Image
Image Caption
Windspeaker.com Books Feature Writer
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Both on the page and in real life, Leigh Joseph is giving her children an opportunity that wasn't there for her grandparents.
As the characters in her first children's book, The Land Knows Me: A Nature Walk Exploring Indigenous Wisdom, Joseph takes her son, daughter and niece through the Pacific northwest rainforest, and in a respectful way introduces them to their relations, the plants and everything, like pollinators, that makes an ecosystem healthy.
“It's been really important, since I've had kids, as I reflected on the fact that my grandparents’ generation just didn't have the opportunity in the same sense to go out and to learn on the land with family. They had their residential school experiences and everything that came after that in terms of their survival and still not feeling safe to go out on their own homelands,” said Joseph.
Through vibrant colourful illustrations by Natalie Schnitter and with the help of a language expert from Joseph’s community of Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) First Nation, the 42-page book is a combination of English and Squamish words for the names of plants and relations.
Respect for the plants and land as sacred beings and as a place of the ancestors is also prominent throughout the pages as the children introduce themselves to the plants, give gifts to the land and harvest in a sustainable manner.
In fact, that connection is why Joseph chose to call her book The Land Knows Me instead of I Know the Land.
“It's important to me because I wanted to centre the land just as much as the characters in the book and to centre this idea that the more time we spend on the land, on walks like shown in the book… that relationship is built. And then that land reflects them back and knows them and they feel that comfort there on that land,” said Joseph.
Joseph is an ethnobotanist, which is explained in the book as someone who “loves and studies plants.” More fully, an ethnobotanist studies the relationship between people and plants, focusing on how different cultures utilize and perceive plants for a variety of purposes. Joseph is also a university professor at Simon Fraser University.
The Land Knows Me is Joseph’s second book. Her first book, Held by the Land: A Guide to Indigenous Plants for Wellness (2023), came about through the academic work she did with the community.
“I just saw what a wonderful tool it was, and it was a tool that my community had been asking for, like a resource,” she said.
When Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted as a young readers’ edition, it gave Joseph the idea of producing a book that could engage children with plants and the land.
She reached out to her publisher, Quarto Publishing Group, “and from there the process unfurled,” said Joseph. “The hope is that young readers and their families can learn together, as well as take the book out with them seasonally on the trail or see plants outside and then come back and learn about them in a kid-friendly way.”
Joseph called upon the beloved books of her childhood to guide her in the writing process. She worked with development editors on how to blend science and cultural knowledge through story at the appropriate age level.
Joseph sent illustrator Schnitter reference photos of plants and the landscape around Squamish, as well as of her family. Joseph also provided guidance for the book cover, which included ensuring she wore a cedar hat and beaded earrings, “tweaking skin tones,” and adjusting clothing to ensure there were “some really clear visual cues” so The Land Knows Me was a “visibly Indigenous book from the Pacific northwest.”
That distinction was important to her as a member of Skwxwú7mesh First Nation.
“When I'm writing as an Indigenous author, I want to be really aware of grounding what I'm sharing in my own story and experience but writing it in a way that is more broadly accessible to other Indigenous communities who have an interest in the topic, as well as non-Indigenous readers,” she said, confident that the story will resonate with people from different regions.
For Squamish readers, Joseph hopes they’ll get joy and pride from seeing their words and landscapes portrayed in The Land Knows Me. For other Indigenous Nations, she hopes the book inspires another author to write about the land in their community.
For non-Indigenous readers, she hopes the book leads to “conversations about what respecting natural spaces looks like with their kids, have creative, fun adventures with their kids and just really look at ways of building those relationships while also considering some cultural teachings that are embedded in the book as well.”
As for children, Joseph still remembers her favourite childhood books and “I hope that there's kids out there that listen to the story and just let their imagination take them on this walk and that it's something that stays with them in some way in their life, just even a little part of it. And to me that would be the best outcome.”
The Land Knows Me, which was published earlier this month, is available for purchase wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Indigo, and independent bookstores nationwide.
Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.