Continuity as a Protective Factor against Suicide in First Nations Youth

some legendary and less trammeled past, the tragedy of suicide among Canada’s Aboriginal youth was once less commonplace than it is today is, perhaps, unanswerable. What is not open to serious doubt is the accumulating body of contemporary evidence (evidence forcibly brought to public attention by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples) demonstrating that, at least among certain of Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities, youth suicide rates have reached calamitous proportions – rates said to be higher than those of any culturally identifiable group in the world (Kirmayer, 1994). The remarkable outpouring of concern over such suicides that followed in the wake of the Royal Commission resulted in scores of public gatherings, funded research initiatives, government reports, and scholarly publications. Although this literature is much too large to be summarized here, it is, nevertheless, possible to extract from all of these efforts a few summary conclusions to guide future research and practice.