What Does Indigenous Participatory Democracy Look Like? Kahnawà:ke’s Community Decision Making Process

CLAIM CONNECTIONS / 12

Where this source is used

• Kahnawà:ke's contemporary law-making process combines community-specific Haudenosaunee principles with elected-council and legislative institutions.

  • supports · pp. 113–118, CDMP as a bridge between systems

• Kahnawà:ke’s law-making process is evidence about named institutions under specific colonial, legal, and community conditions; it does not establish a universal tribal, clan, council, confederacy, or stateless form of government.

  • context · pp. 111–132

• The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke approved use of the Community Decision Making Process and its request-for-legislation form on October 14, 2005.

  • supports · pp. 120–122

• Horn-Miller describes Kahnawà:ke's law-making process as a community-specific bridge between Haudenosaunee and elected-council systems.

  • supports · pp. 111–118, community and institutional account of the CDMP

• Between 2005 and 2007, consultations with Kahnawà:ke organizations, interest groups, governmental bodies, and a Traditional Government Working Group reduced the proposed process from fourteen phases to three.

  • supports · pp. 120–122

• Horn-Miller characterizes the Community Decision Making Process as a contemporary bridge that adapts Haudenosaunee principles within Kahnawà:ke’s elected-council and legislative institutions, not as an unchanged survival of a single traditional system.

  • supports · pp. 111–118 and 131–132

• Horn-Miller reports conflicting views within Kahnawà:ke about the governing authority of traditionalists and the elected council, with mistrust of the council reducing participation in a process it sponsors.

  • supports · pp. 129–131

• In her 2013 account, Horn-Miller described Type I laws applying to the whole Kahnawà:ke community as using public hearings to establish the mandate and review drafts until participating groups consent, after which Council enacts the law in a legislative session.

  • supports · pp. 122–126, especially pp. 125–126

• For a Type II law affecting a sector or specific group, initial stakeholder consultation helps develop the proposal before the chiefs or Council are asked to establish its mandate, scope, purpose, and intent; further community and stakeholder consultation follows as the draft proceeds toward public review and enactment.

  • supports · pp. 125–127

• The community-authored preamble to Kahnawà:ke’s decision-making process identifies Kahnawa’kehró:non as part of the Rotinonhsón:ni Confederacy and asserts responsibility for their own laws and affairs.

  • supports · pp. 111–114, especially the community-authored preamble on p. 112

• Horn-Miller describes Kahnawà:ke consensus as a process in which participants have equal access to deliberation, proposals change in response to concerns, dissent is recorded, and consent does not require complete agreement.

  • supports · pp. 115–118

• This guide uses the Kahnawà:ke process to compare participation while withholding the externally imposed classification of republic.

  • context · pp. 111–118, community-specific framing of the CDMP