Before the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century
Before the establishment of a permanent European settlement at the beginning of the 17th century, the religious landscape of what is now Canada consisted in the religious cultures of the great variety of Indigenous peoples who, like other peoples of the Americas, had been established in the territory for millennia. The Indigenous societies with their religious cultures were highly diverse and characterized by a great variety of world views, mythologies, and ritual practices woven into the social, economic, political and cultural aspects of the societies. There was no differentiation of ’religion’ from other aspects of life, even in principle. There is likely a fair degree of continuity between these pre-settler religious cultures and those among contemporary Indigenous peoples in Canada, but these have also evolved and changed over the centuries as the European settler societies became ever more dominant and the Indigenous cultures marginalized and threatened.