Craftsmanship and Health: The Use of Handcrafted Objects in Indigenous Medicine

This report examines the foundational role of Indigenous crafts and medicine in the social and cultural life of Indigenous peoples, with a focus on the P’urhépecha people of Michoacán (Mexico). Based on a critical review of scientific and ethnographic literature published between 2004 and 2025, the study analyzes how these practices constitute complex systems of meaning, identity, and collective well-being. The analysis is based on fifty publications from international databases and was conducted using thematic coding to identify the relationships between culture, ancestral knowledge, and community continuity. The results show that P’urhépecha craftsmanship transcends its productive or aesthetic function to serve as a vehicle for the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, social cohesion, identity affirmation, and local economic development. At the same time, Indigenous medicine emerges as a holistic health system based on the balance between the physical, spiritual, social, and territorial dimensions of life. It also constitutes a form of cultural resistance against biomedical hegemony and a space for the reproduction of ancestral knowledge. The analysis highlights that Indigenous crafts and medicine are not distinct domains, but interdependent dimensions of the same cultural fabric. Together, they contribute to maintaining cultural continuity, strengthening community bonds, and supporting Indigenous conceptions of collective well-being.