Indigenous cultural knowledge renewal with Leigh Joseph of Sḵwálwen Botanicals

Greater Vancouver Board of Trade President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson speaks with Sḵwálwen Botanicals Founder Leigh Joseph about how she is contributing to cultural knowledge renewal in connection to Indigenous plant foods and medicine.

What is GVPOD - Greater Vancouver's Business Podcast?

GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.

0:00:00.2 S1: [BRIDGITTE] Hello everyone, and welcome to GVPOD, Greater Vancouver's business podcast exploring the challenges and opportunities facing our region. I'm Bridgitte Anderson, President and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. An interest in local plants and land is what got Leigh Joseph started on her path, an ethnobotanist, researcher and member of the Squamish First Nation. Leigh launched Sḵwálwen Botanicals an Indigenous business that makes small batch botanical skin care products. Nice to see you Leigh, thanks for joining us.

0:00:41.3 S2: [LEIGH] It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

0:00:44.0 S1: [BRIDGITTE] Okay, so let's start from the beginning. What does the name Sḵwálwen mean?

0:00:51.5 S2: [LEIGH] Yeah, so that's a great question, and it doesn't have a totally straightforward answer, Sḵwálwen n is a word in the school Minato or the Squamish language, which is the community that I come from on my father's side and Coast Salish territory, and it doesn't have a direct translation to English so the closest that I have come to find and resonate with for a definition or translation of Sḵwálwen is to carry yourself in a good state of mind and heart and spirit, and it's often a word that you will hear when we gather as a community or in ceremony, Sḵwálwen is to carry yourself and to be present in that really good way of mind, heart and spirit. And so when I think about why it is that I do the work that I do with culturally important plants, that really encapsulates a very personal meaning for me...

0:01:53.0 S1: [BRIDGITTE] Well, I have to admit that I was stalking you a little bit on your website and social media, just to find out a little more about you as we have this conversation, and I was really struck by how you spoke about your connection to community and to land and you spoke about your grandparents and their residential school survivors and how all of that has really had an impact on the way that you have come forward in your business. Maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit about that.

0:02:25.2 S2: [LEIGH] Yeah, definitely. I think the first thing that comes to mind is just how... In all of the work I've done as an ethnobotanist, which is someone who studies the cultural inter-relationships between people and plants in my academic path and my own path of coming closer to my cultural identity, so much of that has been such a personal process and so much of it has been guided by plans and my relationships with plants and the cultural and community relationships that this work has opened up. So when I started Sḵwálwen, it was really as a way of like a creative way to honour my love of plants, all that I have been sort of taught and gifted in my life through spending time on the land and working with plants. And so I really wanted this creative way to approach that, and so Sḵwálwen brought that creative space and formulating in naming the products and names from the Squamish language, and to me, it's so closely paired with my own personal journey of connecting to culture and identity through that work that... I feel like it's really intertwined very closely, all of the work, including Sḵwálwen...

0:03:51.9 S2: [LEIGH] With my own personal journey.

0:03:54.5 S1: [BRIDGITTE] It does sound very personal, and I'm so glad you told me what an ethnobotanist is because that was definitely on my list, and that's a really important piece of this business journey for you as well. So let's start talking about the product, the botanicals that you make, and your approach to that. What is the process? Because it is quite unique.

0:04:20.3 S2: [LEIGH] Yeah, so really when I finished my masters, and that was the first time that I'd done research within my home community, and I had done field work and estuary and spent a lot of time day after day, working with plants out on the land. I came out of that experience feeling like I really wanted to dive just head first into the lived experience of spending time on the land and seeing plants at different times, if they're growing season, and just really making those connections. And so when I had my first child, my daughter, Eva, I would put her in the carrier and walk and we would look at plants and observe them, and eventually that turned into researching how to harvest them sustainably, or going back to teachings that have been shared with teachers in my community or other Indigenous communities that I'd worked with, and so I started harvesting plant ingredients and then creating these formulations with them, and in that, it's much more than of studying out to pick a certain amount of a certain plant, there's a lot of cultural preparation and teaching, that's been shared with me that when you go out to harvest before you go out to do that, it's really important, again, coming back to that place of being in a good place of spirit and mind and heart, and that doesn't mean necessarily being happy it doesn't mean being in a sort of superficial Happy State, it really is kind of accessing a place of mindfulness and gratitude really for the act that you're about to do, which is going out and asking a plan to share its medicine with you, essentially.

0:06:08.5 S2: [LEIGH] And so within that, I've really found that there's a lot of ceremony and a lot of cultural teachings that go into the active... Even preparing to harvest. And so by going through that process and by teaching my kids, just by virtue of being out with me while I've been learning this, it's become a really core part of how I've been growing Sḵwálwen and how I continue to envision what our relationships are with the botanicals that we utilize in their products, and that's one of respect and ethical engagement and sustainability, and that has been changing as I grow in scale.

0:06:47.9 S1: [BRIDGITTE] So thoughtful in your process, and quite certain that it really resonates with the consumers. Maybe tell us a little bit more about what the products are and what they do.

0:07:01.4 S2: [LEIGH] Sure, so our product line has grown since I started the business in 2018, but essentially each product is formulated with at least one Key culturally important botanical in the product, and often the benefits of, say, Wild Rose or doubles club bar, like each botanical will have its own set of benefits for topical use and so I draw on my experience working with these plants over the past years and how I formulate the products, but we have a range of everything from the lip balms to salves to facial oils, serums and tuners, bath and body oils, as well as teams. And each of these products is meant to celebrate the plant ingredients and celebrate the relationship that these plants have been in in Squamish culture for thousands of years, and in doing so, again, goes back to that creativity of designing what the packaging will look like, it's very elegant. Oh, thank you. Yeah, so that part's been really fun 'cause the Botanist and me has really wanted the actual plant species to be depicted on the packaging, and so working with designers to make that come together has been a really wonderful way to honor the products and the ingredients themselves,

[Bridgitte] So you start a company in 2018, and we all know what happens in March of 2020, a really challenging time for all businesses and all individuals, but you've also, in the last few years, had to deal with rising costs and inflation and an acute labor shortage.

0:08:53.0 S1: [BRIDGITTE] I mean, as you... As you look back over the last few years and you look ahead into the next few years, what are the biggest business challenges you're facing right now as you're trying to grow your company?

0:09:05.5 S2: [LEIGH] Yeah, absolutely. We were in that section, I guess, of businesses during covid over the last two years, where my e-commerce sales just increased in a way that caused... Which was great, but it caused really fast... A really fast need to adjust and grow 'cause it was just me at that point, at 2020, I was doing everything in the business and I couldn't keep up, and so it was battling and all these things, but at that point I... I hired two women from my community to come in and help with order fulfillment and labeling and just all aspects of the business, and since then, I've hired on more women from a community, and so on the ground were a team of six Indigenous women, and it's been such an incredible experience to grow this team, to really have an unspoken understanding of the connection to this place and to the ingredients that we're utilizing, and to have people taking on different parts of the business so that I can look more towards the future and the growth of Sḵwálwen and the direction of Sḵwálwen has been really incredible. We've definitely, as a consumer packaging-based business, we've seen an increase across the board and shipping and raw ingredients, it is very challenging, and at the time I think that warrants a lot of...

0:10:46.3 S2: [LEIGH] We're doing a lot behind the scenes to look at planning just the next steps for Sḵwálwen and really looking at our strategies from everything from how much of our business do we want to be direct to consumer and what kind of key retail partnerships would be like to develop. So I think a lot of it has been... We've been really, really fortunate in the fact that the team that we have has stayed together, working together, and everybody is creating a space, I think that our team values and I hope will continue to grow in that way, but also to really look at ways to build those plans for the future in terms of everything from our strategies for raw materials for pricing, for retail partnerships, all of that is very much in top of mind right now.

0:11:45.6 S1: [BRIDGITTE] It sounds like you've been... It is force you to be laser-focused on your strategies and really make sure that you are doing everything you can to control cost, and obviously one of the biggest challenges for any small business, but clear that you have been successful. You're the winner of Telus Stand with Owners campaign. So tell us about how that came to be.

0:12:08.8 S2: [LEIGH] Yeah, so this was such a wonderful... Just piece of news to get, and I guess we as a team, because we're a small business and self-funded, we're always aware and looking for opportunities for business supports, and I was the Telus Competition was brought forward to me by a colleague, and so my team member Rose, who works with me closely on these kinds of applications, we applied and submitted. It was a really nice process to go through because I think it really drew on a lot of the priorities and the bigger why’s for me in terms of high approach growing well in and it was really nice to reflect on what it means to us to give back, and the ways that we're doing that, and that's primarily through our ceremony series, we partner with Indigenous businesses and organizations to our communities organizations to give 10% of proceeds from a small batch run of products to these communities, and then we also have the... I am Project, which is a partnership with a native plant nursery, where we send thousands of seeds out into Indigenous community partners to be grown on the lands and learn from within Indigenous communities, and so being able to go through these give-backs and the reasons why these are so important to Sḵwálwen.

0:13:41.9 S2: [LEIGH] It was a really wonderful thing, and then to have the recognition being successful was just such a left for everybody during this busy and somewhat difficult time, that was a really, really nice... Really nice news to get.

0:13:59.0 S1: [BRIDGITTE] I bet. Congratulations. Sound very, very deserving of that recognition. So looking out now to the future and recognizing that sustainability, and you talked about ceremony and just the thoughtful process and being a small batch producer, how do you scale your company to ensure that all of those important factors remain in place?

0:14:24.5 S2: [LEIGH] Well, I've learned a lot over this past year because that's been the exercise internally is, is how do we scale our production, how do we scale our raw ingredients, how do we move from the origins of being hand-harvested to finding more sustainable ways to grow the plants for the business. So that's looked like we're partnering with small farms and Indigenous communities to actually grow the plant ingredients, and then also having no seeds and starts from these plants that were growing to share within community. So that's been a really exciting evolution and one that I hope to build more on, and then... Yeah, really, I think the process of finding... It's so key to find partners for co-manufacturing that you can work with in a way where they really understand your business, where they really value...

0:15:29.6 S1: [BRIDGITTE] And those values are aligned.

0:15:31.8 S2: [LEIGH] Totally, and that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time and effort, and I feel like we're at a good place now where we can take that step to increase our production in order to grow our business and our experts and our retail program, but in a way that still honors the origin of the business, and we will be keeping the production of some of our key products in-house for the foreseeable future, but by outsourcing as well, it gives us a chance to really focus on those products at the same time is really working with Co-manufacturers to make sure that the products that we're putting out there, follow our quality and sustainability at Sḵwálwen.

0:16:22.0 S1: [BRIDGITTE] Sounds like an exciting new chapter or new chapters ahead.

0:16:27.7 S2: [LEIGH] Definitely, thank you.

0:16:29.5 S1: [BRIDGITTE] So as we round out the conversation, recognizing it small business month, then you just, I think, exemplify what a small business is and just with such consideration and care for the environment and connection to your community. What advice would you have to other small business owners that are either looking to launch their business or scale their business?

0:16:54.7 S2: [LEIGH] Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is I'm as an Indigenous business within a space that has very little Indigenous representation still, I think speaking specifically to potential future Indigenous entrepreneurs or people who are starting businesses that are connected to culture in some way, that draw strength from that, draw strength from your identity, from the ways that you're in a relationship and community and finding... I think for just generally, for anyone who's heading on an entrepreneurial path, finding the place that you draw strength from and the place that you draw inspiration from within the business is really important, kind of digging down into that. Why... And of course, it will be framed in a business way like, Oh, what's the problem that you're solving? I think turning that even more personally, and what is this feeling within yourself, what does this mean to you, because that place is so important to come back to you in those moments when you're growing your business where things are really challenging and you're maybe not spending all your time on the things that you love about growing a business, I think that's just necessary as a small business owner, you end up wearing a lot of hats, so I think coming back to that place of meaning and the impact that you wish to make is really important in entrepreneurship.

0:18:28.4 S1: [BRIDGITTE] Just that purpose and the values align, such great advice Leigh. Thank you so much for taking the time for speaking with us today, and good luck in scaling and growing your business.

0:18:39.0 S2: [LEIGH] Thank you so much. It's been wonderful to speak with you.