Toksook Bay documentary on suicide prevention screened for Alaska lawmakers

Alaska lawmakers gathered Thursday to watch a documentary about how a Yup'ik village on Nelson Island confronts one of rural Alaska's most urgent crises: youth suicide.

The 19-minute film, "Talking to the Tundra: How a Yupik Village Heals Together," was screened in the Senate Finance Committee room. The documentary follows Toksook Bay residents as they navigate grief, cultural healing practices, and the stark absence of daily professional mental health care in southwestern Alaska.

"We have I would argue the most powerful 19 minutes you are going to experience maybe in a long time," a legislator said before the screening. "The message is beyond compelling. It is a message to us to take the issue of mental health and the very, very tragic sort of circumstances surrounding increasing rates of suicide in a lot of our communities."

The film centers on Hope and Healing Week, an annual community gathering in Toksook Bay that brings together elders, families, and high school students to process loss through culturally grounded activities. Young men in the documentary describe losing multiple friends and family members to suicide within short spans of time.

"I lost 5 friends, actually, one year after the other," one young man said in the film. "I was pretty close. I even played ball with them in high school."

Another described losing four cousins. "Most are tired of being strong," he said. "Most are tired of carrying everything that happened in the past."

Toksook Bay sits on Nelson Island in southwestern Alaska, off the road system and accessible only by air. The village lacks the kind of daily professional mental health support available in urban centers. A school counselor who travels to seven villages described serving more than 658 students across the region. That caseload leaves graduates without consistent support once they leave school.

"The graduates are able to give me a call, or when I am in the village, they can come in and stop in and see me," the counselor said in the film. "But most of them after that, they lose the support from the school and they start their own path, so they are not too sure about talking about their feelings anymore."

One young man in the documentary survived a suicide attempt and spent 12 days in a hospital receiving daily therapy. "That is what we need to cry out for out here, professional therapy," he said. "They need that person, or they need that group, or they need that team. They need the constant everyday therapy that we do not have out here."

The film shows how Toksook Bay residents turn to traditional practices when professional help is unavailable. Elders counsel young men to process grief through subsistence activities: hunting, fishing, time on the tundra. Hope and Healing Week includes community walks, drumming, smudging ceremonies, and potlucks that bring the village together.