The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/10/inuit-highest-suicide-rate/

by akakievich • 7 years ago

216 151 7 years ago

breitling• 7 years ago

In case any one doesn't know: Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, oversaw these residential schools, the last of which were only dismantled in the 90s under a different government.

This is a dark chapter in the history of Canada.

FrankTheBank• 7 years ago

Your first statement is highly misleading, the residential schools started in the 1800s and peaked in 1931. They were also primarily run by religious organizations. The abuse and human experimentation on the childern also predate Trudeau by decades. Yes the federal government had a role in oversight, but to pin the residential schools so completely on Pierre Trudeau is downright disingenuous and masks the complicity of many many other people.

But it was indeed a dark chapter in the history of Canada. For those of you curious about the residential schools a basic introduction can be found at: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residentia...

Ensorceled• 7 years ago

Pierre Trudeau was PM from 1968 to 1984 (with a brief interruption by Joe Clark's PCs)[1]. Residential schools were taken over by the Department of Indian Affairs in 1969 and by 1986 were eliminated or turned over to the local bands[2].

A better characterization is that Pierre Trudeau oversaw the dismantling of the residential schools.

Given that this is an election year in Canada, Justin Trudeau is a candidate and that this is a very deceptive portrayal of the situation, I'm going to assume this is intentional and report.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau [2] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residentia...

yostrovs• 7 years ago

"Nunavut’s [suicide] rate is 100 per 100,000, ten times higher than the rest of Canada and seven times higher than the US. When I visited Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, in July, virtually every Inuit I met had lost at least one relative to suicide, and some recounted as many as five or six family suicides, plus those of friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances."

So one in 1,000 kills himself and nearly everyone has a relative that did it? Pretty big families over there.

ninkendo• 7 years ago

I think that’s 100 per 100,000 per year.

bloak• 7 years ago

That's right. I hate it when people mess up the units like that. When I read that "X's GDP is $Y billion" with no mention of "year" or "annual" I am almost as annoyed as when journalists can't tell the difference between energy and power.

abdullahkhalids• 7 years ago

Yes. Let's roughly estimate the probabilities here. We know that 1 in 1000 people suicide every year. Say the average life expectancy is 71 years [1], so a person living a community of 1000 people will roughly see 71 people suicide across their life.

Say, a person has roughly 32 relatives (parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews). It's fairly easy to get to 32.

Then the probability of at least one relative committing suicide is 1-(1-71/1000)^32 = 91%. Which is indeed "virtually every Inuit". With 50 relatives it is 97%.

[1] https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/65674nunavut_lowest_li...

ekianjo3• 7 years ago

Mainly driven by alcoholism, and it is very well known:

Alcohol and drug use among Inuit increased significantly between 1992 and 2004, particularly among young adults. Alcohol users consumed significantly more alcohol per drinking episode than other Canadians in both time periods. Considerable cannabis use was widespread. In 2004, no significant differences in frequencies of heavy drinking episodes were observed by gender, with 60% of drug users consuming alcohol on a regular basis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4696457/

and the link between alcoholism and suicide is well documented:

Various classical studies found an excess of suicide among alcoholics [73–80]. Beck and Steer [81] and Beck et al. [82] found that alcoholism was the strongest single predictor of subsequent completed suicide in a sample of attempted suicides.
In 1997, Harris and Barraclough, in their unusually comprehensive meta-analysis analyzed 32 papers related to alcohol dependence and abuse, comprising a population of over 45,000 individuals [34]. They found that combining the studies gave a suicide risk almost six times that expected but with variation of 1–60 times. Specifically, they found that the suicide risk for females was very much greater than for males, about 20 times that expected compared with four for males. Suicide risk among alcohol-dependent individuals has been estimated to be 7% (comparable with 6% for mood disorders; [83]). Of 40,000 Norwegian conscripts followed prospectively over 40 years, the probability of suicide was 4.76% (relative risk +6.9) among those classified as alcohol abusers compared with 0.63 for non-drinkers [84]. Similar finding have been made worldwide [85]. Murphy et al. studied 50 suicides and found that an alcohol use disorder was the primary diagnosis in 23% and a co-occurring diagnosis in 37% [86]. Conwell et al. performed a study in New York City and reported that alcohol misuse was present in the history of 56% of individuals who completed suicide [43].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872355/

EDIT: even in Japan where there is a significant correlation between alcoholism and suicide rates (in Japanese men at least): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5865438_Alcohol_con...

claudeganon2• 7 years ago

Given the violence, dispossession, and virulent racism indigenous people are and we’re forced to bear, isn’t the alcoholism another symptom, not the cause?

ekianjo3• 7 years ago

That is certainly up for discussion and debate. But once you get into alcoholism, having a greater suicide rate than average is a given.

musha68k• 7 years ago

Dr. Gabor Maté talks a lot about trauma and how it can get "preserved" over generations (he is himself a survivor of the Holocaust).

endorphone2• 7 years ago

Similar groups in various other arctic locations throughout the globe have abuse and suicide rates that are only marginally lower. Further the greatest number of victims are youth.

Living like it's the 1700s only works if you aren't aware that the rest of the world exists. Put youth in very remote locations and teach them that maintaining a lost culture is their most important reason for existing -- but they're aware of a wide world that will embrace them [^1] yet they're told that it reviles them -- and it has to be pretty self-defeating. Add horrendous weather most of the year, harsh conditions, and it just isn't conducive to happiness.

^1 - Aboriginal racism comes up a lot, and rightly so. But it's often a stereotype of reserves and remote communities (one very sadly backed by data -- if you live near a reserve, property crime is likely significantly higher than if you didn't), and not about a peoples. Canada is a very multicultural society and any of these people would be just another shade in Canada, but because of the clutching to the "old ways", much as if I was wearing a Kilt and trying to raise sheep, it's tough to do and these youth bear the burden of their ancestors more than most of us do.

Smithalicious2• 7 years ago

Does alcoholism drive suicides, do suicides drive alcoholism, or do other things drive both suicide and alcoholism (or, perhaps more likely, all of the above)?

ekianjo3• 7 years ago

You could argue that people who end up trapped with alcoholism were probably having problems in the first place and used alcohol as a form of escapism. It's a generalization, but there are probably hidden factors behind alcoholism and suicide.

Tiktaalik• 7 years ago

Yes it seems much more likely that people are using alcohol as a form of self medication.

daliusd3• 7 years ago

Wondered if Lithuania will be mentioned in the article. Yes, it is. The difference between Nanuvat and Greenland is that their populations are 10 thousands, we are almost 3 million.

ChuckNorris893• 7 years ago

I guess Lithuania has he same problem as all the Nordics, dark gloomy weather year round.

I wanted to emigrate to Sweden due to the high quality of life but the dark, drizzly, windy weather really put me off and some locals I talked to said they were really depressed by it and were either trying to emigrate or work remotely from Southern Europe.

In the Blatics it's probably worse as the economic situational is not positive for some people.

daliusd3• 7 years ago

We have quite nice summers actually here in Lithuania while they become quite hot recently because of climate change. Anyway, weather is not the main cause of suicides.

dagw6• 7 years ago

I guess Lithuania has he same problem as all the Nordics, dark gloomy weather year round.

Except the Nordic countries have a lower suicide rates than the US. The whole high rates of suicide in the Nordics is a myth.

looki• 7 years ago

Meanwhile, being from the northwest of Germany, moving to Sweden would apparently be an upgrade for me[1]. :( It really is quite grim here for a good portion of the year and I will never get used to it (I was born and raised here).

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe_s...

username90• 7 years ago

Suicide is actually correlated with lots of sunshine and high temperatures even in colder countries like the Nordics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_effects_on_suicide_ra...

People tend to say that they get depressed by the winter, but I believe that it is similar to how people tended to say that exercise was bad for you not too long ago. Cold helps against depression in many cases, for example cold showers. If you asked people if they would be happy trading their warm showers for cold showers they would say that it would be horrible even though it likely would improve their overall happiness.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325725.php

goodcanadian• 7 years ago

I always find the linking of climate and weather to depression strange. I grew up in a place with quite dark winters. While I know seasonal affective disorder is a thing, for me, winter is cosy, and not at all depressing.

kevadk• 7 years ago

For comparison, here are a few of the highest rates per 100k in the US:

98.7 - Kusilvak Census Area, AK; 75.1 - Nome Census Area, AK; 64.2 - Sioux County, ND; 58.9 - Buffalo County, SD; 49.3 - Carbon County, UT

https://vizhub.healthdata.org/subnational/usa

Extend the list and you see lots of high latitudes, low incomes, remote rural settings, and indigenous American populations (e.g. Yupik and Inupiaq in Alaska, Sioux in the Dakotas).

Alcoholism is often common in these places, although survey data do not show it affecting the groups in northern Alaska so heavily. Deaths due to chronic liver disease are not particularly high for them, either. There's a distinct history in Nunavut, though, so the story might be different.

DanielBMarkham• 7 years ago

Great link. This is the interactive graphic that should have appeared with the article. Instead of a single narrative, users can explore various scenarios as they read along. Looking at this strictly from a geographic standpoint, for instance, there's something weird going on in North Dakota between Carson County and Sioux County. It really stands out on the map. Alaska also looks quite odd.

leesec2• 7 years ago

"something weird" being the native american population, who have been getting trampled on by Americans for hundreds of years now.

boomboomsubban• 7 years ago

One of the causes in the ND patch is that there is a ton of space with nothing there. The amount of time for any medical care to arrive and then reach a hospital would be extremely high.

fireattack• 7 years ago

How do you show suicide rate in that interactive graphic? By choosing "self-harm" as cause I assume?

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

Extend the list and you see lots of high latitudes, low incomes, remote rural settings, and indigenous American populations

Gloomy weather, little opportunity for future economic advancement exacerbated by a government hundreds of miles away made up of people nothing like you making up rules for you that make life harder (rural area generally make money on resource extraction and western government are regulating that more tightly for climate reasons) and it's been this way for generations.

This isn't quite shocked pikachu territory but it should come as no surprise people living like this kill themselves more than the baseline.

BurningFrog5• 7 years ago

Alcoholism is always rampant when a population is first introduced to the drug.

Over centuries, evolution acts to produce a population less prone to it, since people who drink themselves to death don't tend to reproduce.

The population that has had access to alcohol for the longest (8000 years, according to a guess I saw somewhere) is the Chinese, where the "asian red flush" gene has developed as a protection against alcoholism.

jvanderbot• 7 years ago

Well, I'm confused. Something seems off.

Evolutionary pressures / adaptations over 8000 years would just as likely make a population less likely to suffer adverse effects from, for example, alcohol. (see sickle cell tradeoffs in malaria-risky areas). This genetic syndrome you reference makes damage from alcohol 4x more likely over time.

We'd expect long-time drinking societies to have higher alcohol tolerance to better avoid adverse effects of drinking.

andyjohnson0• 7 years ago

Over centuries, evolution acts to produce a population less prone to it

Is this a supposition? Or is there any evidence for this effect being real and/or it being significant over such evolutionarily short timescales?

okmokmz3• 7 years ago

I don't believe this is the case, do you have any sources to back it up?

cwkoss2• 7 years ago

Indigenous Americans made alcoholic fermented beverages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_Native_Americans#P...

whatshisface3• 7 years ago

You are likely to find the highest suicide rates in less-populated areas because the average of fewer numbers tends to have a greater variance than the average of more numbers. The suicide rate could be the same everywhere and you would still be guaranteed to find the most suicides in rural counties.

jessaustin• 7 years ago

If "small numbers" were the dominant effect, we'd expect to see it move around. This year the highest would be somewhere in the Dakotas, next year in NW Oklahoma, etc. If the rankings are stable over time it must be something else.

koonsolo2• 7 years ago

From a statistical standpoint, it's logical that the most extreme numbers come from the lowest populations. So if the lowest rates are also in remote rural areas, this says more about statistics than anything else.

rovolo• 7 years ago

I'm not sure which of these two points you're trying to make:

1) These specific counties could be flukes because of their small population.

We can account for that by making multiple observations--i.e. look at multiple years of data--and seeing if the counties change rank. The visualization has yearly data for 1980-2014, and the specified counties are consistently high compared to the national average

https://vizhub.healthdata.org/subnational/usa

2) The 'rural' component of these counties isn't necessarily a factor, since the counties with lowest rates may be rural as well.

A bit of searching turns up a clear correlation between population density and suicide:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/How-population-density-a...

ivl• 7 years ago

This is tangentially related, but a couple years ago a Canadian woman won the Global Teachers Prize. [1] The northernmost area of Quebec has quite a lot in common with Nunavut, being remote and only accessible by air, and struck by high rates of substance abuse and suicide. However, Quebec is so much more densely populated in the south that the total population hides this.

I suspect that the reason the Yukon and the Northwest Territories don't see the huge rate that Nunavut sees is because Whitehorse and Yellowknife (to a lesser extent) represent such a huge portion of the population, compared to Iqaluit.

1. https://www.globalteacherprize.org/winners/maggie-macdonnell

_yxi6• 7 years ago

Former Alaskan here. I wasn't shocked to find out Greenland and Nunavut which are also very high north have high suicide rates. The long dark winters can really mess with you after a while which can lead to substance abuse.

TearsInTheRain• 7 years ago

I think it is too easy to just make it about the environment. If you read the article it claims the suicide rate wasn't always this high. Something cultural got lost when they transitioned away from their nomadic lifestyle.

slothtrop3• 7 years ago

Change in culture isn't enough to explain it either. Hunting and trapping culture is still strong in the north. There's not much else going on.

mieseratte• 7 years ago

I think it is too easy to just make it about the environment.
Something cultural got lost when they transitioned away from their nomadic lifestyle.

As with many problems, the cause is likely mosaic.

I can tell you anecdotally that I would surely devolve into substance abuse and suicide were I to live in an Alaskan / Canadian environment like that. Just working from home on a permanent basis was enough to send me out to the bar on a daily basis. Similarly, when I spent time unemployed my only solace was substance. I cannot imagine being stuck in such an environment, little contact and little to do.

Some people just can't handle a certain lifestyle.

One wonders were we to leave the natives to their nomadic lifestyle if we wouldn't be seeing criticisms for any inevitable fallout and suffering that lifestyle might bring to members of the population.

jimbob45• 7 years ago

Anecdotal evidence: I used to live in Oregon, where it rains a majority of the year (or the skies are otherwise gray). I was super unhappy all the time and was regularly depressed. Moved to Florida where the sun is out virtually 365 days of the year. I haven't had a dark day since I got here some years ago. I'm living in a lower-class area too.

seanmcdirmid2• 7 years ago

Suicide and alcohol related deaths were pretty common on my Ketchikani mom’s side of the family. I imagine it would be worse in Fairbanks, let alone Nome.

I had some friends who did summers in Alaskan canneries, they said all there was to do was drink.

milchek• 7 years ago

There is more to it than just the weather, as others have pointed out. However, your comment reminded me of "Winter-over syndrome" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter-over_syndrome) - worth a look for those interested in the effects of long periods of cold and dark isolation on human psychology.

vollmond• 7 years ago

Anecdotally, I've heard Scandinavia has a similarly high rate, for the same reason.

CogitoCogito• 7 years ago

Anecdotally, I've heard Scandinavia has a similarly high rate, for the same reason.

Why are you posting your anecdotes like this? You have access to the internet after all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

For example, on that list the US rates _worse_ than Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and are about the same as Finland.

ben5092• 7 years ago

The US is a large, heterogeneous nation and comparisons with small homogenous nations are misleading.

heymijo• 7 years ago

If the commonality is that living in these higher latitude zones causes increases in suicide, what happens when/if the Earth hits +4C and the habitable zones become these very same areas? [see map linked below]

There would be obvious confounders, like the despair of knowing that humans decimated the planet's habitability.

https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/climat...

coldtea• 7 years ago

If the commonality is that living in these higher latitude zones causes increases in suicide, what happens when/if the Earth hits +4C and the habitable zones become these very same areas?

When that happens, the deaths from first-order climate related causes (floods and droughts, extreme weather phenomena, raised temperatures, etc) would be so many, that the increase in suicides due to migration to higher latitude zones would be a drop in the bucket...

Raphmedia2• 7 years ago

It is not the latitude that is causing the suicide rates. The at-risk populations just happen to be there. Causality does not equal causation.

oarabbus_• 7 years ago

Pretty sure you're the one who has it backwards, and extended periods of darkness and/or vitamin D deficiency have causal factors in suicide.

astrodust• 7 years ago

It's going to suck when the only habitable areas on the planet are dark for a quarter of the year.

merpnderp3• 7 years ago

If people really believe +4C is likely in 80 years, why aren’t they out marching and demanding a move to nuclear power? It’s the only option that doesn’t decimate the poor and drastically increase the price of food, and this magnitudes more likely to be acted upon. Yet the overlap between people against nuclear power and terrified of climate change is a massive majority.

fwip2• 7 years ago

Not everybody is looking at the same statistics you are, and not everyone is as hopeful about our ability to store nuclear waste safely indefinitely.

I'm pro-nuclear power, but it's foolish to act like their motivations or beliefs are less real than yours because they have a different risk assessment.

dyadic• 7 years ago

People are out demanding changes.

I'm terrified of climate change. I'm also terrified of nuclear power. I'm not really against nuclear power in theory, but I'm afraid about how we're unable to think about, plan, or prepare for longer than an election cycle. If we're heading for a collapse then a lot of abandoned nuclear power plants are going to cause a lot of damage.

jhayward2• 7 years ago

it's the only option that doesn’t decimate the poor and drastically increase the price of food

This is an unsupportable assertion. Nuclear power costs far more than the alternatives (mainly Wind/Solar), none of which impoverish people nor drastically increase the price of food.

CarlosCabrito• 7 years ago

Based on my anecdotal evidence, the major factors that seems to affect regions with high suicide rates are:

- Isolation/ lack of community connection: Isolated individuals tend to have less social feedback loops, which impacts their perception of the world around them.

- Alcohol and Drug abuse: This can be a byproduct of other areas, as an attempt to help alleviate the perceived suffering, boredom, etc. In my opinion, in the long run, alcohol and drug abuse tend to exacerbate the issue.

- Lack of Vitamin D and Sun: A lack in this areas has been associated with increased bouts and feeling of depression, which can increase thoughts of suicide.

spinach• 7 years ago

But going by the article, "suicide was rare, and among young people, almost unknown" until contact with outsiders. So I don't think it's just isolation.

dagw6• 7 years ago

Isolation on the individual level. Contact with outsiders could have led to previously close knit communities breaking down and other social ties weakening, even if there where more actual people around.

p1esk2• 7 years ago

This doesn’t explain Lithuania which is not isolated, has no alcohol/drug problem, and has enough sun.

luckydata4• 7 years ago

because he's missing "lack of hope for the future" which is a key component. That's usually tied to economics.

dagw6• 7 years ago

Isolated in this case isn't necessarily talking about geographic isolation, but the social isolation individuals experience. And when it comes to alcohol, I don't know enough about the country to say whether it has a "problem" or not, but it is consistently listed among the top 3 countries by alcohol consumption.

agota• 7 years ago

I personally think that there might be something in Baltic genetic makeup that makes us more prone to suicide.

Lack of sun exposure probably does play a role, though, because I suspect that the average adult doesn't spend enough time in the sun during the time of the year when we can produce vitamin D.

japhyr2• 7 years ago

The history of alcoholism and suicide in Alaska goes back to the time of first contact with outsiders. When westerners first contacted Alaska Native tribes, those "explorers" tended to be people who were after valuable furs, and missionaries. These people were usually a mix of Russians from the west and Americans from the south.

The outsiders brought with them diseases like tuberculosis and influenza, and these diseases were devastating. In many villages, up to 70% of the population died in the span of a few generations. It's hard to imagine how hard this would be to live through. I live in a town of 10,000 and I imagine waking up at some point to only have 3,000 people around, not because people move but because all of those people we knew were dead.

That wasn't all, though. Almost all of the missionaries blamed the survivors for what happened. They said their people died because they worshipped the devil. They took the surviving children away, telling parents they weren't fit to raise their own children. They banned the use of Native languages, and all aspects of Native culture such as dancing, regalia, ceremonies, and more. All of this has led to despair and a disconnect with a rich culture that existed for ~10,000 years before this.

Life for Native people before contact was not perfect. But this is the root of alcoholism and suicide in Alaska, and in many areas with indigenous populations around the world. If you're interested in learning more about this history, I recommend Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being by Harold Napoleon [0], and Chills and Fever: Health and Disease in the Early History of Alaska by Robert Fortuine [1].

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Yuuyaraq-Human-Being-Harold-Napoleon/...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Chills-Fever-Health-Disease-History/d...

slothtrop3• 7 years ago

But this is the root of alcoholism and suicide in Alaska

More accurately, conditions today ripe for alcoholism and suicide may be borne out events following contact. There's similar issues in Canada, Siberia.

seanmcdirmid2• 7 years ago

Is the problem of alcoholism worse in Siberia than it is in the rest of Russia, where it is already pretty bad?

ColanR• 7 years ago

What you're recounting seems (from the article) to be the Canadian government's side of the story. The 12th paragraph of the article begins the Inuit's description of what happened.

Most Inuit look back very differently on this period. Their version begins shortly after World War II, when the US and Canada jointly established a line of radar stations across the Arctic in order to spy on the Soviets and monitor the skies for potential attacks via the North Pole. The Canadian government, keen to prevent the US from claiming sovereignty over this potentially mineral- and natural gas–rich area, hastily established towns and forced the Inuit to settle in them. Older Inuit told me they remember armed police officers arriving at their camps unannounced and ordering everyone to leave. Sled dogs—even healthy ones—were slaughtered before their owners’ eyes.
The government concedes that thousands of Inuit children, some as young as five, were sent to boarding, or “residential,” schools, where they were cut off from their families, given Christian names and ID numbers, punished for speaking their native Inuktitut language, required to wear Western clothes, and taught a Canadian curriculum that had no relevance to the world they’d been born into. Many were also beaten and raped by their teachers. Some went to the schools willingly, but many reluctant parents, informed that if they didn’t send their children off, they’d be denied government welfare benefits or credit from fur traders, surrendered them in tears.
Memories of these horrors haunt the lives of older Inuit today. [...]

mikepurvis2• 7 years ago

Canada's FNMI (First Nations, Metis, Inuit) relations have been really screwed up for a long time, and the current Federal government has not improved things by trying to steamroll a pipeline through traditional lands in BC (despite talking a big game about reconciliation during their election campaign). Meanwhile the newly-elected conservative provincial government in Ontario immediately backed away from plans to include content about residential schools in the public school curriculum, which was to be written in collaboration with people who actually lived through it, see: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-education-tru...

Anyway, if you're interested in more about what FNMI life is like in Canada, the APTN First Contact show is a pretty great place to start:

https://aptn.ca/firstcontact/video/season-1/

TimTheTinker• 7 years ago

Almost all of the missionaries blamed the survivors for what happened. They said their people died because they worshipped the devil. They took the surviving children away, telling parents they weren't fit to raise their own children. They banned the use of Native languages, and all aspects of Native culture such as dancing, regalia, ceremonies, and more. All of this has led to despair and a disconnect with a rich culture that existed for ~10,000 years before this.

Do you have any citations for this? I have read a lot of missionary stories, and have friends and family who have been or are missionaries themselves, and have never heard of anything so heinous. That's exactly the opposite of what missionaries are supposed to be; it sounds more like a particularly brutal form of western imperialism and exploitation than anything else.

mikepurvis2• 7 years ago

I mean... to be fair, when you read a missionary story, you're reading the missionary's own account of how things went down. Not saying it's always this bad, but you're unlikely to see a lot of self-criticism if you don't have the account from the other side of those interactions.

I'm not really sure about Alaska in particular, but the Catholic Church for example was definitely complicit in the attempted cultural genocide undertaking by the Canadian government against indigenous peoples (and resists issuing a formal apology for that role, even to this day: https://globalnews.ca/news/4110276/canada-residential-school...).

fwip2• 7 years ago

It's not hard to find these accounts.

Here's the top link I found when googling 'first nations canada banned language': https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-people...

Here's another source from The Guardian (not my favorite paper, but generally publishes true things): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/02/canada-indigen... - "Children inducted into residential schools were forbidden from speaking their native languages and subjected to routine physical abuse, inadequate nutrition and neglect. Sexual abuse was common, according to the survivors who testified at commission hearings throughout the country."

Edit: The history of missionaries is inextricably linked with the history of Western imperialism and exploitation. These accounts are by no means limited to the Canada or even the Americas - there are many accounts of the brutal treatment of indigenous people in Africa, Australia and Oceania committed by missionaries.

dang3• 7 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21070110.

yeahforsureman• 7 years ago

Could there be a cultural factor, too? At least historically, in very rough habitats, you really wanted to be useful for your community, not a burden. Many native tribes in eg. Alaska and Canada even had a range of customs around suicide or leaving behind or even killing people of old age and poor condition, usually based on the wish or consent of the victim.

Maybe such attitudes combined with bleak social and economic prospects and general feelings of purposelessness and uselessness could well contribute to the phenomenon?

mikelyons• 7 years ago

Agree. IMHO, I think it's very important here to examine historical and other-cultural attitudes toward euthanasia and it's analogues. eg., ritual suicide in feudal Japan. These attitudes seem likely to echo forward from their common-practice eras ...

131012• 7 years ago

For those interested in the issue, this documentary gives voice to some members of the community.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/angry_inuk/

Merrill• 7 years ago

It's doubtful that suicide was rare in pre-1950s Nunavut. More likely there is a problem with non-existent records or with definition of what constitutes suicide. In particular, when hunts failed and food was scarce, both infanticide and senilicide were practiced, the latter usually in the form of assisted suicide. See "Law-Ways of the Primitive Eskimos" https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...

l0l0l0l• 7 years ago

interesting.

_edo• 7 years ago

Nunavut’s rate is 100 per 100,000, ten times higher than the rest of Canada and seven times higher than the US.

Ok, that's bad.

But we can connect that to the US: white males with no college, aged 45-54, have a suicide rate of 38.8 and a poisoning (overdose) rate of 58.0[0]. Put those together and that's pushing 100 per 100,000. That's enough to start asking some cultural questions.

However, "During 1999–2003, the suicide rate among Nunavut males aged 15 to 19 was estimated to exceed 800 per 100,000 population, compared to around 14 for the general Canadian male population in that age group."[1]

800 per 100,000? This statistic is staggering for a couple of reasons: its magnitude and the age range.

The graphs in [3] show just how young and male the suicides among the Inuit are. It's no surprise that it's primarily male, because it almost always is, but it is surprising to see an 8:1 ratio and that it's affecting the youth so heavily. For comparison, in the United States the 15-24 age range is near the bottom of the suicide statistics[4].

These are boys born in the 1980's. As bad as the crimes against the Inuits may have been in the 1950's it's a strange territory to wander into where an effect of an atrocity shows up 50 years late in a population that wasn't alive yet. From wikipedia[2]: "...to about 170 in 2002. Some of the reasons given include adverse childhood experiences involving emotional neglect and abuse, family violence and substance abuse, as well as social inequalities brought on by government intervention." (referencing [3]) I can see the argument the author is making here but I don't have the time to address it.

The article is giving the "white guilt" narrative and for whatever reason is dancing around the massive gender disparity in suicide rates. When I see articles like this I wonder how much the author cares about suicide and how much they see it as a platform to write about anti-colonialism.

[0] - Table 1 https://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078 [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Canada [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Canada#Among_the_In... [3] - https://www.iwgia.org/images/publications//IA_4_07.pdf#page=... [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crude_US_suicide_rate_by_...

juskrey• 7 years ago

The smaller the sample the more likely you'll see the outlier rate, too high or too low.

Yours truly, Captain Obvious.

sdegutis• 7 years ago

The more our lives are guided by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, the more we will find life to be empty and meaningless, and the more suicides there will be.Places with the highest "individual freedom" to pursue all sorts of physical pleasures, especially by changing laws to make unlawful immorality lawful, are the ones with the highest suicide rates.

unfocused3• 7 years ago

When you read article, it is important to note the before state and after state. There a lot of things that happen in between.

First, you need to understand that this culture existed well before colonization, and it existed in peace. Secondly, the culture's history and knowledge, specifically on how to survive in such a harsh environment, was oral as the Inuit did not pass things on by reading and writing. This is a key point.

It's not that it's impossible to survive in the Arctic, it's that that are many requirements, and these requirements were passed on generation after generation. Much like an Astronaut has to pass tests to ensure that they can survive the remoteness of space, the same can be said here.

What happened next is that the people, who were the 'books' of knowledge were taken away, put in schools, killed, imprisoned, etc. The requirements to be able to live in this environment were no longer being met because the people responsible for the oral transmission of the requirements and knowledge, were no longer capable of doing so. The fragile ecosystem of the Inuit and the remote environment was disrupted.

I don't think people are getting the idea that their oral traditions were essentially what we would call religion. When religion was put forth a long, long time ago, it was there to shepard our civilization by providing requirements so that people can survive, and to enable them to deal with trauma, for example death, anger, etc.

If you were to rip out religion from a population thousands of years ago, burn all their books, and make them forget it, they probably would descent into chaos. This what happened here. The Inuit had their oral traditions, i.e. akin to religion in this example, removed, and the memory or books, disappeared as the information was in the people, and not in a book.

The alcoholism, violence, etc. are symptoms of our current society applied onto theirs. This problem will span generations, and the situation will only improve once they are able to get back their oral traditions, their religion, their way of structuring their life in order to survive in the remote location. Of course, this is more complicated than that because we've now injected our modern way of life into the mix. I don't know what the outcome will be, but I do think once they are able to find their oral traditions, and to remember the stories from the old, they will be better than they are now.

Just my 2 cents.

firefoxd• 7 years ago

This is a pretty good insight. I think it's the same issue affecting many other groups.

unfocused3• 7 years ago

In bizarre twist, although I am in the IT world, I've had the good fortune to listen to some knowledgeable people that know far more than me about this.

In addition, I think I knew and have worked with Bonnie who is mentioned in the article. Iqaluit/Nunavut is a small place, so even by first name, I think I'm kind of sure who it is. If she is who she is, then she knows a lot about this topic and I would trust her words.

Guthur• 7 years ago

I'm not sure there is really a viable route back. A lot of the traditions and ecosystem that worked before may not be there.

I believe it's more that just the oral tradition. The small insular nature of the communities is also lost and I don't believe the traditional approach would scale to the large urban centres they find themselves in.

ghostbrainalpha• 7 years ago

Unlike knowledge stored in books, oral traditions and knowledge can't be "got back to".

Once the line is broken, it is gone.

unfocused3• 7 years ago

Yes and No. I think they can never go back to how it was. But having memories and remembering the old ways is a start. A point of departure if you will. From this point of departure, I think this where we will see how they will evolve their ways.

Much like how after a tragedy, people talk about it to get over it, the next talk has to be about what happened to them, so that they can move forward.

This, along with remember the ways of the old, can give them roots, and a feeling of belonging, a feeling of who they were, and a feeling that traditions can evolve and continue on.

gravelc• 7 years ago

From my understanding, suicide rates among indigenous Australians are similarly high, particularly in remote communities. I suspect many of the same factors are at play.

The Highest Suicide Rate in the World

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