Today’s crochet mandala, made using Wink’s mandala pattern for the spoke mandala, is from Angela Skees of Little Black Marker. (Here’s more info on the Mandalas for Marinke project.)
Angela writes:
“From one creative soul to another … Remember that the things we make are crafted from our time and love. Thinking of you Wink.”
Angela is a fun crafter who shares on her blog that she is
“a graphic designer, an artist and art history buff, font and logo nerd, crochet guru, dog lover, anime fanatic, and all around weirdo” who shares “doodles, drawings, digital coloring, crochet projects and advice” among other things on her site.
Find her as @khyarete on Instagram, Ravelry, Etsy and Twitter.
For today’s awareness-raising portion of the project, I wanted to alert you to the alarming news that Native American Youth Suicide Rates Are At Crisis Levels according to the CDC. 40% of suicides in the Native American community are among youth age 15-24 and “among young adults ages 18 to 24, Native American have higher rates of suicide than any other ethnicity, and higher than the general population”.
The information from this study was information that may have been overlooked for some time.
“The report is also notable because it is not a typical analysis for the CDC. It was the passion project of two college-aged summer interns who wanted to investigate the suicide data for their age group, (statistician and research) Miniño explained. In isolating this age group and deciding to include data on American Indians/Alaskan Natives (groups often left out of analyses because of the quality of the reporting), the team uncovered this unexpected disparity, which Miniño acknowledged as shocking.”
It is important to note that continued studies of Native American youth suicide rates (and how to help this population) are very important and also to be culturally aware that suicide rates vary greatly among different tribes.
I also want to remind you here that Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation (a South Dakota Native American community) accepts crochet donations if you are interested in giving much-needed handmade items to help this population.
