It’s difficult to pinpoint how old the concept of a spirit animal is — at least in those words — but the notion is nearly ubiquitous in some corners of the internet and social media. While most of the time the term is simply used to express your favorite kind of animal or childhood idol, the associated images online often stereotype Indigenous people or appropriate and misconceive real religious beliefs.
“What I hate about those memes, and what a lot of other people hate about them, is that they almost always go along with stereotypes about Indians,” says Pinny Lavalier, a Sicangu Lakota volunteer at Native Languages of the Americas, an organization dedicated to preserving Indigenous languages. She describes Facebook quizzes accompanied with images of bears wearing a feathered headdress, or “an Indian woman in her underwear hugging a wolf.” She says that “dehumanizing” image “makes us seem like animals or mystic savages who talk to animals all day.”
For Lavalier and many others, the origin of the term spirit animal is unclear. It may have come from some sort of New Age spirituality, but the problem comes when the concept is misused in a way that trivializes generations of deep Indigenous belief from a host of different cultures.
“Animals have sustained our people for thousands of years, through food and medicine and clothing,” says Renee Gokey, teacher’s services coordinator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
