Teen Indian (Native American) suicide urgent issue, Congress told

[brentspeak]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The American Indian teenagers died one by one, all in order, as they had agreed in their suicide pact.

Seventeen teens have killed themselves in recent months in Cheyenne River, and the deaths were typical of teen suicides among American Indians, experts told a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, as they asked for funding for programs to target the problem.

"Some of these suicides were young men who had made a suicide pact with one another. They drew numbers, and decided to hang themselves in that order. One by one their families found these boys, often hanging in their homes, as their number came up," said Julie Garreau, executive director of the Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050615/hl_nm/suicide_dc

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(This has actually been an urgent issue for decades, now. Suicide and alcholism are rampant on reservations. I'm not so sure living on reservations is all that good for people.)

[H2O Man]

1. The highest rates in the country.

It is not reservations per say that are the problem. It's the systematic withholding of rights and benefits that the US is obligated by treaty to provide that causes the high rates of poverty, alcoholism, etc.

[azndndude]

2. And Bush has never set foot on one Indian reservation

Not that we want him to, but some kind of commitment from the "Champion of Freedom" would be nice.

[consuming]

3. Bush speaks with forked tuonge