Skwachàys Lodge

Although Canada’s indigenous population has exploded over the past decade, its cultural contributions are often overlooked. Not so at Skwachàys Lodge, a boutique hotel—featuring 18 guest rooms and a rooftop sweat lodge—that provides affordable housing to 24 First Nations artists, who work and live on-site. The result is a facility that immerses guests in Native art—they can take classes on beading, tribal art and spoken-word poetry—and also empowers the people who create it. Skwachàys has already used hotel profits to launch an in-house gallery space; soon, it will start helping indigenous artists sell their crafts online. —Abigail Abrams