Cultural Continuity as a Hedge Against Suicide in Canada’s First Nations

• Main Authors: Michael J. Ch, Christopher Lalonde, Michael Chandler
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.502.2825; http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/lalonde/manuscripts/1998TransCultural.pdf

This research report examines self-continuity and its role as a protective factor against suicide. First, we review the notions of personal and cultural continuity and their relevance to under-standing suicide among First Nations youth. The central theoretical idea developed here is that, because it is constitutive of what it means to have or be a self to somehow count oneself as continuous in time, anyone whose identity is undermined by radical personal and cultural change is put at special risk to suicide for the reason that they lose those future commitments that are necessary to guarantee appropriate care and concern for their own well-being. It is for just such reasons that adolescents and young adults—who are living through moments of es-pecially dramatic change—constitute such a high risk group. This generalized period of in-creased risk during adolescence can be made even more acute within communities that lack a concomitant sense of cultural continuity that might otherwise support the efforts of young persons to develop more adequate self-continuity warranting practices. Next, we present data to demonstrate that, while certain indigenous or First Nations groups do in fact suffer dra-matically elevated suicide rates, such rates vary widely across British Columbia’s nearly 200