Nine From Wyoming Reservation Hang Selves in Two Months : Suicides of Young Indians Called Epidemic

They buried Clyde Blackburn on the Wind River Indian Reservation Saturday, the ninth young man who has hanged himself here in an inexplicable outbreak of suicide that began late on the night of Aug. 10.

The 25-year-old Blackburn was the oldest and the latest--but not, authorities fear, the last--of the males as young as 14 to hang themselves.

“This is a crisis of major proportions,” reservation officials say, an “epidemic.”

“I’ve been coroner 25 years,” Fremont County Coroner Larry L. Lee said, “and there’s always been economic problems and there’s always been unemployment on the reservation, but there’s never been anything like this.

“We don’t know why they’re doing this,” Lee said. “We just haven’t been able to find out. There have been a couple of notes, but neither said why. The thing that bothers me the most is the young kids 14, 16. They haven’t even lived yet, and they’re killing themselves.”

16-Year-Old’s Death

One who seemed to have much to live for was Roderick Underwood, a 16-year-old sophomore active in basketball, track and the Council of Many Feathers youth club, who told his father on Sept. 26: “See you, dad,” and went outside to hang himself on a corral.

The cause may be “young men who are not sure what their cultural identity is,” suggested Dr. James Shore, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center in Denver and an expert on Indian suicide.

“(They) are continually confronted with a homogenous, consuming, dominant (white) society,” Shore told a press conference last week. It is a society to which they do not belong even as they see their own cultural identity slipping away, such as the loss of native language.

“They do not know what camp they are in,” Shore said.

78% Unemployment Rate

Inevitably, though, the search for a cause of the tragedy turns to the rampant alcoholism, idleness, federal penury in funding Indian programs and the 78% unemployment rate on the reservation.

Indeed, one victim was found with a letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Coroner Lee said, passing him over for a bureau police job. “The letter was right there with the (suicide) note,” Lee said.

“We need to get some sort of recreation program on the reservation,” said Burnett Whiteplume, chairman of the Business Council for the Arapaho tribe, which shares the reservation with the Shoshone tribe.

“But that’s only a start,” Whiteplume said, adding that all of the victims not in school were unemployed and that 34 jobs held by tribal members were lost when a nearby steel plant closed. “We need economic development.”

The latest rash of suicides began with Reynold Wallowingbull Jr., 19, arrested Aug. 10 for public intoxication. He was found hanged in the Riverton City Jail about 10:30 p.m. with a noose made from socks taken from the feet of a sleeping inmate.

Donovan Blackburn, 16, (unrelated to Clyde Blackburn) was next, on Aug. 16. He was a friend of Wallowingbull and had been a pallbearer at his funeral. The third victim, 14-year-old Darren Shakespeare, was a close friend of Donovan Blackburn.

‘Copycat, Domino Thing’

“It’s a copycat, domino thing,” Lee said. And Shore said he is afraid that it may go on for six or 12 months.

So the epidemic has gone on, claiming Paul Dewey, 23; James Norah, 22; Thomas Littleshield, 19, also in the city jail on intoxication charges; Underwood; Levi Trumbull, 24, and now Clyde Blackburn, on Oct. 1.

“The hangings are different (from each other),” Lee said of the methods used, “but they are all suicidal. No homicidal, no auto-erotic and no accidental.

“They (the parents) say, ‘Why did my son do this?’ ” Lee said, “and I can’t tell them.”

Complete results of alcohol and drug tests on the victims are not yet available.

Whatever the cause of the epidemic, the result has been an intense effort to prevent more suicides. Donovan Blackburn was a bright, promising student at St. Stephens Indian School on the reservation, and the school is trying to steer other young people away from following the same path.

The St. Stephens high school has voluntary support groups that meet one day a week, in which teachers or staff members work with eight to 10 students for about half an hour. Topics vary from week to week but students express their feelings--and listen to feedback from other students.

And, every Tuesday, students can participate in a suicide prevention group with mental health counselors.

Working on Tight Budget

“We are doing everything we can on a shoestring budget to help students in coping with life and making decisions,” said school Supt. Louis Headley, who noted that, although federal law calls for Indian schools to be funded at levels matching state schools, St. Stephens receives only half of the $4,000 that the state’s public schools receive per student.

“We want to offer even more services and opportunities through a well-rounded program,” Headley said. “This is limited . . . due to the lack of Bureau of Indian Affairs funding for the high school.”

Although the current epidemic of nine suicides has sent a shiver through the reservation of 6,500 people, another occurred earlier this year on the reservation, and two more hanging suicides claimed Arapaho males living off the reservation. Only two occurred last year. In recent years, only the six suicides of 1979 come close to the latest epidemic.

The current suicide rate--nearly 20 times the national rate but somewhat distorted because of the relatively small population involved--has brought an unwanted glare of publicity and intrusion into the private world of the Wind River reservation, 2 million acres of high plains and wilderness in west central Wyoming.

Newsmen Chased Away

A network television crew angered mourners at one funeral, a newspaper reporter and photographer were chased away and a television crew from Salt Lake City, held at shotgun point by a group of Indian men, saw its equipment and videotape destroyed.

“We are hurting,” Whiteplume said of the impact of the suicides on reservation residents. “We need to get something for young adults . . . learning to do something that you’re good at, something you feel good about.

“We can’t wait. We need to do something now.”

“I hope it’s ended,” Coroner Lee said of the epidemic.

“But I’m afraid it hasn’t.”