@starkatt This has been a conundrum since the early days of therians; and coyotes and foxes are the poster species for it. ;)
I would argue that we can't NOT experience it through a cultural lens, and cultural constructs are totally valid things to base even a spirituality off of.
Having strong cultural-species-trait ties only really become a problem when you're trying to argue for things like p-shifting or very essentialist implementations of reincarnation. And those have other problems. ;)