Your power animal represents the entire species of the animal that is protecting and helping you.  For example, you don't have the spirit of a specific eagle, kangaroo, or squirrel protecting you.  Rather, you have the protection of the spirit of the entire species of eagle, kangaroo, or squirrel.

I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.