Historically, suicide was a rare occurrence amongst Indigenous Canadian people, and it was only after contact with Europeans and the effects of colonialism that suicide became prevalent.While New Zealand’s general suicide rate has increased over the past four years (at the time of this report), Māori men are disproportionately represented in the statistics, with a 12 per cent increase of suicide deaths per 100 000 people in the last year, according to provisional data.Suicide accounted for 40% of all Indigenous deaths in this age bracket. In 2017, suicide remained the leading cause of death for both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous children and young people between 5-17 years of age.These are all countries where the Indigenous peoples have elevated suicide rates compared to the non-Indigenous/mainstream population. The countries reviewed for suicide rates were Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America, Greenland, and Scandinavian countries of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. The countries identified for this background paper share similar colonial histories and all but Greenland have populations where the Indigenous population is significantly smaller in comparison to the non-Indigenous/mainstream population.
This background paper presents an overview of suicide in Indigenous peoples in countries where there is a dominant White society.
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