Julietta Sorensen Kass didn’t expect the tobacco seeds she tossed onto her lawn in northwest Calgary would take off, let alone provide more than she would ever need to perform prayers and ceremonies as part of her Métis culture.

So, when it was time to harvest and dry the leaves, she decided to share her bounty — for free — by posting on social media.

“I got wonderful responses — absolutely wonderful responses,” said Sorensen Kass.

Not only were people interested, she says, but the respondents offered their own gifts in return, such as bundles of cedar and sage.

“It was just really kind of wonderful the idea of it’s 2026 and you can still have these really simple but deeply rooted exchanges that are really based on gifting ideas,” said Sorensen Kass.

Sorensen Kass is a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation, with ties to St. Paul des Métis and the Red River Settlement. 

She, like many members of Métis and First Nations communities, consider tobacco a sacred plant and use it in ceremony and prayer. 

Sorensen Kass considers it the “gratitude plant” and offers dried leaves when interacting with the land, animals and people. Before a family canoe trip, for example, she offers tobacco to the river.

“To be able to have something that you can offer feels a little less like you’re constantly taking; it feels a little more reciprocal,” said Sorensen Kass.

A better return

Sorensen Kass first grew the Nicotiana Rustica tobacco in the spring of 2024 and ended up with way more than she needed for herself and gifts.

She was too shy at first to offer to share the tobacco publicly, believing everyone else already had their own source.

“I kind of figured I was the odd person out who didn’t have my own … like I was out of the Indigenous loop,” said Sorensen Kass.

But two years later she still had so much dried tobacco left, she decided to make the social media post.

One of the people who responded was Debra Roulette.

She typically uses store-bought cigarette tobacco to burn during prayers but unfortunately, she says, all the added chemicals give her a headache.

“So I wanted something pure,” said Roulette.

She says offering something in return just made sense. She made a batch of bannock, using her mother’s recipe.

Sorensen Kass loved the idea, and invited her own mother over to enjoy the fry bread together.

Roulette says she would eventually like to learn to grow her own tobacco, sage and sweetgrass, and continue her journey to reconnect with her Indigenous culture and learn more about her family’s background.

On the rise

Tobacco Seeds Canada, an online company, says since it started in 2020, it has seen a doubling in demand every year for its products. They attribute that to rising tobacco taxes as well as people becoming more interested in gardening and organic growing. 

“Also, it is quite difficult to locally purchase tobacco for ceremonial and Indigenous purposes, so this may be a factor as well,” said owner Jason Stashko in an email to CBC news.

Sorensen Kass says she purchased her seeds from a nursery south of Calgary. And, she says, she did a lot of research to learn about the different varieties, how they grow and the legalities of growing tobacco.

According to federal law, without a licence Canadians are allowed to grow up to 15 kilograms of raw leaf tobacco per year per adult in a household, for personal use and not for sale. That’s the equivalent of about 150 to 200 plants.

And there is no local bylaw stopping people from growing it in the city.

Calgary bylaw services did reach out after receiving some complaints about the unruliness of her lawn, she says, which she plans to improve upon with some landscaping when she plants another crop later this year.

Sorensen Kass plans to continue to grow tobacco and gift it to others, after she’s prepared it with a smudge, especially knowing the challenges many people face trying to source it.

“To see indigenous plants — I mean the plants that naturally are meant to grow here — alongside tobacco growing in the front yard was … liberating,” said Sorensen Kass.