Definition.
Indigenous American cosmologies are archaic, integrated worldviews conceived by the ancient and protohistoric peoples of the Americas prior to substantive contact with European peoples in the sixteenth century.
The cosmos in these worldviews usually comprises several layered and axially organized realms.Dec 13, 2020.
For Native Americans, the universe is generally considered to consist of three realms.
The region below the surface of the earth comprised the lower world.
The region above the reach of the highest trees constitutes the upper world.
The region in between is, approximately, the middle world..
There is no room in the indigenous cosmologies of the Americas for the plurality of worlds and extraterrestrial life.
These traditional cosmologies are delineated in mythic narrative that does not engage physical law, the geography of outer space, and modern astronomical knowledge.
Rooted in observation and interaction with nature, these cosmologies portray the primary components of the environment, including:
We have seen here, however, that an indigenous view of the universe requires a different type of categorization.
Rather than think of the sky, the earth, and the Underworld as three physical realms, we may now see them as three social realms, or three polities that require the same types of negotiations within and across them as do human polities.
