People First Radio – April 03, 2025People First Radio – April 03, 2025
People First Radio
Ethnobotanist Leigh Joseph shares how Indigenous teachings shape relationships with plants and guide respectful learning, while retired CFL star Andrew Harris reflects on mental health, resilience, and leadership in sport and business. Together, their stories link connection to land with care for one another.
0:00•4 Apr 2025
Plants, People and Pressure: Leigh Joseph and Andrew Harris on Connection and Mental Health
Episode Overview
- Seeing plants as relatives encourages reciprocity, respect, and more careful harvesting practices.
- Non-Indigenous people are urged to ask whose land they are on, seek permission, and avoid overharvesting culturally important plants.
- Growing native plants at home or in community gardens offers a safer way to connect with Indigenous plant knowledge without putting pressure on wild populations.
- Andrew Harris highlights that success in sport or business can hide deep mental health struggles, and that honest conversations can be lifesaving.
- Leaders are asked to care, communicate, and pay attention to changes in people, creating workplaces and teams where vulnerability is met with support rather than judgement.
“Everyone has a story. Everyone has a past. And often in sport, or in business or in your career, we put on a face, we put on a mask.”
How do people manage co-occurring mental and physical health issues while recovering? People First Radio takes that question in an unexpected direction by pairing plant relationships with pro-football pressures. Ethnobotanist Leigh Joseph opens the programme by sharing how Squamish teachings guide her work with plants as relatives, not resources. She explains how seeing a cedar tree as “my relation” shifts every decision, from how much bark to take to how to care for the land around it.
Leigh talks through practical examples, like harvesting cedar and cottonwood buds, stressing reciprocity, respect, and the idea that “nothing can go to waste”. Her new children’s book, *The Land Knows Me*, follows a plant walk with her kids and niece on Coast Salish lands. Through that story, she blends cultural teachings with forest ecology, aiming to make plant knowledge accessible for children aged 6–11. Leigh also tackles a common question: how non-Indigenous people can engage with Indigenous plant knowledge respectfully.
She suggests asking who the land belongs to, checking motivations, avoiding overharvesting, and growing native plants at home or in community gardens instead of rushing out to “wildcraft”. Later, retired CFL star Andrew Harris shifts the conversation to mental health, leadership, and vulnerability in sport and business. He reflects on his time with the Vancouver Island Raiders, calling his move to Nanaimo a “second chance” and emphasising how brotherhood and structure changed his life.
Harris talks candidly about periods of suicidal thoughts, the pressure to wear a mask of strength, and how one honest, tough-love conversation with a friend jolted him back from the edge. For leaders and employers, he underlines the importance of genuine care, communication, and noticing when someone on the team seems “a little bit off”, even if they look successful from the outside.
If plants and people both need relationships to thrive, what small step could you take today to look more closely at the land around you—and the people beside you?
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