A healing center for Kake

By Mary Catharine Martin
The Salmon State

Joel Jackson, President of the Organized Village of Kake, has long dreamed of creating a cultural healing center near the community. Now, that dream is moving toward fruition. Photo by Tyler Bell.

For years now, Organized Village of Kake President Joel Jackson has had a dream: a cultural healing center that can reintroduce people looking to heal from alcohol and drug addictions and intergenerational trauma to their culture.

For the last couple of years, that dream has been moving toward reality. Fifty-two miles from Kake and twelve miles from Petersburg, in Portage Bay, is an old Forest Service administration bunkhouse. For decades, it has sat empty. The first time he saw it, Jackson looked at his brother, Mike Jackson, and said, “This is my cultural healing center.” 

“When I got back to town, I called the Regional Forester in Juneau,” Jackson said. “And when I told him what I had planned for it, he said, ‘I can't think of a better reuse of the building.’” 

Portage Bay, the bay where the unused U.S. Forest Service building is located, is about 52 miles northwest of Kake.

Photo by Tyler Bell. 

Motivation

“What really got me moving towards the Cultural Heal Healing Center is I lost two brothers to alcoholism. Many other family members, friends over the years,” Jackson said. “Whether it's from intergenerational trauma, from boarding schools — we have to start healing our people.” 

Support in getting sober, he said, is vital. He’s experienced that himself. 

“Two of my friends got sober after I did. I said, ‘Jeez, if we can do it, anybody can do it.’ It's just having support that is very critical,” Jackson said.

When Jackson was in his early twenties and serving as a police officer, 15 people died by suicide in Kake in just one year. That also drove home how necessary the healing center is.

“Our community was basically shell-shocked by what was happening,” he said. “Nobody could react. We didn’t have time to.” 

A group of people from the community got together. Counselors and other advocates came to Kake to offer advice on how to address it.

After the counselors left, Jackson said, one of the Elders said the people of Kake would have to take things into their own hands and heal themselves. 

Out of that conversation was born Kake’s Youth Culture Camp, which will be in its 37th year in 2025. Soon after that conversation Elders also began teaching Lingít, as well as Keex’ Kwáan songs and dances, in schools. Jackson’s late brother taught carving classes in schools. Others are teaching sewing, beading, and other traditional practices. 

“We really started bringing back our culture,” said Jackson. “It's our people that are going to be the experts on the healing of our own people. Just like that Elder said years ago.”

The old Forest Service administration bunkhouse building pictured here was built during the boom of the logging industry and has sat for decades empty. Now, it may be repurposed as a cultural healing center. Photo by Tyler Bell. 

Curriculum

The curriculum at the healing center, Jackson said, “is going to be totally based off our values as a people.” 

They’ll make sure everyone knows their family, clan, and where they come from. They’ll have talking circles, weaving, carving, beading, hunting, gathering, and more — ”everything that we have done for forever,” Jackson said.  

The center will be open to attendees from all Southeast Alaska communities, especially rural ones. 

“We are all pretty close,” Jackson said. “Like my late cousin Clarence Jackson used to say, we're all related one way or another. So we have to come together and start healing as a people.” 

Right now federal grants for the project are held up. The Organized Village of Kake is still looking for private funding from foundations, private funders and others, which will be necessary for the center even with federal grants. 

Learn more about the healing center at https://www.kakehealing.org/ 

If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK  to 741741.

Kake, Alaska. The Organized Village of Kake is working toward a cultural healing center near the community. Photo by Tyler Bell.