Palmer man helps lead fight against depression

PALMER — Bill Pagaran recently found himself walking through an Anchorage mall feeling sorry for himself.

“Am I doing any good?” he recalled thinking. “Am I really making that much of a difference?”

While embroiled in his self-pity party, a young Alaska Native girl who was with a couple of friends stopped Pagaran.

“Hey, you’re that guy,” she said. “You came to my village. I was suicidal and you gave me that $20 bill.”

She pulled the crumpled, battered bill from her purse and said, “I’m keeping this forever. It made all the difference in my life.”

At a time when his faith was tested, Pagaran was shown his life’s work does affect others in ways he doesn’t see every day.

“I walked away in tears and I realized that, wow, that really made a difference in her life,” he said.

That $20 bill was one of many Pagaran has given away over the past decade in his work with Carry the Cure, a Valley-based non-profit that has made a commitment to “convince the youth of Alaska to be committed to life,” said Pagaran, the group’s president.

“Yes, that’s a tall order. That’s really our main program. We want to give young people reasons to live, and a big part of that is coming back to the core of helping them discover their self-worth and embracing their identities.”

A Tlingit from Palmer and a 1988 Wasilla High School graduate, Pagaran visits schools and villages throughout Western Alaska with a mission to reduce the high suicide rate among the state’s youth and Alaska Native populations.

One of the more popular parts of the assemblies he holds at village schools includes the $20 bill example. First, Pagaran takes out a fresh, crisp, new $20 bill.

“I’ll wave it and say, ‘What is this?’” he said. “Then I’ll say, ‘Who wants this?’ Of course, everyone wants it. Then I throw it on the ground and step on it. ‘Now who wants it?’ Then I crumple it up, then ask again.”

Every step of the way, all the youth say they want that $20 bill. It’s an exercise Pagaran said illustrates that, no matter how battered or beaten it is, that $20 bill doesn’t lose its value, a lesson for youth who feel they have no self-worth through life’s circumstances.

“At the end, it’s still of the same value as when I started,” he said.

When one of those $20 bills came back to him in that mall, Pagaran said he knew he was on the right path — and it’s a path that didn’t have a great start.

An Alaska Native, Pagaran was born in Washington state and moved to the Last Frontier in 1975 at the age of 6. He settled first in the Anchorage area then moved to the Valley, where he attended junior high and high school.

“My mom gave complete custody to me to a complete stranger, who abused me in about every way possible,” Pagaran said. Telling his story helps others realize he truly understands why there’s an epidemic of depression with Alaska Native youth.

When he was 4 years old, Pagaran’s uncles used to take bets whether the child could finish a shot of whisky or take a hit of marijuana. By the time he was 7, his parents had divorced and he later became addicted to marijuana himself.

Through it all, Pagaran had his music, which he used to earn a college scholarship and continues today as a member of Broken Walls, an award-winning Native American band that has performed around Alaska and North America. Broken Walls is a six-time nominee for the Aboriginal Music Awards, and is another vehicle for Pagaran to spread his message.

Although the band and Carry the Cure are separate entities, Pagaran said he enjoys opportunities to marry their missions. One such time will come with the running of the 2011 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, where Broken Walls will perform at checkpoints along the trail, including Fairbanks, Tanana, McGrath, Kaltag, Unalakleet, White Mountain and Nome. All the performances in the rural communities will focus on suicide prevention.

“We feel we have a message of hope that needs to be carried across Alaska,” Pagaran said. In fact, Carry the Cure took its inspiration from the long sled dog treks made to take life-saving medicine to Western Alaska villages to fight the 1925 diphtheria epidemic.

“Just as diphtheria was an epidemic then, the alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse and suicide and depression are huge issues in Alaska today,” he said. “We can carry that message of hope and life. We know we save lives. We know we’ve led people into productive lives pursuing their dreams and their goals, freeing people from their past hurts.”

During a recent workshop with hundreds of Native Ojiwes in a community in northern Ontario, Canada, Pagaran asked a simple question — how many are ashamed to be Ojiwe.

“Everyone in that room, probably about 300 people, all raised their hands,” he said. “It breaks your heart, but then you start to realize that the reason they’re ashamed of who they are is because they’ve been told for hundreds of years now that they’re no good. Their identity was stripped from them and we scratch our heads these days and wonder how come there’s such a problem with drug abuse and depression and suicide. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a big mystery.”

Pagaran admits that, “I myself was ashamed to say I was Alaska Native until I was 25 years old, and I grew up in Alaska,” he said. “I would tell people I was oriental, Mexican — anything but Native. I believed these lies like so many other people do. Our message is not only hope, but also (bringing) that identity to help people realize that when God created us, he didn’t create any mistakes.”

While Pagaran admits the battle sometimes seems uphill both ways, he can take solace in knowing his lessons don’t always fall on deaf ears. There’s always that young woman who cherishes a beat-up $20 bill.