Lower Kuskokwim School District pits cultural, personal strengths against adversity.
Students connect over a game at the Sources of Strength training in Bethel, Alaska on Oct. 10, 2023.
The students were all from grades 6 through 12, and they were there because their communities had identified them as leaders capable of learning the lessons of a suicide prevention program called Sources of Strength. They will be responsible for bringing the lessons of the day home to their peers. “Grief. The past couple of years it’s been more grief. Understanding grief. They’ve all been affected by death,” he said.
The wall above Biela’s desk is covered in artwork and pictures of students he has counseled and befriended. He pointed out several who have died from suicide, then pulled one image off the wall and looked at it for a moment: “I knew him since he was one year old,” he said, before gently laying it down on his desk..
Two years ago, when he and his brother Cory brought Sources of Strength to Nightmute, they used the mental health example of Cory’s guitar, his source of strength. “I was trying to calm my mind and drawing a guitar and it really helped me,” he said. Brothers, Cory and Colby George, attend the Sources of Strength training in Bethel on Oct. 10. The twin brothers are from Nightmute and have been involved with Sources of Strength since spring 2022.
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