The Indigenous Craftsmanship in the Composition of Worlds. Towards an Ethnolinguistic Exploration

Abstract

Handicraft making is a complex phenomenon which involves socio-cultural, historical, productive, technological and artistic dimensions, but also environmental and ethnolinguistics variables. From an ethnographic perspective, the paper exposes the way in which traditional handicraft comprises the biological and environmental diversity with the sociocultural one. It exemplifies how the indigenous handicraft making moves vital frameworks (native epistemologies and ontologies) in which nature and culture fuse in special ways. It explores the hypothesis that the native expressions in indigenous language, through different resources, allow us to observe the continuity of human life. This continuity involves animals, plants and other non-human beings that intervene within artisan work in the different “worlds” in which indigenous peoples in our country live and work.

The research is based on field work, interviews and analysis of unpublished and published documentary sources.