O n a cool day in early November, the Miami Nation of Indiana hosted a native craft show at the Chief Richardville House in Waynedale. Outside, men played drums and chanted. The scent of wood smoke from two fires filled the air. Buffalo stew and fry bread cooked over one of the open-pit fires, and elders talked around the other fire. It was a friendly atmosphere; greetings of "Aya aya niihka," or

"If you don't kill, yourself, you are killed." -- Jimmy Otim, a former child soldier in northern Uganda Around the world, about 250,000 boys and girls younger than 18 today are involved in violent conflicts. Many of them are abducted or join fighting forces out of desperation because of poverty, abuse or starvation. In at least 13 countries, including Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, u

The Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary was my home for two weeks this summer. I lived, ate and studied at the seminary in Pittsburgh with 22 other high-schoolers who were selected to participate in the Theological Foundations for Youth summer program. This program was created in 1998 through a Lilly Endowment grant to help churches and seminaries reach young people hoping to be future past

Time and again, Denis Okwonga was confronted with countless mangled bodies, which covered the blood-spattered ground. Scenes like this had become commonplace for the 14-year-old child soldier, forced to fight in the civil war in Uganda that has now raged for 20 years.

The Indiana University Health Center estimates that one in 10 people in their late teens and 20s will self-injure at least once during adolescence or early adulthood. And Butler University reports that cutting injuries among middle-school and high-school students is a "growing concern."