By Nigel Duara for CalMatters
A member of the Humboldt County Yurok tribe who advocated for better mental health treatment and suicide intervention in rural Northern California has died in an apparent murder-suicide.
Celinda Gonzales was 59.
In 2020, we wrote about her work in Humboldt County, where about 2 and a half times as many residents die by suicide per capita as the rest of the state.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said they found two bodies in a home in the Yurok reservation village of Weitchpec on Feb. 3.
“Based on the preliminary investigation, the incident appears to be consistent with a murder-suicide,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.
The sheriff’s office declined to elaborate on the nature of the crime scene or the identities of the people they found.
The Yurok tribe confirmed Gonzales’s identity in a memorial.
“She was a beloved friend to many Tribal Councilmembers, staff and community members,” the tribe said in the memorial. “This is a tremendous tragedy for the Tribe.”
Gonzales once had a grant-funded role as a suicide intervention specialist, working with local police and fire departments to recognize potential signs of an intent to self-harm.
In 2019, the federal funds that paid for her grant position ran out, so she started working on her own.
Gonzales lost her son, Paul, to suicide, when he was 19. Her 43-year-old brother, Gaylord Lewis Jr., died by suicide five years later, in 2014.
As the pandemic swept through California and rates of anxiety and suicidal ideation skyrocketed, Gonzales was motivated by her own losses to help in Humboldt County, where access to mental health services is already difficult, compounded by the dearth of psychiatrists willing to relocate to rural California.
A 2016 Humboldt County grand jury investigation found that the county behavioral health board did not adequately serve the county’s residents.
Gonzales believed that, despite the challenges of the pandemic, her community was resilient.
“They’ve survived wars, floods, fires and landslides,” she told a CalMatters reporter in 2020.
The Yurok tribe is offering grief counseling at the village clinic.
Wow, I heard about this but I didn’t know that about her. Thanks for writing about it. These are really rough times and it isn’t going to get any better any time soon. What else is there to say. I’m sure your readers know the rest, whether they acknowledge it or not. It seems pretty feckless to say this on my part, but thanks again for pointing out as much as you did.
OMG, this story leaves out so many important details! WHO was murdered & WHO committed suicide, WHY, & HOW?? 😩😩😩
May she Rest In Eternal Paradise!
It’s tragic that the members of the tribe who were voted in to take care of our people do not. I receive a monthly paper showing millions upon millions of monies the tribe is awarded, but my people are not receiving it. In care, mental health care should have had these problems fixed and cleared out and done in the last thirty years. The [lack of] available help that Calif. residents get, let alone our Yurok tribal account is outrageous.The end result is the Yurok gov’t. is causing the giving up. Our private schools which should have been endorsed thirty years ago would have eliminated the problems and they should have had a better life and the future of our children. I have been to many states and tribes with one third [of monies] we were given. They thrive and are doing away with drug use, alcoholic abuse, education for good paying jobs. So we should not bring shame upon our elders who gave their lives paying for and fighting to make the Yurok tribe possible. Respect, traditions.