He says that many suicides are not reported as such. Reckless driving and alcohol and drug use can be deliberate ways for a person to kill themselves as much as a gun or an overdose of prescription pills. The numbers some tribes report aren't even close. If there's even the slightest reason to call a death an accident rather than a suicide, they'll do it to keep the truth from getting out, because they are embarrassed. The deep despair that drives people to end their lives is often caused by poverty, unemployment and alcoholism, facts of reservation life many tribal officials aren't eager to acknowledge.
People have nothing to do on the reservations.
According to research by Duane Gourneau, a counselor at the Village Family Service Center in Rolla, N.D., which serves members of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe, alcohol was a major factor in 60 percent of the suicides which occurred on North Dakota reservations from 1978 to 1993. Most were unemployed. A little more than half of them were experiences family problems. N.D. Her program wrote and distributes a booklet about suicide in the hope of preventing American Indians from taking their lives. The number of attempts we hear about are appalling.