On Reincarnation

[telerib]

This is some honest confusion.

You may have heard about Luna the Overly-Friendly Orca. Luna's gotten into a sound in British Columbia and is so friendly around boats that it's becoming a hazard. Government officials want to relocate the orca to a spot in the ocean where it can reunite with its family, the L-Pod.

However, there's a local tribe that believes the whale is the reincarnation of their late chief, and want it to stay. So you've got one group trying to get the orca to chase their boat into a holding pen, and the other group trying to get it to chase their boat away from it. Typical human antics so far.

Today, there was a further quote on the whole reincarnated-chief question:

"The Indians agree Luna has become too dependent on people, but many believe the spirit of their late chief inhabits the whale. Luna turned up in Nootka Sound in 2001, days after the chief made a deathbed wish for his spirit to reside within an orca. "

Does the orca not have its own spirit? I mean, if a young orca showed up a year or two after the chief had passed, and it showed the same over-fondness for humans in the area, I could see believing that it was the chief returned. But days? Obviously, this orca was already alive and adult and doing its own thing when the chief died. How does the chief's spirit just move in? Would "possession" be a more accurate term? (Laying aside the usual negative connotations for the moment!)

I'm honestly confused and a bit curious. The locals may not be theologians, but they're also not stupid. This phenomenom obviously fits into their cosmology and spirituality; how? Any scholars of native Canadian spirit traditions out there?