?According to Dr. Robert Chaney of the Southcentral Foundation, as of two years ago, Alaska Native youth, ages 18-29 were taking their lives at 19 times the national average for their age group. The amount of human suffering and heartbreak represented by that number is unimaginable; as stated by the Alaska Natives Commission in its 1994 Final Report, it is "startling and staggering in scope."
?It is risky, even wrong, to try to come up with a reason for any particular suicide, I believe it to be holy ground, where only God has the answers.
?Nonetheless, for purposes of understanding, healing, prevention and public policy, it is important that we try to understand the root causes of this epidemic of self-destruction that has overtaken the children of the Alaska Native people.
?I, for one, believe that the most vulnerable members of this generation have been caught up in the eye of spiritual, social, cultural and economic storm that was set in motion by historical forces and governmental policies of the last century.
?I believe that the seeds of shame and guilt were sown in the hearts of Alaska Natives during, and after, the devastating epidemics at the beginning of the last century by the Rev. Sheldon Jackson and his army of federally financed missionary-school teachers while "civilizing" and "converting" vulnerable and disoriented Alaska Native survivors, many of them orphans. Those seeds have come to full bloom in the hearts of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
?I believe that the Bureau of Indian Education's Wrangell Institute, which 3,000 Native children were forced to attend, some as young as 5 years old, succeeded in its campaign to shame the children away from their people, their cultures and their languages. Today's compromised and sick cultures, dying languages, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and suicide epidemics are measures of their tragic success.
?Yup'ik elder Kiunya of Kipnuk has said as much when he told tribal leaders that the suicide epidemic was a symptom of a dying culture -- "Yuu'yaa'raar'puut maana piun'rii'qaa'taar'tuuq," he said, "Our way of life is about to die."
?Then there is the poverty created by the confiscation of the most valuable lands and natural resources held and utilized by Alaska Natives, even fish, by federal and state governments, churches and individuals, which has resulted in the appearance of some of the poorest, economically deprived people, in the world -- the tribes and families of the young people who are now taking their own lives.
?Further, on Dec. 18, 1971, the U.S. Congress, ignoring history, applied the failed, inhumane policies of "termination" and "assimilation" one last time on Alaska Native people. It enacted the experimental Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act with Alaska's tribes the living experimental subjects. Failure in this ongoing experiment will be the loss of Native lands, and extinction of Alaska Native people.
?Through ANCSA, Congress "extinguished" the land titles held by Alaska's tribes, deeded their ancestral lands to state-chartered, for-profit corporations of its own making, and left the tribes themselves landless, impoverished, and hamstrung, without jurisdiction on which to exercise their much-needed powers as federally recognized American Indian tribes (Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie).
?Through ANCSA, Congress "extinguished" the cultural and economic foundation of Alaska's tribes by terminating their hunting and fishing rights, compromising their ability to feed their families and keep their cultures alive.
?ANCSA orphaned all generations of Alaska Native children not alive on Dec. 18,1971 (now amounting to 70 percent of living Alaska Natives) by severing their ties to their ancestral lands and by excluding them, in perpetuity, from receiving shares in the corporations into which it had poured their birthright and inheritance. ANCSA turned on its head the Native American axiom that "our lands do not belong to us, but to our unborn children."
?Lastly, Congress remade Alaska Natives in the image of corporate America. It turned them into "shareholders" of profit corporations of its own making, and with their ancestral lands as baggage, set them adrift, to sink or swim in the dog-eat-dog currents of international business. Hopefully, to stay float there till the end of time or perish.
?We cannot undo the epidemics, call back Sheldon Jackson's army, say that they made a mistake, tear down Wrangell Institute, give the Tongass back to the Tlingits and Prudhoe Bay back to the Inupiat. But we can amend ANCSA.
?We can restore the hunting and fishing rights of Alaska Natives so they can continue to feed their families and cultures honorably. We can enroll all Natives born after Dec. 18, 1971 into the appropriate corporations, make enlightened policy changes with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
?We can stop discriminating against Alaska Natives by pointedly excluding them from beneficial laws like the Violence Against Women Act, the Indian Law and Order Act, and returning to them the responsibility of educating their children and enacting, enforcing and adjudicating their own laws.
?The Congress can also move to prevent tragedies before they happen like designating lands secured through ANCSA as Indian Country under the jurisdiction of the tribes that selected them (as recommended by the Indian Law and Order Commission) and placing them in trust so that Alaska Natives never become homeless -- the ultimate tragedy that can yet be avoided.
?The solution has to include a concerted federal, state and Alaska Native effort to implement policy changes along the lines recommended by the Alaska Natives Commission in its 1994 Final Report. None of them have been implemented after an initial sincere but failed effort by the late Sen. Ted Stevens and Alaska Federation of Natives.
?That effort, represented by legislation drafted by AFN, Rep. Don Young and the late senator's office, entitled the Alaska Native Omnibus Bill, should be dusted off, and the most promising sections introduced in the new Congress as an Alaska Native Restoration Act.
?Such an act would right historical wrongs, prevent tragedies before they happen, and bring hope to Alaska Native people. It would also go a long way toward restoring the good name of the United States and the state of Alaska in the treatment of their Native people.
?Lastly, members of this generation of Alaska Natives have to fight -- for their creator, for justice, for their ancestors, their children, their nation and their state. They must compel their governments to do the right thing by them. Their very survival, their existence, depends on it. They must fight to end the Trail of Tears here, or perish.
?The substance abuse, domestic violence and suicide epidemic took several generations to take root and bloom in the hearts of Alaska Native people, and in the end, it is the Native people who will have to end it.
?Armed with the truth and love, guided by their new-found faith, also brought to them by the very same missionaries who inadvertently planted the seeds of self-destruction in the hearts of their fathers, they will have to patiently love and forgive their way back to health again.
?Should they do so, they will end the long night of our suffering, sanctify the sacrifice of human life that has been offered, and engender "a new birth of freedom" in the hearts of the Alaska Native people who have not known it for the last 200 years of virtual slavery.
Harold Napoleon, Cung'au'ya'raq, is the author of "Yuuyaraq, the Way of the Human Being," and a co-author of "Does One Way of Life Have to Die so Another Can Live," and the "Alaska Natives Commission Final Report, Vol. 1." For the last seven years he has been working with other tribal leaders and elders through the Alaska Tribal Leaders Summit to effect the changes he is proposing here.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.