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EveryJaadu

Orenda

A Haudenosaunee word, recorded in Wyandot and Iroquoian languages, for a spiritual power present in people and nature.

A feather: used in cleansing and blessing in some traditions, worn as a sign of office, and carried as a charm.

Also: orenda (Haudenosaunee)

Orenda appears in writing on the Wendat (Huron) and Iroquois peoples, where it was described as a power by which a person or thing can affect the world, from a hunter's success to a storm's force. The ethnologist J. N. B. Hewitt introduced it to English scholarship around 1902 and compared it to the Siouan wakan and the Oceanic mana. Hewitt, himself of Tuscarora descent, wrote from Indigenous sources. Scholars today caution against treating such words as one universal idea of power with different spellings. Each belongs to a particular language, its stories and its ceremonies, which the Haudenosaunee communities themselves explain.

See also

ManaWakanAnimismThe numinous

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