John Tetpon

OPINION: Focusing millions of dollars on symptoms rather than core issues has failed to produce solutions to the staggering and complex social problems that have devastated Native Alaskans for generations.

OPINION: If it is now legal to kill someone simply out of fear, instead of actual provocation, then so-called "stand your ground" laws are evil, including the one set to take effect in Alaska in September.

OPINION: Alaska Native men on probation and parole live under a state of siege, knowing if they take a drink, they may be sent back in jail. Yet, there are few opportunities on the outside.

It was a story that begged to be told. It was 1987. That year, Anchorage Daily News editor Mike Doogan noted that an alarming number of obituaries were coming across his desk without listing a cause of death. That meant only one thing; these were victims of suicide. Self-inflicted deaths. And most of them were Alaska Native young people.