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 past couple of years, that dream has been moving toward reality.

For decades, a U.S. Forest Service bunkhouse has sat empty, 52 miles from Kake and 12 miles from Petersburg, on the north end of Kupreanof Island in Portage Bay. 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.'"

The building can house up to 16 people, and features a common area, kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, garage, workshop and more.

The Forest Service two years ago approved a special-use permit for Kake, but federal grants for the project now are held up. The Organized Village of Kake is looking for private funding from foundations, private funders and others, which will be necessary for the center even if the federal grants come through.

"What really got me moving toward the cultural 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 he was in his early 20s and serving as a police officer, several people died by suicide in Kake in 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, now in its 37th year. 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 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 towns.

"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."