Indigenous American art, hand-made and performance, is diverse, because there are that many Native American tribes. But particular generalities can be made about this art, because lots of their core religious and non secular sentiments are similar all across the clans. One commonplace characteristic of all Native American art is the utilization of animistic themes. These are themes that stem both from lore and from shamanic teachings and experiences. Animism announces that all beings and all things have a dynamic non secular essence, so that in a way all things are in unity, as some modern Western physicists have also come to conclude. Animism does not negate duality, for example good vs. Bad, male vs. Female, and that kind of stuff but it does go beyond dualities to try to get to what it considers the first Source of all matter, energy, objects, and living beings.
Animism is likely the oldest spiritual perspective in the world . When animism is depicted in art, there may be found abstract shapes such as spirals and zigzag lines carved or painted on it. There is also going to be depictions of therianthropes. Now therianthropes are half-man, half-beast pictures.
These are vital because they follow the abstract shapes that were made reference to in shamanic vision-journeys, and it’s from their shamanistic views and their pragmatic environmentalism that all Native American art fundamentally springs. So there will be showed deer with a man’s head, or a man with antlers (this is a particularly strong therianthrope and appears to be universal, or that is, internationally cross-cultural), or a buffalo with arms and hands like a man who shoots a bow and arrow. These therianthropes are thought to be forceful spirit guides who help the shaman walk the road between the 2 Worlds and provide him wisdom to impart when he psychologically gets back to his clan. But it is not animal worship. Native Americans have traditionally been expert hunters, and one of the ways that they mastered the hunting of an animal was to wear its skin and act like it, so as to “get into” that animal in order that they could more successfully hunt it. Native American dances are also miraculous dances, they are not merely for aesthetics and they aren't ballet-type stories, though a lot of them do tell stories.
Indigenous American dance is designed to channel spiritual energies or re-activate traditional stories that can be caused to re-appear in the world today. There is also the dream catcher as a repeated and pervasive theme. This is supposed to be an enchanting web that captures frightening dreams for the sleeper in order that they can be removed easily, while the good dreams remain in the conscience. The concept of all creation being an element of a spider’s web is another Native American non secular idea that is similar to modern physics. Too many Indigenous Americans, the most sacred animal is the wolf, and the wolf is often pictured in all kinds of ways and styles in Indigenous American art. The Wolf Tribe presumably was the newest of all of the original clans and brought religious teachings to everybody else.
Also widely depicted in Indigenous American art is Kokopelli, the “Trickster” (sometimes also depicted as the Raven), a dancing, flute-playing shapeshifter who loves humankind but is extraordinarily mischievous.