The Healing Power of Diverse Voices

by Brian Lee Young

“Don’t think those thoughts, shiyazhí,” my grandma had said to me while I sat on a hospital bed. She wiped away tears with a disintegrating tissue that had soaked up her previous sobs. I was in seventh grade at that time and had just confessed to my school counselor that I had been fantasizing about what the world would be like without me. My mom was in the hallway with some psychological professional discussing how I was to be flown down to Phoenix, Arizona to be put into a suicide watch facility for the next two weeks, during which I would also be put on a regimen of antidepressants as well as initiate intensive therapy.

Growing up on the reservation, I had been exposed to gangs, drugs, alcohol, and people in my community who have mental health disorders, such as depression. In 2021, the rate of suicide for American Indian and Alaskan Native (AI/AN) populations was 28.1 per 100,000, compared to 17.4 per 100,000 for white non-Hispanic populations (CDC, 2024). The rate of suicidal ideation can be as high as 25% in certain Indigenous communities (Price and Khubchandani, 2025). As a 12-year-old, I thought that it was perfectly common for everyone to have a deep, unending sadness in their hearts.

I first came across these shocking statistics when, years later, I was doing research for my final senior thesis in 2010. I had decided to write about Indigenous self-representation in cinema, as I was set to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Studies from Yale University. In my research, I discovered Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), which was released in Igloolik, a hamlet in Nunavut, Canada. The movie retells a traditional Inuit myth, in which Atanarjuat battles to rid his pre-colonization community of a malicious entity. Every scene in this movie reflects how the Inuits’ ancestors lived. I highly encourage you all to watch it.