The Organized Village of Kake is looking into using a U.S. Forest Service facility at Portage Bay, on the north end of Kupreanof Island, as a cultural healing and rehabilitation center. The goal of the program would be to reconnect people with their cultural identity, improve their mental health, and counsel those recovering from alcohol and substance abuse and other issues.
The cultural healing center has been a dream of Joel Jackson, the village president, for years.
“What I had in mind was getting people to teach them who they are, because in the Native culture it’s important that you know who you are,” Jackson said.
About 30 years ago, Kake was faced with an “epidemic of suicides” while Jackson was the chief of police. He recalled that the state sent counselors to the community to help, but they came and left.
“One of the elders told us in one of our meetings, he said the only ones that can help us is ourselves, we’re the ones gonna have to do it. Nobody else can do it for us,” Jackson said.
It was then, he said, that their culture started to revive. They began a youth culture camp to teach young people their language and how to take care of the land, harvesting salmon and moose and gathering berries.
Through the Keex’ Kwaan dance group, Ruth Demmert taught traditional Tlingit songs and dances and Jackson’s brother made regalia and taught formline art.
“We noticed that when people start getting interested in their culture, their language, their values and everything ... the suicides subside, so we know it works,” Jackson said.
He kept bringing up the idea of the cultural healing center as an extension of that belief but they never found the right place to get the program going.
That was until he took a drive with village Transportation Director Mike Jackson to check out the Kake Access Road, which connected Kake’s logging roads to Portage Bay, and saw the Forest Service facility.
“We drove down this road and we come around the corner and I see this huge building sitting out in the middle of nowhere and you wouldn’t even know it was there,” Jackson said. “When I saw that building I told him, there’s our building, there it is right there.”
Bret Uppencamp with the Forest Service said the administrative facility at Portage Bay was designed as a field camp for Forest Service employees and partners who needed to overnight for work based on the Portage Bay road system.
He wrote that the facility has, however, seen “very little use” in the past several years and has generally been vacant.
The building can house up to 16 people, according to Jackson, who said it features a common area, kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, garage, workshop and more.
It does have its share of problems that need solutions, including asbestos in the linoleum floors.
The Forest Service has also said that Kake would be responsible for repairs before the facility can be used including updating electrical service to an underground supply, upgrading the water treatment system, and repairing or replacing the heating systems.
Because of its location, Jackson thought it would be the perfect place to get people out on the land and envisioned participants in the program weaving with bark from yellow cedars and carving totem poles.
After seeing the building for the first time, he called the Petersburg Ranger District and the regional office in Juneau, which liked the idea, and they later got a tour of the facility.
Jackson has now been working on getting the program started for more than a year, with the idea of opening it up to people across the region.
“I want to have mostly Native staff, if I can get them, to teach them who they are, what clan they belong to, what tribe and our Native values, and teach them about who their relatives are, and get them out on the land, to go out and hike in the woods, to gather our medicines and the berries and whatever else that grows out there that we will gather for the facility, and also do arts and crafts,” Jackson said.
They will not be able to use the facility to detox people, but Jackson wants to offer people who return from detox a place where they can go to “get grounded in their culture and to get the counseling they need.”
Jackson also spoke on his experience learning about intergenerational trauma and how he came to realize its impacts in his life at a workshop in Anchorage.
“As I sat there, I realized, wow, this is what I experienced in my life from when I was a young boy growing up here, watching my people, our people, it was, wow, this is what was happening to them,” Jackson said.
“I’ve learned over the years from going to workshops and talking with people, getting to the root of the problem is important to help them understand that there is a better way of life.”
A Cultural Healing Center Advisory Board with a dozen members has been established in Kake to discuss ideas for the program and Jackson is holding talks with multiple organizations to see how they can get involved.
He hopes they can start renovating the facility sometime this year and said people are always welcome to share their ideas, give financial contributions, or partner with them.
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