Carrie Armstrong has been preparing for her jump to entrepreneurship her whole life.
“I worked in all areas of cosmetics — from sales to salon supplies to department stores — and couldn’t help but notice the lack of representation of Indigenous products,” says Armstrong, who founded Mother Earth Essentials in 2006.
The idea for her company had been percolating for years before that. Armstrong traces it back to her childhood. Growing up next door to her Cree grandmother, Armstrong watched her work with herbs in the kitchen, teaching Armstrong about traditional medicines. On walks, her grandmother would tell her about the different properties of plants and their everyday uses.
After leaving her career in cosmetics to return to university to study education, Armstrong found a job at amiskwaciy Academy, the central Edmonton Indigenous public high school. There, she found inspiration working with students in the school’s garden. That experience, coupled with her time in the cosmetics industry, pushed her to finally launch her own brand of beauty products — made from the herbs and medicines she grew up with.
First focussing on soaps and teas, Mother Earth Essentials has since expanded to offer candles, aromatherapy sprays, essential oils and skin care products. Drawing inspiration from the medicine wheel components for their earliest products — cedar, sweetgrass, sage and tobacco — the company now offers a variety of scents, still with a focus on local ingredients and scents, creating everything from juniper soap and wild rose cranberry candles.
The products at Mother Earth Essentials are not only made from natural, sustainable ingredients — they are an invitation for customers to discover Indigenous teaching and reconnect with the natural world, through their products as well as Armstrong’s book and workshops.
“When I do workshops I get to tell people, ‘That plant growing between the sidewalk cracks, this is what it does,’” Armstrong says. “I love the reaction. People are like, ‘What? I thought that was just a weed.’