The Role of Dreams in Native American Religion
Living on the West Coast has given me countless opportunities to spend time in landscapes that seem to encourage a different pace of thought. I've walked through forests where the trees seem impossibly old, watched the light change across the desert, and stood beside the Pacific early in the morning when there was hardly another person around. Experiences like these always remind me how easy it is, particularly in modern urban life, to think of nature as scenery—something we visit rather than something we're part of. Many Indigenous cultures of North America have traditionally understood that relationship very differently. The natural and spiritual worlds aren't necessarily separated in the way Western culture has often separated them, and dreams can form part of that relationship too.
This is one of the reasons I've become so interested in the place dreams occupy within Native American spiritual traditions. In some Indigenous cultures, dreams have been understood as potentially meaningful experiences through which guidance, healing, knowledge or spiritual relationships might emerge. A dream could sometimes involve an ancestor, an animal, a place or a spiritual being and be taken seriously precisely because the experience occurred outside the normal boundaries of waking life. That doesn't mean every dream was automatically regarded as a supernatural message. As with so many aspects of Indigenous spirituality, the reality is considerably more complicated and interesting than that.
It's important to make that point at the beginning because there really is no single "Native American religion" and therefore no universal Native American interpretation of dreams. North America was—and remains—home to hundreds of distinct Indigenous Nations with their own languages, histories, ceremonies and understandings of the spiritual world. Lakota traditions aren't Diné traditions; Ojibwe beliefs aren't automatically Cherokee beliefs, and neither should be treated as interchangeable with those of the Haudenosaunee, Hopi, Pueblo peoples or the many Nations of the Pacific Northwest. There are certainly themes that appear in more than one tradition, but whenever we talk about "Native American beliefs" generally, we risk smoothing away precisely the cultural differences that make these traditions so rich.
Dreams As A Bridge Between The Physical & Spiritual Worlds
With that caution in mind, one idea that does appear in a number of Indigenous traditions is that dreaming can open a different form of awareness. Sleep quietens many of the distractions of ordinary life. The dreamer encounters people, animals and places that may be impossible to encounter in quite the same way while awake. Within some traditions, that experience could be understood as providing an opportunity for communication with ancestors, spiritual beings or other dimensions of existence.
I find the idea of relationship particularly important here. Western discussions of dreams often begin with the individual: What does my dream reveal about my unconscious mind? Freud and Jung approached that question differently, and neuroscience has subsequently given us entirely new ways of understanding what happens in the sleeping brain. Indigenous approaches can begin somewhere else. The dreamer exists within relationships—with family, community, ancestors, animals, the land and a spiritual order. Consequently, the important question about a dream may not simply be "What does this say about me?" but "What relationship is this dream drawing my attention toward?"
That difference may appear subtle, but I think it's quite profound. A dream about an animal, for example, doesn't necessarily become a puzzle in which we look up the animal in a book and discover what it supposedly represents. Its importance might depend upon the dreamer's community, the stories associated with that animal, previous experiences and the circumstances in which the dream occurred. Meaning comes from relationship and context rather than from a universal dictionary of symbols.
Among some Plains peoples, dreams and visions could be particularly important during periods of transition. Practices involving solitude, prayer and fasting sometimes formed part of the spiritual development of an individual, although the precise ceremonies and their meanings varied between Nations. These weren't simply adventurous attempts to induce an unusual experience. They took place within established religious and cultural frameworks and could involve preparation, guidance and responsibilities that continued after the experience itself.
The Vision Quest
The "vision quest" has become one of the most familiar ideas associated with Native American spirituality, but unfortunately it's also one of the most simplified. The English phrase is used to describe practices found among certain Indigenous peoples, particularly in parts of the Plains and surrounding regions, but there was never one standardized Native American vision quest. Different communities had their own ceremonies, purposes and expectations.
In some traditions, an individual might spend a period alone in a particular place, fasting and praying while seeking spiritual guidance. A dream or vision experienced during that period could become extremely significant. What happened afterwards was equally important. The experience might be discussed with an elder or spiritual leader who understood the cultural and religious context in which it occurred. A vision wasn't simply collected as an interesting personal experience. It could carry responsibilities as well as meaning.
This is where modern adaptations can sometimes miss the point. It's relatively easy to borrow the language of a "vision quest," spend a weekend alone in the wilderness and describe the experience as Native American spirituality. But the original practices belong to living cultures, not to a generic collection of spiritual techniques. The ceremony, the community and the cultural knowledge surrounding the experience are part of what gives it meaning. Removing one element and recreating it elsewhere isn't necessarily the same thing.
Animals naturally appear frequently when discussing Indigenous dreams and visions, although once again there is a temptation to generalize. Eagles, bears, wolves, deer, ravens and other animals certainly possess spiritual importance within particular traditions, but their meanings aren't fixed across Native North America. The same animal may occupy very different places in the stories and religious lives of different Nations.
I've always found this more interesting than the simplified modern idea of assigning everybody a "spirit animal." If we think about how Indigenous peoples traditionally lived in close relationship with the animals around them, the depth of the symbolism makes much more sense. Animals weren't abstract characters. People watched how they hunted, migrated, protected their young, survived winter and responded to danger. Knowledge accumulated across generations. An animal encountered in a dream therefore existed within a much larger network of stories, observations and relationships.
Another aspect of these traditions that appeals to me is that an important dream didn't always demand an instant interpretation. We live in an age where we expect answers almost immediately. If we have a strange dream tonight, by breakfast we can type a few keywords into a search engine and receive twenty explanations of what it supposedly means. Traditional approaches could be considerably slower. A dream might be remembered, discussed with somebody knowledgeable and considered in relation to what was happening in the dreamer's life and community.
There's a humility in that which I think we've partly lost. Sometimes we simply don't know what a dream means. Perhaps its significance only becomes apparent later. Perhaps it has several meanings. Perhaps it means nothing particularly important at all. Allowing uncertainty to remain for a while can sometimes produce more insight than rushing toward the first available explanation.
Dreams could also have practical consequences. Historical and anthropological accounts from particular Indigenous communities describe dreams and visions being considered in relation to hunting, travel, warfare, healing and communal decisions. It would be misleading, however, to imagine people simply obeying whatever they happened to dream the previous night. Dreams existed alongside experience, observation, tradition and consultation with others. A particularly powerful or recurring dream might deserve attention without every dream becoming a prophecy.
Dreams & Healing
Healing is another area where the difference between many traditional Indigenous worldviews and modern Western categories becomes especially apparent. Western medicine quite reasonably distinguishes between different biological causes of illness and has developed extraordinarily effective ways of diagnosing and treating them. But within some Indigenous traditions, health has historically involved more than the condition of the physical body. Emotional, social, environmental and spiritual relationships could also matter.
A dream might therefore become relevant to healing without being understood as a medical diagnosis in the modern sense. It could reveal a conflict, an unresolved relationship or some form of spiritual imbalance. Dreams might appear during ceremonies or periods of illness and subsequently become part of conversations about what needed attention. Healing could involve restoring relationships—with family, community, the natural world or the sacred—as well as treating the person who was suffering.
I find this concept of restoration particularly interesting. Modern life encourages us to divide ourselves into compartments. Physical health goes in one box, mental health in another, spirituality somewhere else, and relationships perhaps somewhere else again. Many traditional cultures didn't necessarily make those divisions quite so sharply. Whatever else we may believe about the spiritual explanation, there's something valuable in remembering that people experience illness as whole human beings.
Ancestors can also appear in dreams within a number of Indigenous traditions. Dreams of deceased relatives are, of course, found throughout the world. I've spoken with people from very different religious backgrounds who have described an extraordinarily vivid dream of somebody they loved after that person died. Often they say it didn't feel like an ordinary dream. It felt like a visit.
How we interpret such an experience depends largely upon our beliefs. A psychologist might understand it as part of bereavement and the continuing emotional relationship with the deceased. Someone from a spiritual tradition may believe that an actual encounter occurred. I'm not sure we always have to settle that argument in order to recognize the importance of the experience. For the person who dreamed it, the comfort can be very real.
What particularly distinguishes many Indigenous traditions is that ancestors don't necessarily belong entirely to the past. They remain part of a continuing relationship between generations. A dream involving an ancestor can therefore reinforce the idea that an individual's life belongs to a story that began long before their birth and will continue after their death.
The Weaving of Nature into Dreams
Nature is woven through all of this. When I read accounts of Indigenous dreaming, I'm repeatedly struck by the presence of landscapes, weather, animals, water and sky. Perhaps that shouldn't surprise us. If your waking life is closely connected with the movement of animals, the arrival of particular seasons, changing weather, rivers and the night sky, those things will naturally enter the imagination as well.
Our own dreams haven't entirely lost this language. People who spend almost all their waking hours surrounded by roads, buildings and screens still dream about oceans, forests, storms, mountains, snakes, birds and wild animals. I find that fascinating. Whatever explanation we give it, the natural world continues to occupy an enormous amount of psychological territory within us.
Modern neuroscience obviously approaches dreaming from a very different direction. Research into sleep has helped us understand how dreams relate to memory, emotion and the activity of the sleeping brain. REM sleep is strongly associated with vivid dreaming, although dreaming isn't confined exclusively to REM. None of this requires us to dismiss the cultural or personal meaning people give to their dreams. Knowing something about how an experience is produced doesn't necessarily tell us what that experience means to the person having it.
Perhaps one of the simplest things we can learn from Indigenous attitudes toward dreaming is the value of paying attention. Most of us have probably had the experience of waking from an extraordinary dream, thinking we'll remember it forever and then discovering over breakfast that almost all of it has vanished. By lunchtime we're left with a person, a colour or perhaps a single strange image.
I encourage people who are interested in dreams to keep something beside the bed and write down whatever they remember before getting up. It doesn't need to become an elaborate dream journal. A few sentences are often enough. Although writing dreams down is obviously a modern personal practice rather than a substitute for Indigenous traditions of sharing and interpretation, the principle of giving a dream time and attention is useful. Recurring images and emotions become much easier to recognize when we stop allowing them to disappear every morning.
There is an ecological lesson here too, although I think we need to be careful not to romanticize Indigenous cultures as somehow universally living in perfect harmony with nature. The reality is much more complex. What many Indigenous traditions do offer are worldviews in which human beings aren't automatically placed outside or above the natural environment. Animals, rivers, mountains and other features of the landscape can participate in cultural, spiritual and moral life rather than existing merely as resources.
That idea feels particularly relevant now. Many of us spend our days moving between houses, cars, offices and screens. We can go surprisingly long periods without noticing the phase of the Moon, watching the sunrise or knowing which birds are living around us. Spending time outside won't suddenly give us access to somebody else's spiritual tradition, nor should we pretend that it does. But it can remind us that our lives are taking place within a natural world that continues whether or not we're paying attention to it.
Native American Spirituality Today
Respect is especially important when discussing Native American spirituality because these traditions aren't relics from a vanished past. Indigenous Nations and communities are alive, contemporary and extraordinarily diverse. Many have had to preserve or revitalize ceremonies and languages after generations of forced assimilation and suppression. Spiritual practices that outsiders now find fascinating were, at various points in American history, actively discouraged or prohibited.
For that reason, I think learning about Native dream traditions should begin with a certain amount of humility. We can find them fascinating without claiming them as our own. We can listen to Native writers, scholars, elders and cultural organizations rather than treating Indigenous spirituality as a collection of attractive ideas that can be separated from the people to whom they belong.
After spending years exploring different spiritual traditions, and perhaps because I now live on the West Coast where the natural landscape is such a constant presence, I keep returning to one idea in particular: relationship. So much of modern life is concerned with control. We want to explain things, categorize them, optimize them and arrive at answers as quickly as possible. Dreams stubbornly resist that approach. They arrive in their own time and speak in a language that is rarely straightforward.
Many Indigenous approaches to dreaming suggest another possibility. Pay attention. Remember what you can. Don't assume you understand everything immediately. Consider the relationships involved—with other people, with the land, with animals, with those who came before you and perhaps with parts of yourself that don't usually get much attention during the day.
I don't think we need to adopt beliefs that aren't our own in order to appreciate the wisdom of that approach. Whether we regard dreams as spiritual encounters, psychological experiences or some mysterious combination of the two, they ask something increasingly rare of us: to become quiet for a moment and listen. Perhaps that is what I find most moving about the place of dreams within many Native American traditions. The dream isn't necessarily there to give us a prediction or a convenient answer. Sometimes its importance lies simply in reminding us that we exist within relationships much larger than ourselves—and that not everything worth understanding speaks loudly enough to be heard when we're rushing through life.