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Geography
SFU Geography welcomes ethnobotanist as professor of Indigenous geographies
Leigh Joseph, an ethnobotanist from the Squamish Nation, joins SFU’s Department of Geography this September as an assistant professor of Indigenous geographies. Joseph works to advance traditional knowledge renewal by studying the cultural interrelationships between people, plants and place.
Specifically, Joseph studies the role plants can play in reclaiming conceptualizations of health and wellness to address needs and priorities identified by communities. For example, during her doctoral research, she explored how traditional foods and medicines may be used to prevent and manage type 2 diabetes in Canadian Indigenous communities.
Joseph explains that while her research works to restore and document forms of traditional Indigenous knowledge, she also applies a critical lens to understand why this work is urgently needed today. This includes diving into the impacts of colonialism and systemic racism on Indigenous health and land access.
“My focus is in creating pathways and opportunities for communities to set out priorities when it comes to Indigenous plants, and then working to rebuild those knowledge systems, which starts with acknowledging the fact that, as a result of these systems, a lot of people don't feel like they even belong on the landscape,” says Joseph. “It’s about building opportunities for people to have the confidence and skills in plant identification so they feel that they can also rebuild those relationships in safe ways and tend to their own health.”
As she joins SFU as a professor of Indigenous geographies, Joseph is excited to continue to explore connections to place and land, while working in her home territory.
“Indigenous geography, ethnobiology and ethnobotany are so intertwined. It's really looking at relational ways to be in connection to place and having the storied approach and historical context to understanding landscapes. It’s also about how Indigenous communities create frameworks that are based on place and on land,” she explains. "For me, it means exploring and learning and deepening our own connections and contexts for the places we're from and the places we may be residing or learning in. It’s also about understanding that there are other frameworks for understanding land and land-based knowledge.”
Joseph shares that she is guided by wanting to honour her grandparents and the generation of residential school survivors who in many cases didn’t have the opportunity to explore what a deeper connection to cultural practices and land access meant. She also hopes that her work will create a path for future Indigenous students to draw inspiration and see other Indigenous voices in the field.
“Having gone through many years of research and academic training, and community-based research and experience, it means so much to me to continue on that learning with a focus on giving back to community, giving back to the land and paving a path that other Indigenous people who might want to take this path can have more voices in the literature, and more examples of Indigenous-led ethnobotanical research.”
Joseph is also the founder of Skwálwen Botanicals, a skincare line that honors Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) plant knowledge and ancestral traditions, and the author of Held By The Land: A Guide to Indigenous Plants for Wellness and the card adaptation.
Learn more about her research, teaching and more here.