What are some characteristics of Native religions? How are contemporary Indigenous spiritual paths related to these characteristics?

In North
America, Native beliefs are historically extraordinarily diverse, but, like Eurasian religions,
they generally had some commonalities. One was that religious traditions were transmitted
orally, through stories passed down by the generations. So-called "creation myths,"
which were common to many Native peoples, would have been told and retold in both formal and
informal gatherings.

While Native religions are often correctly
characterized as "animist," meaning that they endowed the natural world around them
with spiritual powers, they also generally acknowledged some kind of supreme supernatural being.
As the "animist" label suggests, most Native peoples did not attach the same division
between the natural world and the spiritual that Europeans did. Many of them saw the forces of
nature as themselves elements of the divine. For this reason, many peoples in southern
North...

href="http://are.as.wvu.edu/ruvolo.htm">http://are.as.wvu.edu/ruvolo.htm
href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/natrel.htm">http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyi...