Caravan to prevent suicide Treks across Reservation

Joseph Miller, Jr., had just completed two tours of duty in Vietnam. After receiving orders, he bid farewell to his friends in the 82nd Airborne and traveled to camp in Dac To, awaiting his flight back to the states.

"The next morning, I was playing cards with some medics in their tent, and some guy came in running, saying 'we need you at the LZ," Miller said. "We've got wounded coming in."

Miller asked who had been hit. First Battalion, was the reply.

"'Hey, that's my battalion.' I said. 'Do you know the company?'" No, was the reply.

He rushed off to the LZ.

"It was my platoon they were bringing in, dead and wounded," Miller said. "I had been with them the day before. They walked into an ambush. I helped unload my friends out of this helicopter. I carried that with me for years and years because I felt like a coward, I felt like a chicken for not being there with my friends fighting with them. I carried that guilt. I still carry it."

Miller didn't speak of his guilt for many years. Compounded with the horrors of combat he had seen, the trauma was immense. Over the next decade and more, Miller contemplated suicide.

"People are hesitant to talk about it," he said. "I was too. In 1982, I considered it too because of all the trauma, the post traumatic stress disorder I carried back from Vietnam. I had those thoughts for a long time. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to or not until I talked to a really good friend I had grown up with. He was a gunner on a chopper and got shot down a couple of times. He told me what he was thinking about doing. That is when I opened up to him. It felt good to talk about it."

It was important to discuss the matter with someone who could understand where Miller was coming from, he said.

"We don't let very much go outside of our circle because a lot of people don't understand it."

Miller, lives out his years now in peace on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. An Elder of his Tribe, Miller knows what suicide can do to families and their communities and wants to make a difference for those considering what he once had.

To help spread a message of hope, Miller participated in Saturday's 3rd annual Suicide Awareness Walk/Ride sponsored by the Fort Beck Tribes. The event began in Nashua at about 8 a.m. with a sage smudging ceremony, during which participants sought to drive out negativity and foster healing. After a prayer, the participants began there journey eastward. The first stop after Nashua was in Frazer. Then it was on to other communities dotting U.S. Highway 2, with side trips in each to deliver resources about suicide prevention to community members. The last stop was Poplar.

Hilary Gourneau, of Poplar, and her niece Kylie, participated in the caravan.

"Right now, I am a director of Head Start," Gourneau said. "We've had some family experience with suicide and losing loved ones. As a teacher, I have been exposed to that. I have had experience with students having idealization [of suicide] and loved onces committing suicide. There are a lack of resources for mental health on the reservation. That is why I feel these [events such as these] are important because they bring awareness. We are out here and we care."

It is the youngest members of the Tribe who are impacted the most, Gourneau said.

"I know little onces are affected by what happens in the home and the community. The things that happen to children by the age of 3- or 4-years-old, they are already experiencing trauma by then."

Such traumas may remain dormant for years down the road, but can ultimately lead to suffering in future, Gourneau said.

"Trauma will come out in ways such as self-harm through substance use, maybe being in domestic violence relationships, or taking their own lives. We don't have the resources, necessarily. We have cultural resources that can help us in that healing way, but I think it takes individuals start these things where people can be in places of healing. I think putting more of these positive events on will help."

Miller agreed.

Hopefully, people will see how it affects other people, especially their immediate relatives, their family and close friends. The hurt it can cause them. The pain," Miller said. "And also, becoming aware of it, there are ways they can learn to cope with their problem rather than taking this drastic step, knowing there is support for them. They can find people they can trust to get through the emotions. They are a very important thing, emotions."

Suicide is more common among veterans, per capita, than among the civilian population, with about 18 current or former servicemembers taking their own lives in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. And, there are many veterans on the reservation. Miller's father, his uncle, his cousins and now his son have all served.

Miller has found it easier to speak to his peers about the trauma's he carries with him and thoughts of suicide.

"It is one of those things," he said. "I didn't want to talk about it. It was the shame of it, I guess. But, I wouldn't have to worry about it if I took my life. I didn't do it because I thought about my family, my children, my grandchildren and all the old people who raised me."

While over 50-years have passed, Miller is still haunted by his memories.

"On Valentine's Day 1968, President Johnson sent us back to Vietnam," he said. "When other people's thoughts turned to love and romance, my thoughts turned to war and chaos."

Miller once asked his father, Joseph Miller, Sr., a veteran of the Second World War, if the it would ever get easier to deal with the traumas of war.

"He said nothing for a while. Then he told me, 'it has been 47-years since I was in a submarine in the South Pacific. Some nights I wake up and can still hear the depth charges exploding outside of our sub, rocking it. It is part of you. It will never leave you. But, eventually the hurt will go away.'"

Even so, the mories remain.

"For me, a lot of it is memories," Miller said. Some of the memories are very tough. I still cry. It took me a long time to do that."

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK, the suicide prevention lifeline.