I ask for wisdom and strength Not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come before you with clean hands and a straight eye. So as life fades away as a fading sunset. S.D. - Statistics show that American Indians commit suicide at a rate three times higher than the suicide rate for the general population in the United States. Gerry Cox, chairman of the Sociology Department at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, who has taught college-level classes on death and dying, says that on some reservations the number of people killing themselves is as much as 10 times higher than the national average.
Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States.
Those high figures are only the tip of the iceberg, Cox thinks. 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.