email: lloyd_ryan@nf.sympatico.ca It is with growing alarm, concern and compassion that we witness the continuing (and growing?) high rate of suicide in Canada's Aboriginal community. This phenomenon has numerous far-reaching and negative implications and, up to the present, few satisfactory explanations and fewer proposed solutions.

It is, thus, imperative that aspects of contemporary Aboriginal personal and community living that have not yet come under sufficient scrutiny be examined and analyzed, not for anthropological or abstract sociological purposes, but for intensely personal and life purposes. It must be realized that, sometimes, it is that which is most ubiquitous and familiar which may be most ignored, the assumption being that what is common is not significant. An example is parasites borne by the river that has fed us for generations, or heavy metals in our staple food, both contributing to chronic health problems, and both ignored because we expect severe dysfunction to have exot

The Aboriginal dropout has few or no supports at his community or village level and may drift to Toronto or Winnipeg or Montreal or Vancouver, where he quickly perceives himself as one of a small, despised, and unrespected minority, with no skills of value to the dominant culture. Alcohol becomes a refuge and a relief.

Is it any wonder that along that path suicide becomes an option - an option for someone who perceives himself as having no value, whose culture has lost its value, and who has neither the social, educational, or employment skills which have currency and value in the dominant culture?

The solution for Aboriginal communities, and indeed for the general community, does not lie in that direction, primarily because the crucial questions have been neither asked nor answered.

Is the very model of contemporary schooling so out-of-step with natural brain functioning that it precipitates the destruction of children's self-esteem, so much so that their personal and social deterioration - and suicide - is an almost inevitable result? The question is important for schooling in the general population. The question has even more significance when asked in a context of the schooling of Aboriginal children.

In the dominant culture, if a student doesn't "do well" at school, there are still many other aspects of society and culture that provides personal "support" (more-or-less successful friends who are "just like me", cultural activities, TV, employment - even if part time and minimum wage, general acceptance, being able to blend in, a society that continues to function, at least one parent who "works," an allowance, and so on), so much so that the student is not challenged or his integrity not breached at a sufficiently fundamental personal and cultural level that suicide is a perceived option. It should be noted, however, that even in the dominant culture, the cohort most at risk of suicide is 15 - 25 year olds, which should raise concern about schooling-related causation.

It is also important to note that at not a single teacher training institution in Canada (and, as far as I have determined, thus far, only one in the US), is there a course on the nature of the learning brain, nor do teacher training courses contain elements of that area of knowledge. It also appears that there are no teacher training faculties who have even exhibited interest in that area of knowledge. In other words, the infection is firmly entrenched at the teacher training institutions and since it is not recognized as an important issue (In fact it is not recognized at all!) the situation is unlikely to soon change.

Consider the Aboriginal child from what may be a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional community having inflicted on him the contemporary dominant model of schooling. Consider, even, a healthy Aboriginal child from a functional family in a functioning community being forced to attend the dysfunctional and brain-antagonistic school.

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Approximate Word count = 2208
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)