Iroquois Decision Making

While Athens is an example of direct democracy (everyone participates) the Iroquois is a more representative form of democracy where Chiefs are leaders. And while Athens used voting to reach decisions, the Iroquois made decisions based on consensus. We believe this stems from their goal of maintaining a peaceful society. 

We used this model of Consensus and followed the Grand Council method to see if we could come to a decision by consensus on where we should go as a class on a field trip. 

First we had clan meetings:

Then the Chiefs of each clan (as chosen by the Clan Mother) met in a Grand Council meeting to discuss the options. 

Then the clans met again in pairs to try and reach a decision. One set of clans did manage to make a decision but the other pair did not. Today we learned that making a decision by consensus is really hard!