Native American Religion What do we mean when we speak of Native American religion? Unlike Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, it has no single founder. Unlike Judaism, it is not the ongoing story of a people with a strong sense of their own identity. Neither does it resemble Hinduism, with its ancient and all-inclusive adaptiveness. In a sense, Native American religion does not exist at all: There is no one religious expression common to the 250 distinct Native American peoples still surviving as America approaches the 21st century. And complicating the question even further is the fact that few Native American people today can say for sure how their ancestors worshipped before the onslaught of European immigrations: Too much death lies between the present and pre-Columbian America, too much cultural devastation, too many forced conversions to Christianity. The chain of elders preserving tradition was broken by disease and war. Many contemporary Native Americans interested in knowing their own heritage have found themselves in the peculiar position of needing to consult anthropologists for information. For traditional Native Americans, there is no separation between the sacred and the ordinary. Every act, every thought, walks hand-in-hand with Spirit. The hunting of a beast for food is a dialogue between the hunter and the spirit of the animal. Agriculture is an honoring of the spirits of the plants and the fruitfulness of the earth. Human sexuality mirrors and participates in the masculine and feminine forces present in all the earth and the skies beyond. For traditional Native American religion, almost every act could be considered ritual, since each act is consciously tied to Spirit. AHO