Goodall tackles Native suicide

Jane Goodall And the Rise of the Planet of the Chimps

By John JurgensenA new documentary film, “Jane’s Journey,” covers these chapters, but also takes the story back to Goodall’s childhood in England, where she rooted in the family garden and doted on a stuffed monkey named Jubilee. Her later scientific breakthroughs, including her discoveries that chimps were not vegetarians and used rudimentary tools, are noted in the movie, but the emphasis is on her current work through the non-profit Jane Goodall Institute. In the movie she helps bring a youth conservation program to an Indian reservation in South Dakota, where a rash of youth suicides had hit the Oglala Sioux Tribe.And:How did you, as a primatologist, end up at the Pine Ridge Reservation, trying to address a very human problem, teen suicide?

Flying over the Gombe national park in 1991, I realized that outside this tiny 30-square mile patch, all the trees were gone. More people than the land could support. Terrible poverty. That led to us to forming a program where the people created a buffer around the park. To make conversation work, you have to work with people and get them to be your partners. What’s the point of saving forests if we’re not educating young people? Our Roots and Shoots program, which is young people choosing projects to make the world better, is now in 120 countries. From pre-school right through university. I thought, the program is working so well in Africa, why wouldn’t it work on an Indian reservation? It makes perfect sense once you look.Comment:  For more on Native suicide, see Anti-Suicide Arts Workshop and Oprah Network Funds Suicide Prevention.

Below:  "British primatologist Jane Goodall holds a speech while sitting next to a toy monkey at the town hall in Hamburg, on September 3, 2011." (Christian Charisius/AFP/Getty Images)