My dad believed and taught that America as a continent has its own guardian spirits. Christianity and other “foreign religions” could never take root here. Not permanently, anyway.
Those of us descended from the European diaspora are living in a time of transition. The ancestral gods we brought with us are native to Europe, not America. In fact, that’s why America has so many fanatic Christian Fundamentalists — they are fighting an inner battle against their natural environment.
Over time, we will adopt and adapt the local gods, but we are only a few generations into something that will be an extended evolution. In the meantime, those of us who were born here, in America, are truly “Native American”. We belong here, even though we haven’t yet learned how to be here comfortably.
We can learn how to be here in part by looking at the culture of the local tribes our ancestors displaced. One thing we should not do is appropriate their culture in any way that would pretend it is our own culture.
As I get older, I find myself more and more interested in that idea.
