(Photo, courtesy of Leigh Joseph/Sḵwálwen Botanicals)
When Leigh Joseph was growing up, she’d pick vegetables from her great uncle’s garden near the Nanaimo River on Vancouver Island, help him hang salmon in his smokehouse, and drink the fresh blackberry juice her great aunt made.
These experiences instilled in Joseph, a member of the Squamish Nation, the importance of understanding her connection to the natural world. And it’s the natural world, and her Squamish culture, that inform her skincare brand Sḵwálwen (pronounced squall-win) Botanicals.
Joseph launched the business in late 2017. After getting a master’s degree of science from the University of Victoria, she began building her own relationship with wild plants, as she puts it, harvesting and processing them to use as ingredients in household salves, ointments and bath products for her two children.
She loved the creativity evoked by developing recipes, and started thinking about how she could start a small business in a respectful way, grounded in her culture. The result is Sḵwálwen, through which Joseph marries traditional Squamish plant knowledge with her academic background as an ethnobotanist—someone who studies the relationship between people and plants.
“Having my degree in biology and having the chance to have focused on some upper-level botany and plant biochemistry courses has helped me to understand more about the medicinal compounds in the plants or the compounds that can lend themselves well to topical skincare,” says Joseph, who lives in Squamish, B.C., and is working on her PhD.
The sap and resin produced by coniferous trees, for instance, aids the trees in protecting themselves from insects and infection. As a result, these two ingredients have powerful antibiotic and antimicrobial properties that can be used in skincare to heal minor burns or scrapes.
From Squamish elders, too, Joseph has learned about the historical use of plants as medicine. Stinging nettle, for one, has long been used by her ancestors as an anti-inflammatory, both ingested and applied topically. And antioxidant-rich rose petals soothe irritated skin.
With this knowledge, Joseph gathers plant ingredients from forests and meadows and creates recipes, producing such items as Kalkáy (pronounced call-kay, it means “wild rose bush” in Squamish) Face Masque, Tewín’xw (too-ay-nooh, meaning “berry”) Cranberry Rose Antioxidant Facial Serum, Pá7pawtn (pa-pow-tin, which means “plant that relieves sore muscles”) Nettle and Arnica Sore Muscle Salve, and Nékwentsut (neck-went-suit, meaning “warm oneself”) Rose, Nettle and Mint Tea.
She sells her products online across Canada and at local markets in British Columbia. The Kalkáy items—facial oil, toner, bath salts, body polish, mask, and healing salve—are most popular.
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