The pandemic took a harsh toll on U.S. teen girls’ mental health, with almost 60% reporting feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness, according to a government survey released Monday that bolsters earlier data. More than a quarter of American Indians and Alaska Natives said they had seriously considered a suicide attempt, higher than other races and ethnicities. Feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness affected more than one-third of kids of all races and ethnicities and increased over previous years. Recent poor mental health was reported by half of LGBTQ kids and almost one-third of American Indian and Alaska Native youth.
Tribes in Maine are feeling left out of a Native American resurgence by a 40-year-old federal law denying their self-determination. Hundreds of the 574 federally recognized Indian nations in the U.S. now routinely provide their citizens with the full array of services customarily expected from state and local governments, from tax collection to environmental protection regulations. At the same time, many tribes are becoming the economic engines of their regions. All this has happened over the past several decades under federal policies that, unlike previous policies, support tribal self-determination through self-government. The progress has not been uniformly outstanding, nor is it close to complete. Tribes have long histories of disempowerment and consequent deprivation to overcome. Nonetheless, per capita incomes in Indian Country have grown more than 60% since the start of genuine tribal self-government in the late 1980s. This growth far outstrips the 17% growth in personal income experienced by the average U.S. citizen over the same period.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
