Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat 88lifeline.org.
Shirley Sneve
ICT
Nobody wants to talk about suicide, but it’s all-too-familiar in Native communities.
Native Americans have the highest suicide rate among the different races and ethnicities – more than three times the rate for non-Native people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Historical trauma among multi-generations of Native people from forced relocation, genocide and assimilationist polices and abuse at Indian boarding schools contributes to the high rate of suicide in Indigenous communities.
But September — which is National Suicide Prevention Month — is the time to talk about it, “to raise awareness, spread hope, and spark meaningful action around one of the most urgent mental health issues of our time,” according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, known as NAMI.
“It’s an ugly, ugly secret,” Father Paul Sneve, Sicangu Lakota, vicar at the Tiospaye Wakan Episcopal Mission, based at Calvary Cathedral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Sneve is the brother of ICT senior multimedia producer Shirley Sneve.
“If you’re at the point where you are experiencing so much pain that the only option that you feel you have available to you is to take your own life, your brain is not working right chemically,” Paul Sneve said. “It needs help and of course that’s also linked to clinical depression. It’s one thing to wake up and ‘I’m kind of blue today.’ No, clinical depression is ‘your brain is broken.’ They don’t tell anybody.”
The reasons driving the high suicide rate among Native communities are complicated but go back generations, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA.
“Historical trauma is the cumulative, multigenerational, collective experience of emotional and psychological injury in communities and in descendants” according to a report from SAMHSA. “One of the most familiar examples of historical trauma is that experienced by Native Americans. Traumatic events, such as forced relocation, genocide, or the abduction of youth to more than 350 government-funded boarding schools, caused lasting impacts on Native American communities … [M]any Native American people, cultures, and traditions have suffered over time.”
The impact is felt broadly across Indigenous communities, contributing to overall poor physical and emotional health through low self-esteem, depression, substance abuse and high rates of suicide, according to the report.
“It’s bad enough that we carry our own issues, our own trauma, but we also have this neurological inherited historical trauma of our ancestors,” Paul Sneve said. “They never had the luxury of healing themselves. Very often part of their trauma was even their death, the death of their families. The abuse goes on and on. … It’s further compounded by racism and poverty.”
Lasting impact
Keilani Burroughs, Hunkpati Dakota, a Native youth organizer in Sioux Falls, has survived the suicides of her mother and brother, both citizens of the Hunkpati Oyate (Crow Creek Sioux), and an attempted suicide by her son.
“My mom, Ramona Shields-Burroughs, died by suicide in December of 2007 by taking pills,” she told ICT recently. “My brother, Andrew Burroughs, died by suicide in October 2021 using a handgun.”
Their deaths hit hard within the family and beyond.
“One thing about my mom is that we had a lot of hunka siblings,” she said. “Hunka for us is those adopted siblings who were with us all the time. So, it wasn’t just my immediate brothers that were impacted. There were so many that were impacted by the loss of her because of her involvement with church and the Native youth in Sioux Falls. She passed a couple days after my birthday, and it was right after I had just gotten married.”
Ramona worked closely with her church, helping organize a regional gathering of Native American Episcopalian, Niobrara Convocation, which was held at the First Presbyterian Church in Flandreau, South Dakota, in 2001. And like many “aunties,” she held an important role in the tiospaye — extended family, always smiling, always joking and always organizing the chaos around her.
“She had a lot of friends. I had so many uncles and aunts and cousins that I needed to call,” Burroughs told ICT. “And unlike today, [when] you can kind of post on social media, and you really only have to say it once, we had to say it multiple times, over and over and over again.”
The impact is still felt among those who knew her.
“It just didn’t become real, because this woman always was laughing,” Burroughs said. “You would just never know if she was sad. You just didn’t know because there was so much humor in our household. There was so much food at our tables and at church and everywhere. We just didn’t know. It was really shocking to a community where she was such a big part of it.”
“And it’s still shocking. I still get so many people that say, ‘I really miss your mom.’”
Burroughs said her mom did seek counseling, but felt that the non-Indian therapist didn’t understand her. She didn’t go back for another session.
“I think that’s the one thing about suicide is, you always have those lingering questions,” she said. “And when someone asks were they sick, you don’t know what to say because they were. I don’t think that you can ever prepare for a loss, but the type of trauma and impact that it had on me, my brothers and I, still resonates today.”
Her death influenced Burrough’s brother Andrew’s decision to become a therapist, as well as her cousin Wyatt Pickner, who works for the American Indian Cancer Foundation.
“It completely changed the course of his education, along with Wyatt’s,” she said. “Andrew wanted to work in family medicine specializing in sports medicine. Wyatt went into research — he works in cancer research now, but that fundamental research of Native populations drove both of them to different careers.”
Andrew’s death came nearly 14 years after his mother’s. He had taught at local universities and was a mental health counselor, often providing help to students without charge.
“One thing about my brother is that he was in a role of helping people,” she said. “ And I think that’s maybe why he was so great at it. He understood the pain that they had. He understood what they were going through. He was one of those human beings that could walk into a room and you knew he was there. … He could come sit by somebody, and then all of a sudden they’re laughing.”
She continued, “His real passion was to help people. In his practice, he had a ginormous toy room. To this day, I will never know if the toy room was for him or for the kids. But that was his playful spirit.”
Like his mother, Andrew’s death had a huge impact on the Native community. He was experiencing financial and personal difficulties at the time of his death.
Paul Sneve’s wife, Tally Salisbury, worked alongside Andrew as a mental health professional.
“We were all devastated, but he knew he should know better,” Sneve said. “That’s sort of like, you know, the cobbler’s children wear no shoes. Even though he knew the recognized signs in other people, a doctor cannot be a doctor for themselves. It is just shocking. It derails us. It’s a very traumatic surprise.”
Sneve has officiated for many funerals of relatives who have died by suicide.
“A lot of our families, when it occurs, they want to continue to hide it,” he said. “And they want to keep it a secret. Not all families, but a lot do. And that’s really hard. I’ve had families say, ‘Please, don’t say anything about it. People in the community, honestly, they know anyway. There’s no secrets. … In Indian Country, we live in smaller communities and everybody’s related. Yeah, everybody knows except the signs and symptoms. If you’re not trained to see it and if, you know, they can hide it so well. And Andrew did.
‘Be kind’
The family continues to deal with generational trauma.
“It wasn’t too long after my brother passed that my middle son also tried to take his life and became an outpatient,” Burroughs said. “It was hard because it felt like we’re in a world of trauma. And so we work really, really hard to make sure that we do things for the community and we still live and breathe everything that my mom and Andrew were. They were just such beacons of hope and beacons for the Native community.”
Guilt is something that families of suicides often struggle with as well.
“I think that anyone who’s ever experienced suicide, whether it was a friend, a parent, a sibling, a cousin, even someone that maybe you worked with, is that we all experienced that guilt,” she said. “We all carry that, that ‘what if,’ ‘what if something would have been different?’”
But Burroughs has worked to look ahead.
“I try not to dwell on that,” she said. “If there’s anything that I’ve learned it’s that if I stay in that puddle, I’m never going to get out of that puddle. I try to really put on myself and I really try to preach to my brothers as well that it’s not our guilt to carry.”
Like her mother and brother, Burroughs also chose a career path of helping people. She works for a youth-centered nonprofit organization.
“I tell all of my kids, ‘I have a couple rules — -one is to have fun, but please be kind,’” she said. “You just need to use kind words, always kind words, because we don’t have any idea what anybody else is going through when they go home or when they lay their head down at night.”