Tlingit & Haida back a Ketchikan plan to treat addiction closer to home

Southeast Alaska tribal citizens who need residential addiction treatment now leave the region for care. A Ketchikan Indian Community project would let them stay, and it has the formal backing of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

The tribe's Executive Council endorsed KIC's proposed Healing Center at Salmon Falls — a tribally led, culturally grounded residential treatment center on a former resort about 15 road miles north of Ketchikan — and the rezoning needed to build it.

The council called Ketchikan a hub that has become an entry point for drugs from the Lower 48, and the tribe, with more than 38,000 citizens, made the fentanyl crisis a formal priority in 2024.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Planning Commission recommended denying the rezoning, saying the project would not add uses the site already allowed, and a resident urged the Assembly to reject it. In April, the Assembly rezoned three of five lots to general commercial, leaving two residential lots out.

Building the center will still require conditional use permits, each with its own public hearing. None had come up as of mid-August.