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This book is presented as “a study in ethno-metaphysics,” an exploration of the worldview of Canada's Native peoples. In offering this as a work of philosophy rather than of cultural anthropology or Native spirituality, authors Rabb and McPherson take as their point of departure anthropologist A. I. Hallowell's claim that a cultural worldview is a “cognitive orientation” from which a set of metaphysical claims might be deduced—even if it is not consciously recognized as such by those who live within it (p. 3). In other words, the guiding premise of this work is that something recognizable and significant as a metaphysical theory can be massaged out of the cultural belief-systems of Canada's Native peoples.

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Stephen Jay Gould, the noted Harvard biologist, has made the observation that within the last generation or so we have begun to witness the realization of essentially biological or 'evolutionary' limits to human performance in certain areas. The argument for limits to performance is grounded in the recognition that people in advanced industrialized societies have already realized the potential set by evolutionary history in respect to such dimensions as average life span and average height. Further, Gould argues, we may be approaching evolutionary limits to certain dimensions of human performance; hence, male athletes, for example, like thoroughbred horses before them, appear to be approaching the natural limit represented by the time it takes to run a mile (Kentucky Derby winners averaged 2:06.4 during the 1910'S and 2:02.0 for the past ten years).