Reduce tribal suicide rates, Nevada’s senators urge feds

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Thursday highlighting the need to improve tribes’ access to mental health services funded by the government and to incorporate culturally appropriate practices to help reduce the high rates of suicides in tribal communities.

Tribes have among the highest rates of suicide and mental health needs in Nevada and across the country, “yet access to robust and culturally competent care for Tribes lags behind other communities in the United States,” the Nevada Democrats wrote in the letter.

Out of the 28 tribes, colonies and bands in Nevada, one tribe recently experienced a suicide cluster that left 21 children without a parent, according to the Nevada Indian Commission, the senators wrote.

“The unique nature of tribal communities and their culture, history, generational trauma, and geographic location, compounded with traditional risk factors for mental health, require a holistic and respectful approach to mental health care that includes culturally appropriate considerations,” Cortez Masto and Rosen wrote.

Stacey Montooth, executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission, said tribal nations in Nevada “have been irreparably scarred by suicide.”

“For the first people of this land, intergenerational trauma coupled with daily hardships of reservation life, especially for our young people, have created unbearable situations for which taking one’s life is commonplace,” she said in a statement.

On Thursday, Nevada’s senators also joined other Senate colleagues in signing a letter urging the Department of Justice to address the high rate of cases involving violence against women on tribal land that the department declines to prosecute.

In the letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Cortez Masto and other senators asked for the rationale not to prosecute cases of violence against women on tribal lands, and they called for improved coordination between the DOJ and the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Murdered and Missing Indigenous Unit.

Native American women are two to three times more likely than women of any other race to experience violence, stalking or sexual assault, the senators wrote, citing the Justice Department.

In 2021, the U.S. Attorney declined 18 percent of cases, with insufficient evidence the most common reason given for the decision, according to the letter. Of those cases the Department of Justice declined, more than half involved physical and sexual assaults, homicide, sexual exploitation or failure to register as a sex offender, the letter says.

The senators wrote that the department’s decision not to prosecute those cases contributes to a culture where the offenders “feel emboldened because there is no one to hold them accountable.”

In the letter, the senators requested the department answer several questions, such as how there is a lack of evidence to prosecute many of those cases and how the decision to decline prosecuting a case is communicated to families of the victims.

If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the Lifeline network at 988. Live chat is available at 988lifeline.org.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.