A healing center for Kake

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...