I'm sure you've heard suicide among young people in America is endemic. It's widespread. New Mexico is no exception to this rampant act. Certainly it's not just an Indian issue, but I'm sure you've heard suicide rates are worse in Native America. That's true. They're much worse.

Let me tell you just exactly how bad it is, in case you really want to know. Recently on the Zuni reservation there were 10 suicides in a one-year span. During a 13-month span on the Navajo reservation, just on the New Mexico side of the reservation, there were 15 suicides. The last suicide involved a 10-year-old kid who hung himself at the end of this past school year. That's pretty bad. The Pueblos and Apaches have similar problems.

I mention the Zuni and Navajo suicides because I want to tell you about the American Indian Life Skills curriculum. According to Hayes Lewis, director of the Center for Lifelong Education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, AILS is a program that embodies generic principles of health behavioral change and an appropriate level of cultural sensitivity.

"It has been found to reduce suicidal thoughts," said Hayes, a citizen of the Zuni tribe. "It increases confidence to manage anger, and to improve peer helping and suicide-prevention skills among the Zuni youth."

After the Zuni community was hit with a rash of suicides in the late '80s, while Hayes was superintendent of Zuni Schools, they called in Teresa LaFromboise, a professor at Stanford University, to assist them with their crisis.

The school-based curriculum she developed, AILS, is designed to reduce students' hopelessness, depression and anger. It is designed to give students tools to effectively deal with life's challenges, including helping a suicidal friend find appropriate intervention. It resulted in fewer suicides among Zuni youth. In two other longitudinal studies, AILS was found to produce a significant reduction in suicide and suicide attempts.

With the most recent suicides (not to mention failed attempted suicides) at both Zuni and Navajo, it's been requested by community members to bring back the AILS curriculum and implement it back into the schools.

Hayes would like to see it as a required class, such as freshmen language arts, so that all students take AILS early on in high school. He said the curriculum was originally designed with the New Mexico standards for language arts in mind.

"Youth are inherently resilient," said Hayes. "We have to help them develop skills that focus on their future. It's a learning experience, it's painful, but we have to be persistent. We have to nurture their talents."

He said the bottom line is that it's going to take the entire community to eradicate this suicide plague. He said an essential part of AILS is to identify community strengths such as cultural beliefs and values that help youth clearly understand there are spiritual consequences and alternatives to taking their own lives.

"Tribal communities don't seem have a good idea of how to initially address the matter, primarily because of the complicated set of related issues, such as drug and alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, unresolved community and family trauma, and other accepted dysfunctional behaviors. The challenges and controversy surrounding suicide, including religious and cultural taboos about not talking about death, have to be overcome before we can do anything," Hayes said.

A comprehensive and holistic approach certainly involves tribal leadership. Often tribal leaders shy away from the sensitive issue of suicide, but our tribal communities and our young people can no longer afford to accept a fragmented approach that doesn't involve everyone. We have to create safer environments that enhance life, and not point fingers when young people take their lives. As Hayes put it, "suicide is everyone's problem."

Harlan McKosato, a Sauk/Ioway, is host of the syndicated radio show Native America Calling, which airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on KUNM, 89.9 FM.