Unique lodge to provide a safe, comfortable home for Indigenous elders in Alberta [Video]

After years of planning and building, a new Indigenous elders lodge is about to open near the Rocky Mountain community of Grande Cache, Alta.

“It feels good to be here,” said Winston Delorme, surveying progress on the 17,200-square-foot Kikinow Elders Lodge.

“When we first got here there used to be a road up here and it was just bush,” said Delorme. Now it’s “almost a full, operating lodge here — for our people.”

The idea for the lodge, located on the Victor Lake Co-operative, an Indigenous land holding on the north boundary of Grande Cache, 430 kilometres west of Edmonton, was first conceived in 2018 and construction got underway in 2023.

Applications are being accepted this month from Indigenous people in the area who want to live in the 14-bed facility.

Victor Lake is one of the six Indigenous co-operatives and enterprises in the Grande Cache area.

Delorme, a Victor Lake community leader, …