanks Gerry for all your work. I would like to take this opportunity to thank both Jennifer and Gerry for their superhuman compassion and generosity of spirit in the many good things they do and good things they inspire others to do. You two are rare and you make a believer of me in the good in people with all you do for the homeless, for everyone. I am an old man and in all my years I have never encountered two more inspiring individuals than you two.
Roy