Haudenosaunee Confederacy

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy ("People of the Longhouse", called the "Iroquois" by Europeans) or Six Nations (1142 - 1800s) are an egalitarian confederation of six indigenous nations (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscarora) in what is now 'Canada' and the 'United States of America'.

Crime

The Haudenosaunee had no police, prisons and courts. Yet they had an extremely low rate of crime, where theft, vandalism, armed robbery and were almost unknown.

According to Friedrich Engels, there was a degree of restorative justice practiced with Haudenosaunee communities practiced:

All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole of the community affected, by the gens or the tribe, or by the gentes among themselves; only as an extreme and exceptional measure is blood revenge threatened-and our capital punishment is nothing but blood revenge in a civilized form, with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization.

Economy

The Haudenosaunee developed and crafted an economy that could only be described as anarcho-commmunist. Land and natural resources (such as forests and rivers) were commonly owned and people only owned as much as they could personally use. People gardened, farmed, fished, cleared forests, built houses, made tools, created clothing, raised children, served as diplomats and hunted for food. Mary Jemison, a European teenager who was adopted into the Seneca nation in 1758, describes a degree of workers' self-management in the communities:

Our labor was not severe...In the summer season, we planted, tended and harvested our corn, and generally had all our children with us; but had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased.

See Also

• Oka Uprising