Canada's First Nations peoples value a legacy of oral tradition that provides an account of each group's origins, history, spirituality, lessons of morality, and life skills. Stories bind a community with its past and future, and oral traditions reach across generations, from elder to child. They bear witness to how women and men were created and populated the land. These descriptions of genesis are as varied as the religions of the First Nations, but all maintain that life began on the North American continent.

Cross-cultural studies of First Nations peoples are conducted by anthropologists in an effort to understand past interpretations of Native origins in Canada. With this goal, anthropologists have recorded the spiritual stories and teachings of Native storytellers, and have transcribed them. However, the inflection and intention of the speaker's voice are crucial and these are lost when the stories are transformed into written words. Translation also leads to altered meanings. Historians are aware of oral tradition and its diversity throughout Canada. But they are unable to agree on how oral traditions and spiritual teachings of First Nations peoples should be treated within historiography.

Native religions developed from anthropomorphism and animism philosophies. Animals, plants, trees, and inanimate objects are interpreted in human terms and their relation to the earth, sky, and water. A cosmological order exists, within which humans live, that values balance and harmony with all of these forces. Among the First Nations peoples, eight unique stories of genesis exist and have been adapted in several forms: the earth diver, world parent, emergence, conflict, robbery, rebirth of corpse, two creators and their contests, and the brother myth. The following stories are representative of these eight themes of genesis:

- Iroquois (Earth Diver)
- Blackfoot (Earth Diver)
- Igluik (World Parent)
- Huron (World Parent)
- Cree (World Parent)
- Siouian (Emergence)
- Haida (Conflict and Robbery)
- Tsimshian (Rebirth of a Corpse)
- Mi'kmaq (Two Creators and their Conflicts)
- Algonquin (Brother)
- Dene (Creation of Seasons)