“Can you teach me everything I need to know?”: Yo‘amte Siha in the Mariana Islands, the Taotao Mo‘na, and Indigenous Futures

This paper profiles the work of Señot Donald Mendiola, a Chamorro yo‘åmte (healer) in the Northern Mariana Islands. While the paper will highlight Señot Mendiola’s work with traditional healing, it will also explore a vital part of his practice, that of hearing and speaking to the spirits and the taotaomo‘na (the people of before/ancestors). This paper takes as its point of departure the resilience of cultural practices that have survived hundreds of years of colonialism and the potential of these practices to subvert Western epistemologies and ontologies. I argue that the future of my home islands lies in the acquisition and retention of these practices. Because they foreground Indigenous Chamorro epistemology and ontology, they provide alternatives that counter the hegemony of Western knowledge and practices. These practices will help the Indigenous of the Marianas tell different stories about our history and our relationships with our human and other-than-human kin.