Читать книгу Racing Toward Recovery. The Extraordinary Story of Alaska Musher Mike Williams Sr. онлайн

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It really did seem as if a teenager was killing himself, or herself, every week in Alakanuk. We wanted to help the community with its grieving. We wanted to find a way to be of assistance during this disaster. We wanted to examine the reasons why the kids were killing themselves. What the heck was going on? The suicides prompted us to consistently travel to that village. I went there and met with community leaders, individuals who were affected, and families. We were trying to salve the wounds. We really wanted to stop this epidemic of suicides and address the issue of “How do we prevent more wounds?” We went there trying to look for underlying causes.

It seemed pretty clear to us that some of the underlying causes of this despair involved the loss of their language and the loss of the culture. And alcohol was playing a major part. Some kids were being abused. There was dysfunction in families as the result of dependency on alcohol. People were drinking because they weren’t adjusting to quick life changes from the days of the healthy Alaska Native. There was that pressure to assimilate. There were all of those new government rules. There was rapid change stemming from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Some people got rich. Some people were still on the outside. Families that for generations had been solidly relying on subsistence hunting and fishing were going on welfare, public assistance.