THE Micronesia Climate Change Alliance and Our Common Wealth 670 will host an Åmut Walk on Saturday, April 22 at Paupau Beach in San Roque.
At the Åmut Walk, Donald Mendiola, a suruhuanu (male traditional Chamorro healer), and Frances Meno, a suruhuana (female traditional Chamorro healer), will guide participants around the beach to learn about and collect available plant medicine.
Moñeka De Oro, Åmut Walk organizer, said this event is an attempt to broaden the public’s access to their ancestral practices and on-island natural resources.
“There’s a lot of people who are hungry for this knowledge and we want to give people resources and direct access to the knowledge keepers. This is something that I think the Micronesian Climate Change Alliance and Our Common Wealth 670 are very attuned to do,” De Oro said.
She said her organization will be giving away free resources that list common medicinal plants while supplies last.
For their part, Mendiola and Meno will perform traditional blessings and share methods in respectfully harvesting medicinal plants.
De Oro said with the right guidance, community members can easily access certain traditional medicinal plants.
“There’s a lot of åmut that grows like weeds. People don’t even realize that there’s so much healing benefits from them,” she added.
