Suicide one of many to spark United Nations appeal

In the early hours of March 4, Amber Lightning Raine, 20, joined the ever-growing number of young Aboriginal people who have committed suicide.

Her death was not the result of a horrific childhood, nor was she facing insurmountable life challenges or suffering a lack of family and social support.

“Yes, she was struggling with her relationship … she had a boyfriend on and off, and she had been drinking. It may have been her lifestyle, or recent deaths of other young people in our family,” said her father Rick Lightning of the Ermineskin Cree Nation, part of the Maskwacis community in central Alberta formerly known as Hobbema.

“I honestly don’t believe she would have done it had she been sober.”

Seemingly, she had everything going for her. In training in Edmonton, she was on-track to create the career she’d dreamed of – studying theatrical make-up application with an eye to working in television productions like Blackstone. 

She was excited about the trip she would take with her family to Las Vegas come June when she turned 21.

“She had her sisters and everyone along the line supporting her,” Rick said. “There was no “cutting” of her arms or any kind of behaviour that said ‘help me, help me, I want to kill myself.’ But we didn’t get any kind of a warning whatsoever and that’s why this has totally caught us off guard.”

The only challenge Amber might have faced was the fact she was negotiating her way through life in a big city that moved a lot faster than the pace of her home reserve.

“She was living in a communal situation with three other roommates she was close to. I felt good about that,” said Rick, who also lost his 27-year-old granddaughter to suicide in February.

“It was just the outside influences. As parents we don’t know what’s out there. Sexuality is so much more open than when I was her age. You don’t know what young people deal with. There are so many factors involved in today’s world.”

As in so many Aboriginal communities across Canada, suicides like Amber’s are a growing concern. A reported 40 people took their lives in Maskwacis in the three-month period between November 2014 and January 2015.

The suicide rate in this country’s First Nation communities is five to six times higher than that of the rest of the population, and among Inuit people it is six to 11 times higher.

Last month, the 12-year-old grandson of Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Wilton Littlechild, also from Ermineskin, took his life.

In April, for the first time, delegates will discuss the issue of suicide at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York. Littlechild will be among them.

Suicide has become a serious problem for Indigenous populations around the globe. Here in Canada, it accounts for more than one-third of all deaths amongst Aboriginal youth.

As a youth worker who may have more tools than other parents faced with offspring who kill themselves – because he teaches about suicide prevention and grief recovery – Rick says he’s affected by his daughter’s death in ways that alarm him. 

“I don’t have a temper. But lately I find myself getting really angry, yet it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening around me. I’ve come to realize why I’m getting so irritated. I’m mad at Amber.”

He offers a reason suicide is escalating amongst his people.

“There is so much death in our community. It’s imprinted on our psyche. There’s so much of it people just automatically say ‘I’m going to kill myself’ without really meaning to say it. It’s on the mind of everyone out here in Maskwacis.”

Suicide doesn’t seem that serious to people. It’s become commonplace, he said.

“And that’s not normal.”

An Elder from Saskatchewan has suggested to Rick that negative energy may have built up around suicide to the point it’s become a spiritual entity that feeds on depression and destructive behaviour. It may push young people who might not normally take their lives to take that drastic step, according to the Elder.

Young people have approached Rick and disclosed they’ve heard and seen the entity and they’ve fought against it. It scared them because of its power.

Entity or not, a common thread among the suicide victims seems to be alcohol misuse, he added.

“I think there’s unresolved grief of some kind and that leads to alcohol. It’s a common denominator in not all, but in most, suicides.”

Rick tells young people to make contracts with each other.

“You can have brother to brother, sister to sister, or friend to friend say to each other ‘I need you to be alive for another year and if anything is getting in the way of you living, you have to talk to me about it’.

“People say the contract should be made to last forever, but saying a year gives young people a concrete time they can envision and work with. At the end of the year, you can renew the contract.”

And we definitely need to emotionally support each other, he said. “We don’t do that enough for each other.

“We send texts to each other that say ‘I love you’ and post little messages on Facebook, but it doesn’t take the place of taking the time to just go out and camp with each other. We need to take time for each other. We’re so modern we don’t show up on each other’s doorsteps anymore because we don’t want to intrude. It’s not intruding.”

When 12-year-olds like Littlechild’s grandson are taking their lives, Rick doesn’t think children in grades one and two are too young to hear messages about suicide.

“We have to create a curriculum of some kind and put it in the schools so children understand that suicide is not the answer.”

Photo Caption: Inez and Rick Lightning, parents of Amber Lightning. To avoid sensationalizing their daughter’s death, and risking copycat suicides, they disallowed the publishing of Amber’s photo.