The village of Gambell, on Saint Lawerence Island off the coast of Alaska, is one of the most remote and isolated places on earth. It’s also home to 700 people, all of them Siberian Yup’ik. The people of Gambell have suffered terribly from colonial practices such as forced assimilation at government boarding schools, leading to some of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world. Today, community-led mental health programs are beginning to heal trauma in Gambell, but suicides continue. One popular high school basketball player took his life a year prior to this photograph, causing other youth to avoid memories of him at the only basketball court in the village.
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