Kake, Alaska

Kake Circle Peacemaking (Healing Heart Council / Tribal Court, Organized Village of Kake)

Problem

Low trust stalls collaboration, leadership emergence, and shared risk-taking.

Solution

Kake Circle Peacemaking is a volunteer-run, Tlingit-rooted sentencing and reconciliation circle that the Organized Village of Kake set up in 1999 (its founder dates it to 1998) to handle mostly youth alcohol offenses referred from the Alaska state court after a guilty plea. It was a Harvard Honoring Nations 2003 honoree, has since added adult, healing and other circle types, and in 2021 to 2022 ran an NIJ-funded planning study on extending the circle to domestic violence cases.

Patterns used: Trust Infrastructure

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