Miranda Mullett’s (Navajo) Kiyani Botanics is an exciting new brand of body care products that keeps sustainability and natural ingredients at the forefront of all it’s soaps and salves. Using the knowledge and values that she learned from her grandmothers, Miranda has created a wide array of products that exemplify the meanings and significance behind the ingredients she uses.
Miranda originally hails from Wide Ruins, Arizona, and has always been drawn to crafting in some shape or form, even studying chemistry for a time. She originally worked in International Education in Asia, which is where she started Kiyani Botanics as a side project when it naturally evolved into a business. Having launched in the U.S. in January of this year, she noticed the demand for her all-natural and environmentally-friendly products when she made almost $2000 in a single day when she first started. Kiyani Botanics currently sells body oils, healing salves, and starter kits for their body soap along with refills.
The values behind Miranda’s brand are clearly seen in the sustainable elements present in each of her soaps and packaging. “We create concentrated body-wash formulation. As a concentrate, we only sell the essentials and then when you get the concentrate, you can add water to it at home to create a full bottle of soap….Our soap dispensing bottle can be re-used over and over, it’s made of glass and a stainless-steel pump. Our concentrate is in an aluminum bottle, and as you know, aluminum has a much higher chance of being recycled compared to plastic. Even our salves are in a refill system – so you have a holding container, which is bamboo, and then you have a refill which is in a paper container.”
Miranda’s no stranger to finding unique methods to reduce waste during production, having once worked with factories to collect scraps of leather and repurpose the material to create all sorts of different accessories and clothing.
Recently, Miranda collaborated with Shy Natives to create a collection of shirts with illustrations of various plants on them with labels of their Indigenous names. Miranda explained that: “I think one of the biggest problems I see, being back in the U.S., when we identify with plants – a lot of the names are broomweed or horseweed. Our Indigenous plants are seen as weeds even though they all have a story, a name, and a purpose. It was just nice to give them that identity and respect that they’re owed because I feel like in modern American society, we just push aside anything in the natural world that doesn’t suit us in that instance.”
Miranda is excited to see her brand expand into markets all over the world, something that’ll open the door to giving others the chance to learn about healthier ways of co-existing with the Earth, and how to put them into practice.
You can learn more about Miranda and Kiyani Botanics on Instagram @kiyani.botanics as well as their website.