Constructing Law, Space, and their Subjects:
Realities of Law and Governance among the North American Indians and Australian Aboriginals

Skyscrapers hide the heavens by J.R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) also provides an insight into aboriginal worldviews and notions of their relationship to land. Miller explains,

Creation myths could vary from one nation to another, but the underlying understanding of what constituted being was the same for all Indians. All people, animals, fish, and physical aspects of nature were animate; all had souls or spirits. Even items of human manufacture had souls. And souls required respectful treatment at all times... Such a belief system was based on the assumption that all the world was a continuum, that everything was animate, and that humans held no special place on Earth and in the cosmos. (pp. 12-13)

... Christians, like the Hebrews from whom they were historically and theologically descended, held a worldview that contrasted sharply with the animistic beliefs of the indigenous peoples of North America. Amerindians believed that they were only one species among many. An Indian's spirit was but one among a myriad of spirits of people, animals, fish, flora, and minerals. In contrast, Christians believed that they held a special place in creation. At the irreducible core of Christianity was the dictum that God created man in the deity's image, and that the non-human world was available for human use and God's glorification.

While Christianity recognized a duty of stewardship in the use and exploitation of the non-human things that God had put on earth for Christians' advantage, it also confirmed that human beings were on a higher level of existence than animals, fish, and the rest of the natural world. This worldview had fueled Western society's development of science and subjugation of nature by means of technology ever since the Renaissance... (pp. 17-18)