Joe Plant

“Joe Plant Nitisiyihkâson.” / “My name is Joe Plant.”

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Joe Plant is the CEO and Founder of Plant Housing and Development (PlantHD). He is Plains Cree from White Bear First Nation and Salish-Kootenai from the Flathead Nation, but was Alberta born and raised on Blackfoot Traditional Territory (Treaty 7). Though he is not Blackfoot (all of his siblings are), he received a Blackfoot name from Elder Roy Bear Chief: Aisom Pi Poom Mawa (pronounced Ay-saw-be-boom-maw) meaning, “One Who Plants Seeds.”

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Joe spent five years as an ironworker in Alberta with his father (and many more during summers as a teenager) before going to university. Immediately thereafter, Joe began doing work in the Indigenous community in a variety of capacities in Treaty 7, building lifelong connections, and eventually extending from local to national, and then to international projects.

 

Joe’s work in the Indigenous community began with a grassroots organization called Aboriginal Community Garden. From there, Joe began to make connections from coast to coast to coast and had many opportunities that he is grateful for. His national roles such as Ashoka Canada’s Indigenous Advisory Council led to more opportunities. Presenting at Ashoka Global, and nearly winning a global challenge called Map the Systems (raising awareness for MMIWG2S+), led to joining one of the largest Indigenous funders in Canada. 

Joe ran programs and supported partnerships at the Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund (IPRF) and has just recently. Working alongside his mentor and leader, Vicki Grant (Order of Canada), with IPRF he began to build the company that would become PlantHD.

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Being positioned in such an important relational intersection between Indigenous nations and organizations, philanthropic partners, social enterprises, and other supporters, Joe saw an opportunity to pull together this network to leverage its strength to support Indigenous communities in new ways: “We are an Indigenous developer and are committed to doing our part in the global housing crisis by ensuring Indigenous people won’t be left behind.”

Joe has just been confirmed to speak at a Ted Talk on housing in February in 2025, and the talk will be used to grow trust and increase reach across Canada for PlantHD. 

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He currently resides on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples, where Tkaronto (Toronto) is situated to build and grow new partnerships for PlantHD.