Today is National Indigenous People’s Day in Canada, and the idea of First Nations culture(s) having a special connection to the land is mentioned in various commemorative statements, which reminded me that I’ve never been clear on whether that’s true. I’ve heard (from, IIRC, First Nations people in both cases) that it is true, but also that it’s an overgeneralization at best and a racist noble savage stereotype at worst.
(I apologize in advance if my wording is insensitive. I try my best not to let my ignorance be hurtful, but please don’t be afraid to tell me if I’ve said something I shouldn’t have.)
I feel like this may be more an anthropology question, but there is some historical basis to it, I suppose.
So, for one, I'm not primarily a historian on native/indigenous history, but I did focus a lot on the Cherokee in colonial/early American era in grad school. I'll also throw out that this I'm going to try to not make sweeping generalizations, as many of the tribes had their own cultures and significant attachments to various things.
In terms of Eastern Woodland (think Algonquian and Iroquois), land had meaning for religious as well as more practical notions. A lot of the tribes in the Eastern Woodlands tended to share cultural aspects, so this is about as blanket answer as I can give you. There is sacred ground, the grounds they live, and the grounds they hunted on.
For example, the Cherokee had their towns like Chota, Tellico, Toqua, and others in the what is now the Tennessee/North Carolina border, but their lands tended to be all over southern Appalachia. They had a sacred spot called the Long Island of Holston, an island in the middle of the Holston River in modern-day Tennessee. It would be considered sacred ground, as it was a meeting grounds for Cherokee councils and making treaties. There was actually a huge consternation between the Cherokee and colonial land speculators, called the Transylvania Company, in the 1770s because a land deal (illegal by this time) included this spot in the deal, even though the Cherokee had wanted to exclude it from the trade.^(1)
Hunting grounds have their own significance, there are spiritual ties to it as well, but I'll comment a bit more on more material matters as I'm not 100% on the metaphysics of it all. Hunting grounds tended to be shared lands between different tribes. The Cherokee, Creek, and Shawnee tended to use lands in Tennessee, Kentucky, and western Virginia as hunting grounds. Hunting provided two functions: sustenance and trade goods. The deerskin trade in the 18th century was a huge thing and something many tribes actively played a part in. Hunting centered on males, as it tended to be a part of "warrior" culture, where males did the hunting and fighting -seen as rather backwards by European counterparts, as hunting was thing of leisure for them, not sustenance. However, loss of hunting grounds through treaties was seen as a bit of an affront to many of the younger crowd within the Cherokee, as it was a threat of erasure for their people and ways, which then lead to war from those like Dragging Canoe against American colonists.^(2)
I can't comment too much on western and plains natives, I do believe they have their own cultural ties as well like burial grounds and the like, but that's a bit out of my forte. Perhaps others might be able to pitch in and fill in that gap.
Might also check out Daniel Richter's Facing East From Indian Country and Richard White's The Middle Ground, both deal with land in terms of both cultural and material thought from native perspective.