Proud Americans-ish: Four Indigenous-Owned Brands Worth Knowing About
Founders whose origin story was here long before the fireworks.
Hello, Gorgeous!
Ah. The interwebs. Some of you received a newsletter on Monday. Some didn’t. When I tried to find it, it didn’t show up online or in my archives either. I’m going to take it as a sign to simply let it go…Or I wanted to, and then this popped up:
Moving right along.
To kick off the midweek roundups, I’m trying something new. In addition to connected themes or products, I’ll also be rounding up a handful of brands, finds, or people I think you should know about — the kind of discoveries that don’t always fit into regular columns but deserve more than a passing mention.
For the debut, I wanted to start with founders who were here before the flag, before the fireworks, before “shop small” was a hashtag. Call them proud Americans-ish. Four Indigenous-owned beauty and lifestyle brands building some of the most interesting businesses in their categories — and worth knowing about long before the July 4th sale emails start landing.
A (not so) small note before we begin: I’m always careful when featuring brands rooted in cultures that aren’t my own. The goal is to amplify, not appropriate, and to let founders speak for themselves. So while I’m always vigilant about honoring other cultures, I’m also leaning on their words, their nations, and their own descriptions of what they’re building.
N8iV Beauty
You may not have heard of N8iV (pronounced native) yet, but you will. The brand was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies of 2026 — one of the top 10 in fashion and beauty. Founded in 2022 by Ruth-Ann Thorn, an enrolled member of the Rincon Band of Luiseño/Payómkawichum Indians, the line was born from a question her teenage daughter Isabella asked her at Sephora in 2019: “Where’s the Native American section?”
The “8” in the name represents the eight-season calendar the Payómkawichum traditionally follow. The signature ingredient is kwíila — acorn oil, harvested once a year from tribal land and used in Native medicine for thousands of years. The line’s other ingredients carry their own heritage: seaweed and kelp (revered by coastal tribes like the Makah and Haida), aloe vera (used by the Navajo and Cherokee), pomegranate, cactus, and plant stem cells.
N8iV won an Allure Best of Beauty Award in 2025 for its exfoliator. This year it’s launching at Nordstrom, entering over 100 Ritz-Carlton spas, and joining Sephora’s* minority inclusion cohort. But that’s a conversation for another time. Back to N8iV, five percent of sales go to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement.
Two to try:
Móomat “Ocean” Nutrient Rich Cleanser ($85) — móomat means ocean. A seaweed-and-kelp cleanser that purifies without stripping, and a smart starting point if you want to test the line before committing to the heavier hitters. My hypersensitive skin loves the way this makes my entire face—T-Zone and all—feel and look.
Starlight Regenerative Cream ($165) — the nighttime cream that put N8iV on the map. Acorn oil, copper peptides, and plant stem cells, with packaging made from recycled materials. Suitable for all skin types and a good entry point into the brand’s anti-aging story.
Manitobah
The one you’ve heard me rave about before. Founded in 1997 by Sean McCormick, a 23-year-old Métis entrepreneur from Manitoba (originally as Fleeceline, rebranded in 2008), Manitobah has become the brand that mainstreamed mukluks without flattening them. When Oprah ordered a pair in 2009, the business took off. Today it ships to over 150 countries, is sold by around 1,000 retailers globally including REI and Nordstrom, and is B Corp certified with an impact score nearly double the median.
What sets Manitobah apart is the Indigenous Market, an in-house platform where individual Indigenous artisans sell handmade, one-of-a-kind mukluks (some over $1,500) — and 100% of revenue goes to the artist. The brand also runs the Storyboot Project and a free Storyboot School that teaches traditional mukluk-making, including at a permanent space inside the Canadian Museum of History.
The only Canadian brand on this list. Worth the cross-border shipping. My fave right now are the Tolani Mocs in dusty pink. Perfect for working from home or a laid-back brunch ($120, manitobah.com).
Ah-Shí Beauty
You may not have heard of Ah-Shí, but Harper’s Bazaar has. The September 2020 issue called it a game changer — the first Native American-owned brand featured in their September print issue.
Founded in 2012 by Ahsaki Báá LaFrance-Chachere, an enrolled Diné (Navajo) and African American entrepreneur, the brand was built around a problem she knew personally: women on the Navajo reservation were mixing two foundations to get one match. So she spent six years developing her first formula. The foundation line now comes in 35 shades, made specifically for Indigenous complexions.
In Diné, Ah-Shí means this is me, this is mine. The translation: this is my beauty.
LaFrance-Chachere was named 2021 Native Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Center for American Indian Economic Development. The skincare line is 98% botanical-based, with storefronts in Window Rock, Arizona (capital of the Navajo Nation) and Gallup, New Mexico.
ahshibeauty.com (If the site's giving you trouble, she's also on Instagram).
Eighth Generation
You may not have heard of Eighth Generation, but if you’ve been to Pike Place Market in Seattle, you’ve probably walked past their flagship. The brand was founded in 2008 by Louie Gong (Nooksack), who started by hand-customizing pairs of Vans shoes with a Sharpie in his 200-square-foot living room. He was raised by his Chinese grandfather and Native grandmother in a house with no running water in Ruskin, B.C., before moving to the Nooksack tribal community at 11.
In 2015, Eighth Generation became the first Native-owned business in North America to sell Native-designed wool blankets, reclaiming a category long dominated by non-Native companies selling “Native-inspired” knockoffs. In 2019, Gong sold the company to the Snoqualmie Tribe, making it the first lifestyle brand in the country owned by a Native American tribe.
Roughly 75% of the staff is Native, from warehouse to CEO. About 30 Indigenous artists design the products and are directly compensated. Every blanket arrives with a card naming the artist and telling their story.
The tagline says it all: Inspired Natives, not Native-inspired.
You can find a beautiful Sweet Birch handcrafted soap for $15 on eighthgeneration.com
I feel like all of these brands are worth a serious look.
Have you tried any of these lines? I’d love to hear about your favorite products or brands. Let’s meet in the comments to discuss!
Rachel, your beauty concierge 💋
Quick note: I included some affiliate links and from time to time some sponsored products which means I might earn a small commission on sales made through these links, but I also throw in stuff I love just because. Prices are current at publish time.
*Tbh, Sephora has serious work to do on which founders it chooses to feature, having danced around calls to remove an extremely high-earning founder with years of spreading false conspiracy theories and vitriol aimed at Jews. At this point, Sephora's continued silence is its own statement.