Dr Michael Trujillo's 1997 Policy Initiative on American Indian Children and Adolescents

Dr. Michael Trujillo suggested to the Working group on American Indians and Alaska Natives of the Domestic Policy Council of President Clinton on April 8, 1997 that the administration could focus on a policy initiative for Indian Children and Adolescents. This initiative was proposed at the same time as the “Proposed Federal Indian Education Policy Statement presented by NIEA was being considered by the same group and discussions ultimately lead to the development of an Executive order on American Indian and Alaska Native Education. At the time I was involved in these discussions and remember that the initiative on Indian children and adolecents was dropped in favor of focusing on the development of an Executive order on American Indian and Alaska Native education. I think many at the time believed that the education executive order would also focus on the well being of Indian children and youth but such a focus on the well being of American Indian and Alaska Native children and youth did not materialize. DB

Policy Initiative for Indian* Children and Adolescents
Working Group on American Indian and Alaska Natives Domestic Policy Council (DPC)
Proposed by the Indian Health Service, DHHS

Why This Policy Issue is Important
• Indian Children are the Future of Indian Communities
• Suicide rates for Indian Children and Adolescents are more than twice the rate for these age groups in the general population. Epidemics of suicides and suicide attempts continue to occur in Indian communities
• The Incidence of physical and sexual abuse of Indian children is high in Indian Communities. PL 101-630 authorizes prevention services and treatment for Indian Children who are victims of sexual abuse. However, funds have never been appropriated to provide these services. Few tribes have child abuse treatment or prevention programs
• Substance abuse rates are very high among Indian Youth
• Concern has been expressed in many Indian communities about youth who are involved in criminal behavior, cults and gangs
• A presidential memorandum asking for information about projects and programs for children in their earliest years (before they reach school age) and directing the establishment of a senior level interagency working group to share, examine and develop these assessments and proposal, was signed February 24, 1997. The initiative proposed today would extend coordinated federal support for programs for Indian Children and adolescents until they reach young adulthood

What Can Be Accomplished by The Working Group
• A presidential memorandum or Executive order can be developed to focus resources within the scope and mission of each federal agency to improve the quality of life for Indian children and support their healthy development through childhood and adolescence
• Information on the problems faced by Indian Children can be widely shared so that Federal agencies can better be prepared to assist Indian communities
• New or enhanced collaborative initiatives to address these issues can be developed
• Persons with Specialized skills can be identified for technical assistance
• Other resources including foundation support, can be developed and made available to tribes to support the healthy development of Indian children and adolescents
How the Policy Initiative Will Strengthen Polices Toward Tribes and Interagency Coordination
• The Policy Initiative will focus the resources of the Executive Branch, within the scope of each agency’s mission, on the needs of Indian children and adolescents, helping them to become healthy adults, prepared to contribute to their communities
• The policy initiative will ensure that Agencies operate within a government to government relationship with tribes , consulting them for the development of plans, project, programs and activities and removing procedural impediments
• The policy initiative will respects tribal sovereignty by ensuring that tribal use of the resources developed is voluntary and that resources are responsive to the needs and culture of each tribe

Initiative Leadership
• The Initiative would be chaired by Dr Michael H Trujillo, Director HIS, HHS. Working group members for the departments of Interior, education and Justice would be invited to serve as co-chairs and the participation of all departments would be invited
*“Indian” includes American Indian and Alaska Natives

OVERSIGHT HEARING to examine the increase of gang activity in Indian country

The Hearing was held Thursday, July 30, 2009 2:15 PM SD - 62
http://indian.senate.gov/public/

Witnesses
THE HONORABLE JOHN MOUSSEAU
Tribal Council, Chairman-Tribal judicial Council, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge, South Dakota
THE HONORABLE BRIAN NISSEN
Tribal Council, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Nespelem, Washington
MR. SAMPSON COWBOY
Director, Department of Public Safety, Navajo Nation, Window Rock, Arizona
MR. CARMEN SMITH
Chief of Police, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Warm Springs, Oregon


Testimony of Hermis John Mousseau Oglala Sioux Tribe July 30, 2009

Good Afternoon Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: My name is Hermis John Mousseau and I am a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council. I am also the Chairman of our Tribal Judiciary Committee, a former Oglala Sioux Tribal Police Officer and a former Oglala Chief of Police. Thank you for allowing me to present testimony on the gang problems which are today endangering lives in my tribal community. Mr. Chairman, this issue is very personal for me because in 2003 I was wounded in the line of duty by a tribal gang member when I was called to address a domestic disturbance. During that incident, I was forced to shoot that individual and memories like that stay with you forever. Violent crime is increasing on our reservation every day. Just this past weekend, we had a stabbing, a shooting, and a person brutally attacked by a gang member. A week before that, on July 12th, one of our female officers was brutally attacked by a gang member when she attempted to arrest him, and she was forced to shoot that individual in order to save her own life. Now we have blogs, gang tags and open talk in our gang communities threatening the life of that officer and she and her immediate family have had to go into hiding. This same female officer had her arm broken a year before when she attempted to arrest another known gang member for another domestic disturbance and that heroic officer has gone through all of this for a salary of about $35,000 a year with no health benefits and no police retirement. While our police department lacks the resources necessary to track all gang-related activity on our reservation, we have identified at least 39 gangs operating in our community of 50,000, and we have logged 8,816 gang-related calls in FY 2008. That is up from the 7,721 gang-related calls that we were able to log in FY 2006. These calls range from simple assaults and burglaries, to life threatening fights and gun related charges. Each one of these calls endangers the officer who responds, and each one of these calls means that another member of our community has been a victim of some type of gang related activity. We have included for your information a chart of our gang related offenses for calendar years 2006-2008. We have also included a youth survey which was done by one of our consultants in April and May of this year. The participants in that survey were 1137 students in our on-reservation schools. The results of that survey revealed that 55% of those students surveyed reported being a victim of gang related activity, 72% reported having been threatened personally by a gang or gang member, and only 65% reported that they felt safe from gang activity at school. Only 35% of those surveyed said that they felt safe from gang related activity in their own immediate community. So anyone that says that gang activitydoes not impact educational advancement is very wrong.Gang activity started on our reservation because our young people were unhappy, powerless and bored. The joblessness and poverty on Pine Ridge has led far too many of our people towards alcohol and drugs, and because we have no adequately funded programs or residential treatment facilities to address this alcoholism and drug problem, we have a large number of minors who live in alcoholic families and simply do not want to go home. This coupled with our lack of after school programs, youth recreation centers and youth employment monies has left many of our young people receptive to gang life . For young people who have never had a $20 bill to spend, the promise of easy money for stealing a few items and selling a few drugs has been hard for many of our teenagers to resist. Now, we have families who have three generations of gang members in their homes. Over time, as drugs have become more common, our gangs have become more brazen and fights over territory and drug sales has escalated. Today, we have gangs being formed just to protect their members from other gangs, and to allow their members to move freely across our reservation without fear of attack or intimidation. We also have gangs which were formed just to keep watch out for the police, so people could smoke a little dope and get drunk without the threat of arrest or attack from another gang. In the past few years, we have seen more outside law breakers moving on to our reservation. It is not unusual to see a male Mexican national “falling in love” with one of our female tribal members and before long he is selling drugs out of her on-reservation home. Drugs are coming in every day from Minneapolis and Denver, and now from Omaha. Large urban based gangs such as Texas Syndicate, Indian Mafia, Native Mob, MS-13, and Surenios affiliated gangs now have members appearing on our reservation. To add to our fears, the Hells Angels biker gang has recently bought a bar in Scenic, South Dakota less than 20 miles away from our reservation border. Another biker gang affiliated with the Bandidos has been recruiting and they now have a base of operations in of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Drug trafficking on the western side of our reservation relates mostly to marijuana and cocaine, but meth use is increasing every day. Because of the remoteness of our reservation, its centralized location in the United States, its jurisdictional complexities, and its lack of police manpower, we have become a prime target area for gang related crime and drug trafficking. But here are most telling statistics: 50,000+ people, a land base the size of Rhode Island, 39 gangs and 12 police officers per shift- if no one is sick or on injured reserve. At Pine Ridge, we receive approximately 73,000 calls for police service each year. That is about 6,083 calls per month. We are forced to answer those calls with 48 police officers. Now 48 police officers divided by 4 shifts equates to 12 officers per shift. That means that each officer has to respond to 506 calls per month. That is not manageable for a police officer in an urban area where the call is a few blocks away, but it is impossible for us because most of our calls are 50 or 60 miles apart. As a result, we have a sizable number of calls that simply go unanswered and when our officers can respond, our response time generally runs around 1 hour, for even the most serious acts of violence. That means by the time we respond, the activity is generally over and the perpetrators have left the scene. The office responding would like to investigate what happened and arrest the people involved, but by that time he or she generally has another two or three calls backed up and has to leave to try to help someone else. To make matters worse, all of our police officers have to work alone and backup is generally at least 40 minutes away. We have single officers walking alone into parties with 20 or more intoxicated or drugged out individuals, often with gang affiliations, or with a subject banishing a deadly weapon and they know going in that they are completely on their own. Mr. Chairman, while we appreciate very much all that you are trying to do to increase the BIA law enforcement budget, I must respectfully tell you that it is simply not enough. Of the increase proposed in 2010, we at Pine Ridge are hearing that we will only get an increase of around $125,000, and while we appreciate that very much, $125,000 to address 8,816 or more incidents of gang violence, plus our 65,000 regular calls, does not go very far. It does not even give us one more officer per shift. Forgive me for speaking this bluntly, but the simple truth is we need more officers and we need them now! We have 5,000 gang members, but we also have 45,000 scared law abiding people whose lives I have sworn to protect. Please help me in anyway that you can to accomplish that goal. We need more personnel to provide youth based prevention activities in and after school. And we need more investigators to review and investigate cases at the tribal level. We also need more officers to respond to these calls and merely to prevent the burnout of our current officers. Finally, we need more staff in internal affairs to ensure that our citizen complaints are handled in a timely manner. I would like to ask our housing authority director, Mr. Paul Iron Cloud, to speak for just a bit about the impact that these gangs are having on the daily lives of our children, elders and families and our property. Thank you again for this opportunity to speak to you about these very serious issues. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

New York Times Article-Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/us/14gangs.html?emc=eta1

New York Times
December 14, 2009
Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation
By ERIK ECKHOLM
PINE RIDGE, S.D. — Richard Wilson has been a pallbearer for at least five of his “homeboys” in the North Side Tre Tre Gangster Crips, a Sioux imitation of a notorious Denver gang.

One 15-year-old member was mauled by rivals. A 17-year-old shot himself; another, on a cocaine binge and firing wildly, was shot by the police. One died in a drunken car wreck, and another, a founder of the gang named Gaylord, was stabbed to death at 27.

“We all got drunk after Gaylord’s burial, and I started rapping,” said Mr. Wilson, who, at 24, is practically a gang elder. “But I teared up and couldn’t finish.”

Mr. Wilson is one of 5,000 young men from the Oglala Sioux tribe involved with at least 39 gangs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The gangs are being blamed for an increase in vandalism, theft, violence and fear that is altering the texture of life here and in other parts of American Indian territory.

This stunning land of crumpled prairie, horse pastures turned tawny in the autumn and sunflower farms is marred by an astonishing number of roadside crosses and gang tags sprayed on houses, stores and abandoned buildings, giving rural Indian communities an inner-city look.

Groups like Wild Boyz, TBZ, Nomads and Indian Mafia draw children from broken, alcohol-ravaged homes, like Mr. Wilson’s, offering brotherhood, an identity drawn from urban gangsta rap and self-protection.

Some groups have more than a hundred members, others just a couple of dozen. Compared with their urban models, they are more likely to fight rivals, usually over some minor slight, with fists or clubs than with semiautomatic pistols.

Mr. Wilson, an unemployed school dropout who lives with assorted siblings and partners in his mother’s ramshackle house, without running water, displayed a scar on his nose and one over his eye. “It’s just like living in a ghetto,” he said. “Someone’s getting beat up every other night.”

The Justice Department distinguishes the home-grown gangs on reservations from the organized drug gangs of urban areas, calling them part of an overall juvenile crime problem in Indian country that is abetted by eroding law enforcement, a paucity of juvenile programs and a suicide rate for Indian youth that is more than three times the national average.

If they lack the reach of the larger gangs after which they style themselves, the Indian gangs have emerged as one more destructive force in some of the country’s poorest and most neglected places.

While many crimes go unreported, the police on the Pine Ridge reservation have documented thousands of gang-related thefts, assaults — including sexual assaults — and rising property crime over the last three years, along with four murders. Residents are increasingly fearful that their homes will be burglarized or vandalized. Car windows are routinely smashed out.

“Tenants are calling in and saying ‘I’m scared,’ ” Paul Iron Cloud, executive officer of the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Housing Authority, told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in July at a special hearing on the increase of gang activity.

“It seems that every day we’re getting more violence,” Mr. Iron Cloud said.

Perhaps unique to reservations, rivals sometimes pelt one other with cans of food from the federal commodity program, a practice called “commod-squadding.”

As federal grants to Pine Ridge have declined over the last decade, the tribal police force has shrunk by more than half, with only 12 to 20 officers per shift patrolling an area the size of Rhode Island, said John Mousseau, chairman of the tribe’s judiciary committee.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has proposed large increases in money for the police, courts and juvenile programs, and for fighting rampant domestic and sexual violence on reservations.

Christopher M. Grant, who used to head a police antigang unit in Rapid City, S.D., and is now a consultant on gangs to several tribes and federal agencies, has noted the “marked increase in gang activity, particularly on reservations in the Midwest, the Northwest and the Southwest” over the last five to seven years.

The Navajo Nation in Arizona, for example, has identified 225 gang units, up from 75 in 1997.

One group that reaches across reservations in Minnesota, called the Native Mob, is more like the street gangs seen in cities, with hierarchical leadership and involvement in drug and weapons trafficking, Mr. Grant said.

Many of the gangs in Pine Ridge, like the Tre Tre Crips, were started by tribal members who encountered them in prison or while living off the reservation; others have taken their names and colors from movies and records.

Even as they seek to bolster policing, Pine Ridge leaders see their best long-term hope for fighting gangs in cultural revival.

“We’re trying to give an identity back to our youth,” said Melvyn Young Bear, the tribe’s appointed cultural liaison. “They’re into the subculture of African-Americans and Latinos. But they are Lakota, and they have a lot to be proud of.”

Mr. Young Bear, 42, is charged with promoting Lakota rituals, including drumming, chanting and sun dances. He noted that some Head Start programs were now conducted entirely in Lakota.

Michael Little Boy Jr., 30, of the village of Evergreen, said he had initially been tempted by gang life, but with rituals and purifying sweat lodges, “I was able to turn myself around.” He is emerging as a tribal spiritual leader, working with youth groups to promote native traditions.

Mr. Grant said a survey of young men in South Dakota reservations found that the approach might be helping.

Mr. Wilson, the 24-year-old gang member, said he regretted not learning the Sioux language when he was young and now wondered about his own future.

“I still get drunk and hang with my homeboys, but not like I used to,” he said.

His car, its windows shattered, sits outside his house, so he cannot get to the G.E.D. class he says he would like to attend. His goal is to run a recording studio where his younger half-brother, Richard Lame, 18, could make rap songs. Mr. Lame is finishing high school and says he wants to go to college.

But he admits that he still joined 30 or so homeboys in town to party any chance he got — “for the rush, the thrill.” As he spoke, he was dressed in the dark colors of his set, the Black Wall Street Boyz; his tiny bedroom was decorated with movie posters of Al Pacino as the megalomaniacal drug dealer Tony Montana in “Scarface,” and he wore a black bandanna.

He pulled out a thick sheaf of his rap lyrics and gave an impromptu performance.

Ever since birth

I been waitin’ for death ...

Addressing Youth Suicide in Indian Country

The National Indian Child Welfare Association a partner with other National American Indian Organization in the Native American Children's agenda posted the following announcement on it Web site regarding a Youth Suicde prevention tool Kit which can be downloaded as a PDF at their site
http://www.nicwa.org/YouthSuicidePreventionToolkit


February 19, 2009
The National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) is actively working to respond to the high rates of youth suicide in Indian Country. Children who experience abuse and neglect are at higher risk for depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts according to the Center for Disease Control (2007). With suicide rates rising in Indian communities and the presence of high suicide risk factors, AI/AN youth in the child welfare system are particularly vulnerable. Children living in tribal communities are also unlikely to have access to culturally competent mental health services that will meet their needs to address the severe risks of suicide.
Nationally, an estimated 900,000 youth had made a plan to commit suicide during their worst or most recent episode of major depression, and 712,000 attempted suicide during such an episode. The date are from SAMHSA's National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which asked youth ages 12-17 about symptoms of depression including thoughts about death or suicide.
NICWA is focused on the needs of American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth in the child welfare system that are at risk for suicide by increasing awareness and providing technical assistance to tribal communities to implement comprehensive and culturally responsive mental health services. NICWA, National Congress of American Indians, One Sky, and other national partners worked together to host the 'American Indian and Alaska Native Summit on Suicide Prevention, Intervention, and Healing' in Temecula, CA September 2007. Seven tribal delegations, representing both tribal and urban Indian communities participated in workshops and presentations designed to enhance a policy initiative related to youth suicide prevention aimed at supporting long-term and effective change. Two tribal delegations at the Summit were awarded the Garrett Lee Smith Grant August 20, 2008.
NICWA was funded by the American Legion Child Welfare Foundation, Inc. to develop and disseminate the 'Ensuring the Seventh Generation: Youth Suicide Prevention Toolkit' for child welfare and mental health programs focused on victims of abuse, children in out-of-home care, and witnesses of violence. The toolkit is to educate tribal child welfare workers of the warning signs of suicide, risk and protective factors, suicide prevention and intervention methods, and when such workers should seek professional mental health services. 300 copies will be made available to tribal child welfare programs across the country and accessible at http://www.nicwa.org/YouthSuicidePreventionToolkit

Access to mental health services is significantly important to address the concerns of youth suicide. NICWA is the primary technical assistance provider for the tribal Systems of Care and Circles of Care grantees of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Since 1999, NICWA has successfully provided technical assistance to 49 funded tribal communities. Currently, NICWA provides technical assistance to a total of eight Systems of Care grantees implementing children's mental health initiatives in their community. NICWA is providing technical assistance to eight Circles of Care grantees to planning a service delivery model for mental health services

OST President Two Bulls declares an emergencyFaced with rash of suicides

Mary Garrigan Journal staff Posted: Friday, December 11, 2009 7:00 am

In an emotional appeal to the people of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Theresa Two Bulls declared a state of emergency Thursday in the face of overwhelming numbers of suicides and suicide attempts on South Dakota's largest reservation.
Between October 2008 and August 2009, the OST Public Safety Department responded to 96 suicide attempts or completions, Two Bulls said. Since September, there have been a rash of teen suicides on Pine Ridge. During November, the OST ambulance service responded to 17 suicide-related calls.
One of them was the death of a Pine Ridge High School student who hanged himself last week. On Thursday, a contingent of the teen's classmates were present for Two Bull's proclamation on the same day friends and family buried the boy and "sent him into the spirit world," Two Bulls said. "In our culture, we say children are sacred. Instead of just saying it, we need action now."
Specifics about OST's suicide prevention plans weren't revealed Thursday, except that Two Bulls mandated that Indian Health Services and all OST programs assist the Sweetgrass Project, OST's suicide prevention program, "to the fullest extent of their services."
She also called for schools and youth centers on the reservation to develop an action plan to keep gymnasiums and recreation centers open and available to youths on weekends and other "down times."
The state of emergency declaration was broadcast live throughout the reservation by KILI Radio.
"We can no longer have numbers like that," Sweetgrass Project director Carol O'Rourke said.
O'Rourke promised that the reservation would be blanketed with suicide prevention symbols of yellow ribbons and sweetgrass during the upcoming holiday season, a time when officials particularly worry about people who are contemplating suicide. "You'll see a lot of yellow ribbons during the holiday season," she said.
Tribal leaders need education about suicide prevention, said Rick Grey Grass, an OST council representative who expressed alarm about the recent rise in teen violence, pregnancy and suicide he sees.
"We need to step up to the plate as elected leaders and find something for our youth," Grey Grass said. "I'm listening, and I want to help and be a part of what's going on."
Two Bulls called on parents, grandparents and other adults to listen to the tribe's youths.
"It's time to listen to teens to hear how we can help them -- physically, mentally and emotionally," she said. "A lot of these youth don't get a hug a day. They never hear that they're loved. We need to start using that word."
Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com.

Powerpoint-Native Children's Agenda-A Shared Vision

The link to the Power point Native Children’s Agenda- A Shared Vision: Healthy Lifestyles, Successful Students, Safe Environments, Stable Communities presented by Lillian Spark Executive Director of the National Indian Education Association describes ideas associated with the Native American Childrens Agenda. The presentation was at the 15th Annual Summer Public Health Research Videoconference on Minority Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, June 9, 2009, www.minority.unc.edu

http://minority.unc.edu/institute/2009/materials/slides/2009sphrimh-sparks-dis.ppt.

The Need for a Comprehensive Native American Children's Agenda- Not a New Idea

Robert Cooks letter the other day which I posted on this blog caused me to remember the the need to focus on children and youth as a center point of all our policy--When I was president of the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) I conceived and advocated for the development of a Comprehensive Native American Children's Agenda. The idea of responding to the human needs of American Indians as an aspect of improving educational status and performance goes back at least as far as the Senate Sub-Committee on Indian Education in 1969 calling for the establishment of a Select Committee on the Human Needs of American Indians noting the significant testimony the Subcommittee had received regarding the high rates of suicide and alcoholism among Indian youth. At the time that I was working as director of the Office of Indian Education and working on drafting a possible Executive Order on American Indian Alaska Native Education (1997-1998) for consideration by President Clinton Dr. Michael H. Trujillo, Director of the Indian Health Service promoted an Executive Order and broad based imitative for American Indian children and youth. It was decided to focus on the Indian education Executive Order at the time.
When I promoted the idea of a comprehensive Native Children's agenda outside of recognizing the need to focus on the well being of Native American children as important because of it significance as a central focus in all we do, it was remembering that we were to always get back to Dr. Jurjillo's idea.

Since I left the NIEA board a broad partnership of NCAI NIEA and other Indian organizations have been formed. Below is the original concept of the Native American Children's Agenda as I developed it in 2005


Concept: Comprehensive Native American Children’s Agenda

Goal: Develop a National Comprehensive Agenda focused on meeting the needs of Native American Children

Purpose: Significantly improve the social, emotional, mental and physical health of Native American children and improve the learning capability and potential of Native American Children by significantly reducing the negative impact and influence of violence, alcohol and drug abuse, emotional mental health and physical health issues as experienced by Native American Children. Issues impacting the welfare of Native American children which are inextricably linked to one another include: Education, Healthcare, Housing, Transportation, Substance Abuse Prevention, Public Safety and the Environment (Clean Air, Clean Water).

Themes:

1. Improving the over well being of Native American children and youth with regard to their social emotional mental and physical health should be an important national priority in it own right given the current status and situation of Native children in the United States. It is also critical to improving the overall educational capacity and achievement of Native American children and youth in schools.

2. Everyone involved with Native American children must be collaboratively involved with each other to develop strategies and implement sound cultural appropriate approaches related to the development of Native children.

3. Educators and school communities are uniquely situated given their responsibility to provide educational services but also because of their daily contact with Native American students and relationships with parents and families to play a pivotal role working within tribal and Indian communities to assist in the development of local partnerships.

4. The well being of Native American children is a significant and central tribal sovereignty issue. Tribal governments have a primary concern for the well being of Native American children and youth in representing the needs of parents and families and have a central role in creating collaborations and culturally appropriate approaches that can insure the future for the tribe through the education and well being of its children.


Objectives:

Significantly improve the level of support for programs focused on the comprehensive needs of Native American children.

Provide opportunities for tribal governments and Indian communities to develop comprehensive intergovernmental strategies involving tribal, state and federal governmental to meet the needs of Native American children and youth.

Develop strong linkages between social services and health programs with schools serving Native American children.

Improve knowledge and understanding of the relationship of social, emotional, physical, health and well being with improved capacity to learn for Native American children.

Improve knowledge and understanding among all providers of services to Native American children of delivery approaches that involve Native American families and communities in culturally appropriate ways.

Improve Native American children’s understanding and involvement in living healthy lifestyles.

Create a partnership agreement with national organizations focused on meeting the needs of Native American children.

Seek the development of a White House Conference on Native American Children


Who should be involved to initiate planning and to form partnerships?

National Health and Welfare Organizations
National organizations focused on meeting the needs of Native American children. Examples include: the National Indian Child Welfare Association, National Indian Health Boards Association, National Indian Education Association, National Indian Justice Center, National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Woman’s Health Resource, National American Indian Housing, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Native Hawaiian organizations.

Educators
The National Indian Education Association would provide a central leadership role in pulling together other organizational involvement by articulating the strong relationship between health and well being with learning and capacity to learn, including National Indian School Boards Association, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and other organizations representing the schools where Native students are enrolled.

Researchers
Research organizations focused on social and physical impact on learning. For example, The Center for Indian Education Arizona State University

Tribal Governments and Tribal Organizations
Specific tribal government representatives, The National Congress of American Indians, Alaska Native Organizations and Native Hawaiian Organizations

Government Agencies
The US Department of Education and Department of Interior and other agencies involved with Children and youth issues need to be involved to focus resources and collaboration with regard to providing comprehensive support to meeting the needs of Native American children within their communities.

Other
Foundations with agendas related to children
National Trust for excellence in American Indian Alaska native Education

Note- Robert Cook is the 2009 President of the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) While serving as President he formed a group of past presidents and educators of the year to discuss issues and needs regarding Indian Education. In this regard he routinely sent messages to past presidents and educators of the year. Since he ended his term at the 2009 Milwaukee conference of NIEA he has become the principal of Pine Ridge High School and he continues to send messages to the group. I was on the board 2003-2006 and President in 2005. This message speaks about the tragedy of suicide and the current level of risk young Indian people face in many reservation communities. Certainly our work in Indian education can't be addressed until we can develop new stratagies that begin to assist families, communities and tribes address these issues in a comprehensive way. DB

Tuesday December 7 2009

Friends

I hope this finds you in great health and spirits; unfortunately we had a rough couple of weeks in Pine Ridge. Red Cloud School had a young girl (freshman) commit suicide two weeks ago (her older brother attends our school) and at my high school in Pine Ridge we had a suicide last Thursday, another ninth grade boy, who hung himself at his grandma's (OST public safety first informed us that is was a suicide, On Monday we found out the cause of death was actually alcohol poisoning resulting in a brain aneurism). Also on Thurs a 14 yr old stabbed to death a young man (age 23) in Wounded Knee, this young boys older brother attends our school and both are related to the boy who drank himself to death himself, and later that same day our reservation has another suicide of a young 19 yr old girl who was pregnant in Wamblee.

Each day since I started work as the high school principal in Pine Ridge I pray that we will not receive word of the death of one of our students. That morning who would anticipate so many young people dying on the same day? We organized and implemented our school crisis plan and contacted our reservation suicide prevention organization-Sweetgrass and IHS behavior health. We organized several "safety rooms" anticipating the many students who may need to talk to someone. I announced the tragic event over the intercom and we held a traditional prayer service and assembly to encourage the students to be strong and not to get caught up in thinking there is no future. We instructed them on where to go and who to talk to. We implemented a suicide assessment survey that same day and quickly distributed to my student body. We found out of 370 students at our school over 70 were identified at risk. All 70 of those students were interview and assessed on the same day using the QPR method. Our counseling teams quickly identified 13 students who we put on suicide prevention contracts and we had 9 students we had taken to IHS behavior health who are high risk for impending suicide. In additional, our elementary counselor had a young 7th grade girl take a razor blade and slice her wrist right in front of her and another 6th grade boy sent to Rapid City regional health for threatening to kill his family, he discussed in detail how and when he going to do it, (he related how this dark man is telling him how he must do this. This week is going to be rough burying these young people. Our wood shop teachers say the students’ most popular project is making wooden crosses for deceased relatives so they will have headstones.

These things make me more committed to make a difference in the lives of our young people in our communities. We will stand strong for our communities. Thank you for your work and prayers for our kids during this difficult time. Tomorrow I am picking up the flowers and cake for Joshua's wake and funeral.

Robert B. Cook