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rite practices EssayJohn A. Grim of Yale University explained that the term indigenous is a generalized reference to the thousands of small scale societies who have distinct languages, kinship systems, mythologies, ancestral memories and homelands. Much of these indigenous cultures were found in North America coherent before the European settlers arrived. Some of these cultures had their own way of living and unique ways of worshiping their gods and practicing rituals.Diversity in the belief of the divine, their spirituality and nature would be the near identifiable aspect, wherein some believe in reincarnation, concept of dual divinity and the interrelationship of the microcosm of the body with the macrocosm of the larger world (Grim, 2006), while others believe in kinship in animals and humans. The advent of modern civilization proved to be devastating to these indigenous cultures when natives where forcibly converted to Christianity conduct to high suicide range due to t he suppression of their religion and culture.Many were sold into slavery and forced to live in reservations, therefore limiting their freedom to interact with nature leading to the death of some of their rituals and customs. With the passage of time, some of these indigenous beliefs were incorporated into the different contemporary religions were todays respective native families attend to. Personal convictions represent of the combination of traditional beliefs with Christian elements.Some existing Native American tribes still practice rituals, rain dances, chanting and drum beating within the consideration of Christianity. No matter how great the difference in religious practices between life then and the contemporary times, indigenous people still believe that the olden still lives in the present as John Grim puts it, that central to indigenous traditions is an awareness of the integral and whole relationship of symbolic and material life.Ritual practices and the cosmological ideas which undergird society cannot be separated out as an institutionalized religion from the daily round of subsistence practices. Sources 1) Native Religions Development (2006), www. religioustolerance. org internet http//www. religioustolerance. org/nataspir. htm Date Accessed 17 January 2007 2) Grim, John A. (2006), Indigenous Traditions and Ecology (web page) http//environment. harvard. edu/religion/religion/indigenous/index. html Date Accessed 17 January 2007