Called the Iroquois Confederacy by the French, and the League of Five Nations by the English, the confederacy is properly called the Haudenosaunee Confederacy meaning People of the long house. The confederacy was founded by the prophet known as the Peacemaker with the help of Aionwatha, more commonly known as Hiawatha. The exact date of the joining of the nations is unknown and said to be time immemorial making it one of the first and longest lasting participatory democracies in the world.
The confederacy, made up of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas was intended as a way to unite the nations and create a peaceful means of decision making. Through the confederacy, each of the nations of the Haudenosaunee are united by a common goal to live in harmony. Each nation maintains it own council with Chiefs chosen by the Clan Mother and deals with its own internal affairs but allows the Grand Council to deal with issues affecting the nations within the confederacy.
The Haudenosaunee symbol of the long house, provided by the Peacemaker, is recognized in traditional geographic locations. Upon confederation each nation took on a role within the metaphorical longhouse with the Onondaga being the Keepers of the Fire. The Mohawk, Seneca and Onondaga acted as the Elder Brothers of the confederacy while the Cayuga and Oneida were the Younger Brothers within Grand Council. The main meeting place was and still exists today on Onondaga territory.
the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s constitution is believed to be the oldest, participatory democracy on Earth. What makes it stand out as unique to other systems around the world is its blending of law and values. For the Haudenosaunee, law, society and nature are equal partners and each plays an important role.
Haudenosaunee’s Legendary Founding
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[by aimixin]
"Collectivist" and "individualist" are nonsensical false dichotomies. "Individualists" love to criticize the "collectivists" for wanting to "sacrifice the individual for the collective" and insist that "the individual is more important than the collective". These nonsensical phrases see the individual as an "island unto themselves", that the individual is separate from society, and therefore you can speak of the individual and society as distinct entities.
Yet, this is just objectively not true, the individual is part of that very same collective. If you sacrifice the collective, you also sacrifice the individual, as the collective is merely the totality of individuals.
And, in practice, this is how all "individualists" behave in the real world. They advocate in favor of the sacrificing of the vast majority of individuals in order to promote the individuality of a very few number of individuals.
The most "individually free" society conceivable would be a dictatorship as the dictator would be individually free to dictate whatever he want without any hindrance, but this comes at the sacrifice of the collective's individuality.
The self-contradictory incoherent nature of "individualism" causes so-called "individualists" to advocate directly in favor of the enslavement of the vast majority of individuals to a few. It's an incoherent ideology as "collectivism" and "individualism" are inseparable, the individual is part of the collective, and you cannot sacrifice the collective without sacrificing the individual.
Take the issue of private property, for example. Marxists point out that capitalist societies deprive the vast majority of individuals of the means of production and destine them to work for others for their entire lives, so they advocate for collective control over the means of production so that individuals can actually have control in the economy.
"Individualists" respond to this by saying that this is "sacrificing the individual for the collective" and vehemently defend the massively unequal ownership of the majority of the economy by a small handful of oligarchs because to them, their individual right to be an oligarch is more important than the individuality of the millions of people underneath that oligarch.