Red sandstone buttes at Monument Valley with a lone horse rider silhouetted on a rocky point.

Tradition

Indigenous and Traditional

Church Directory · Non-Christian

Indigenous and traditional religions are the rooted faiths of particular peoples and places, carried by custom, story, and rite rather than by scripture.

Organizations in This Tradition

Uluru glows red-orange in low sunlight above flat desert scrub, seen from a public viewpoint.

Organization Aboriginal Australian Traditions the traditions of the Dreaming held by Australia's first peoples.

A sculpted mud-and-timber shrine building stands among trees in the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in Nigeria.

Organization African Traditional Religions the rooted faiths of Africa's peoples, including the Yoruba religion, carried also into the Americas.

Inside Hong Kong's Man Mo Temple, spiral incense coils hang above inscribed pillars and bronze urns.

Organization Chinese Folk Religion the household and temple practice of gods, ancestors, and festivals across China and its diaspora.

Terraced adobe houses with blue-trimmed doors at Taos Pueblo rise toward forested mountains.

Organization Native American Religions the ceremonial traditions of the Indigenous peoples of North America, including the Native American Church.

A black-and-white photograph from about 1900 to 1920 shows a Sámi group in traditional dress posed with dogs before lavvu tents.

Organization Sámi Tradition the shamanic tradition of the Sámi people of northern Europe.

Religious Art & Images

Inside the wharenui at Waitangi: red-carved rafters, woven tukutuku panels, and the tekoteko post of the meeting house at the Treaty Grounds.

Art Tradition Indigenous and Traditional Sacred objects under community protocol: sacred and secret are distinguished, and repatriation is a live question.

Painted formline figures crown the Kakaso'Las totem pole at Stanley Park in Vancouver, a thunderbird spreading its wings at the top.

Art Entry Northwest Coast Formline and the Crest Pole A visual grammar of ovoids and U-forms that writes family crests in cedar — the pole at Brockton Point, carved by Ellen Neel, stands in public where its predecessors have stood since the 1880s. Formline system centuries old; pictured pole 1955 Art Entry Potlatch Masks — Image Withheld Masks danced at the potlatch open and transform as the ancestor arrives. This page shows no image: the masks are community-governed regalia, and their photographs are published here only with the owning community's consent, which has not been sought for specific pieces. Tradition continuous; confiscation era 1885–1951

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