Over the years, I have had this recurring question pop up in my head: What would the world look like if every ethnic group had been able to keep its indigenous religion? 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what this might look like. It’s interesting to me that there are so many similarities in the spiritual thinking of indigenous faith traditions – even though these traditions developed independently of each other and many of them did not ever cross paths until much later in human history. It makes me wonder if our ancestors understood a universal truth that we have forgotten in our modern world. It also makes me wonder what the world would be like today if that truth was remembered. 

Here are some ways that the world’s religions might be different if we had not lost our indigenous roots. 

1. Religion Rooted in Geography, Culture, and Lineage

Religion would be more connected to one’s geographic location and cultural roots. It would be tied to the land we live on, our ancestors and the land our ancestors lived on, and our language origin. There would be hundreds, thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of distinct traditions. Asking a person what religion they follow would be equivalent to asking them where they are from, who their ancestors are, and what ethnic group they belong to. Instead of thinking of ourselves as individuals with our own belief systems, we might think of ourselves as individuals that belong to a group of people, in a certain land, with certain responsibilities, and with particular ways to prepare the world for those in our lineage who will come after us. 

2. Speaking of Lineage… 

Many indigenous traditions viewed humans as being part of a continuum of the unborn, the living, and the dead. There’s a chance that ancestors would play a larger role in our everyday lives, because we would not necessarily feel that our connection to others ends at death – or begins at physical life.  Ancestor veneration and the importance of maintaining our ancestors’ stories might become more important on a global scale. Premortality might also become a common theme among the people of the world, and perhaps there would be rituals or traditions that center around those who have yet to be born. 

3. Humans and Nature 

Nature would have more of a sacred status in more parts of the world. Instead of viewing humans as detached observers or rulers of the environment – the underlying indigenous beliefs about humanity’s relationship with its environment viewed humans as participating in an interconnected web of animals, ancestors, landscapes, astronomical bodies, and spiritual beings. 

4. Political Territories 

Our political landscape today is due to various forms of colonization. Much of our national boundaries reflect the territories of people who invaded and suppressed other people. But if no one group had ever forced its way of life on to another, our political boundaries might reflect things like clans and tribes, kinship networks, or sacred territories and places. 

5. Conception of Religion and Spirituality 

In today’s world, we do two things with religion. We compartmentalize it and we feel the need for our truth to be everyone’s truth. Compartmentalizing happens when we separate our religion from other things in our lives – health, family, education, politics, nature. We don’t necessarily view these things as being intricately woven together. They can be separate. But if we were to have held onto our indigenous roots, we may not think of religion as “something we practice” outside of the other parts of our lives. We might think of religion simply as being the way our people live. We may also not feel that there is one universally correct way to live or one universally correct thing to believe. Instead of asking “Which religion is true?” or “How can I get people to believe what I believe?” we might ask questions like, “What does each religion notice about life and spirituality that the others don’t?” or “What sort of relationship does each religion establish between humans and their physical and spiritual environments?” The concept of “live and let live” might be firmly established through a mindset that says, “This is how our people maintain a right relationship with the spiritual world, and that is how your people maintain a right relationship with the spiritual world – and both are good.” 

6. The Evolution of Religion 

Finally, I wonder how indigenous religions would need to reinterpret themselves in light of advancements in science, medicine, technology, and globalization? I also wonder how indigenous religions would deal with various social issues that arise as humanity develops through the ages. 

An Omnist take…

It honestly makes me sad the way that humans have discredited and erased the traditions of others and the traditions of our own ancestors. It also makes me sad to think that we have lost so much of the ancient wisdom and interconnectedness that we had as humans sharing an experience together on earth. As an Omnist, I value going beyond questions about what is objectively true and instead asking what I can learn from each tradition. I value the idea of being part of a greater system that includes the sacredness of all life – not just human life. I wonder if our ancestors knew, all along, the truth of who we are and what we are doing here. I wonder if we have done harm to ourselves by discrediting their sacred, first-hand experiences as uneducated superstition. 

And I wonder if we can find our way back? 

What do you think the world would be like if we had never lost our ancestral, indigenous practices?