Horror in Red Lake
A school shooting, and no answers
No support. And that help is perilously hard to find, despite the fact that the incidence of adolescent depression is quite high. An estimated 20 percent of all U.S. children and adolescents have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, and 13 percent of all adolescents experience "serious emotional disturbance."
Indeed, guidance counselors, primary conduits of support for troubled children, increasingly have little time to guide, says Jill Cook, a spokeswoman for the American School Counselor Association. Experts stress that ensuring each student has a relationship with at least one adult can go a long way toward defusing a bad situation. While the number of guidance counselors has grown steadily over the past two decades, Cook notes, they are often assigned to administer the litany of tests mandated by state and federal lawmakers. "It's basically almost all they have time to do," she says.
In their zeal to prevent school violence, teachers and counselors may rush to judgment based on a student's physical appearance or unconventional attitudes. A lot of kids like the nihilistic, gothic style, but they're often quite thoughtful, strong students, says Katherine Newman, author of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings . "It may mean that they are expressing a kind of opposition to the football-cheerleader end of the social spectrum," says Newman, "but that [should] not make them into objects of suspicion."
Back at Red Lake, the shock has not abated. "It's devastating," said Red Lake Tribal Chairman Floyd Jourdain. "We all know each other, play together, shop in the same place. It's a pretty close-knit community."
The reservation is a sovereign nation roughly 100 miles south of the Canadian border in northern Minnesota. About 5,000 of the approximately 10,000 enrolled members live on the reservation, an expanse of lakes and forests. It is a very private community. As the national--and international--news media descended last week, Jourdain ordered them not to roam about the tribal property. At least two photographers were arrested and expelled from the reservation.
By Tuesday, the grieving had already begun, drawing on both Christian and Indian traditions. Healing songs were sung, sage was burned. The school fence was littered with flowers, stuffed animals, and messages. And outside Thursday's wake for student Chase Lussier, 15, tribe members were taking turns sitting by a watch fire they would tend for the three days until the funeral--the three days it takes a soul to make its way to the spirit world.
With Molly Miron, Helen Fields and Angie C. Marek
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