For many Canadian Aboriginals, the natural world abounded in spirit life. Banff National Park, Alberta
Combinations of belief are common throughout most religions, and Canadian Aboriginal Spirituality is no different. Ideas of afterlife are not only dependent on the tribe's beliefs, but also the individual opinions of the people. Ceremonies were performed differently throughout each tribe, to send the soul of the dead to the afterlife.
REINCARNATION
By definition, 'Reincarnation' is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, can begin a new life in a new body.
Reincarnation was a large part of Canadian Aboriginal, as well as Native American afterlife belief, and because the religions are so similar, many thoughts of the afterlife were much the same as each other. Warren Jefferson, author of “Reincarnation Beliefs of North American Indians," writes that “reincarnation is a central aspect of tribal cosmologies in these societies." Many tribes believed that after death, your soul would come back to life in a new human form. Some believed that new birth in their tribe was from the soul of a recent death, some even believe the change to be as close as family connections. For this reason, a baby will sometimes be called 'grandma' or 'uncle' to express this feeling.
SPIRIT FORM
The Algonquin tribes of the eastern United States and Canada, rivals of the Iroquois, postulated a shadowy afterlife where the spirits of dead men hunted dead animal spirits. From this came the saying "the natural world, abounded in spirit life'. In a spirit world, life was lived just the same as it would in the human world, only all 'living beings' were in spirit form. Sometimes this was believed to be a sort of 'limbo' for the souls of the dead, before they were to have an afterlife.
PART OF THE LAND
Spirits inhabited everything - rocks, trees, animals, people - and so in this sense nothing in the world was quite as it seemed. Some Canadians believed that if a soul didn't reincarnate as another person, they would instead come back as a part of the land, from the tribal area which they belonged. They would come back with the help of deities, who would guide them into helping the land to grow.