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Orenda is the Haudenosaunee name for a certain spiritual energy inherent in people and their environment. It is an "extraordinary invisible power believed by the Iroquois Native Americans to pervade in varying degrees in all animate and inanimate natural objects as a transmissible spiritual energy capable of being exerted according to the will of its possessor." Orenda is a collective power of nature's energies through the living energy of all natural objects: animate and inanimate.
Anthropologist J. N. B. Hewitt notes intrinsic similarities between the Haudenosaunee concept of orenda and that of the wakan or mahopa; the Algonquin people manitowi, and the pokunt of the Shoshone. Across the Iroquois tribes, the concept was referred to variously as orenna or karenna by the Mohawk people, Cayuga people, and Oneida people; urente by the Tuscarora people, and iarenda or orenda by the Huron.
Orenda is present in nature: storms are said to possess orenda. A strong connection exists between prayers and songs and orenda. Through song, a bird, a shaman, or a rabbit puts forth orenda.
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