ABSTRACT
First Nations and African American youth and families share parallel experiences with grief around unprecedented numbers of externally imposed sudden, violent, and intentional death and non-death losses as a function of ethnocentrism, pervasive forms of discrimination, and systemic oppression. Oppression is described as a sense of being caught between two negative and opposing alternatives and occurs when one group takes advantage of another group for its own gain. The number of suicide attempts and completed suicides among First Nations youth and families is astounding. One population highlighted in the media for its distressingly high rate of attempted and completed suicides, in the absence of appropriate grief-related support, is the Attawapiskat First Nation. As with First Nations Youth, African American youth also share in a rich cultural heritage marred by profound death and non-death losses and “race-based trauma” related to historical and systemic injustices.
