Practicing Democracy

“Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor?” —Ohiyesa

Democracy remains one of humanity's greatest inventions for enabling every member of a system to exercise decision rights. We see democracy as a process, with roots in practices learned from people Indigenous to the Americas, programming how we set up systems to enable every member to have an equal say in collective decisions. To enable one voice=one vote, democracy, for us, is a procedure of setting up rules to prevent anyone from getting a bigger say than anyone else.

We’re not experts in democracy as it's practiced by governments or nations. Instead, we see it as grounded in a basic idea that most humans, when they start coordinating, need rules to stop them from taking disproportionate power — and then redesigning the system to suit themselves and their loved ones.

"Democracy needs to be exercised as a horizontal power, built by the people, and defined by their participation not just in terms of their numbers but rather through their actual participation." —Berta Cáceres, Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (1971-2016)

For example, while democracy as a practice has failed us often, the methodologies of equal representation, inclusive voting cycles, and checks & balances on power are potentially applicable to any organizational system and give us a treasure of procedures to start from.

But democracy, on its own, doesn't prevent majority groups from wielding disproportionate power when they vote as a unit. As a result, democracy isn't synonymous with justice and it is incredibly fragile. That's why we think an anti-bias / pro earth commitment is equally important — and different from democratic practice.