Haudenosaunee

Iroquois Confederacy Flag, Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois

From Peter Gelderloos, Anarchy Works :

The Haudennosaunne, called the Iroquois by Europeans, are a matrilineal egalitarian society of eastern North America. They traditionally use several means to balance gender relations. Whereas European civilization utilizes gender division to socialize people into rigid roles and to oppress women, queer, and transgendered people, the gendered division of labor and social roles among the Haudennosaunne functions to preserve a balance, assigning each group autonomous niches and powers, and allowing a greater degree of movement between genders than is considered possible in Western society. For hundreds of years the Haudennosaunne have coordinated between multiple nations using a federative structure, and at each level of organization there were women’s councils and men’s councils. At what might be called the national level, which concerned itself with matters of war and peace, the men’s council made the decisions, though the women held a veto power. At the local level, women held more influence. The basic socio-economic unit, the longhouse, was considered to belong to the women, and men had no council at this level. When a man married a woman, he moved into her house. Any man who did not behave could ultimately be kicked out of the longhouse by the women.

Western society typically sees the “higher” levels of organization as being more important and powerful — even the language we use reflects this; but because the Haudennosaunne were egalitarian and decentralized, the lower or local levels of organization where the women had more influence were more important to daily life. In fact when there was no feud between the different nations the highest council might go a long time without meeting at all. However, their’s was not a “matriarchal” society: men were not exploited or devalued the way women are in patriarchal societies. Rather, each group had a measure of autonomy and means for preserving a balance. Despite centuries of colonization by a patriarchal culture, many groups of Haudennosaunne retain their traditional gender relations and still stand out in sharp contrast to the gender-oppressive culture of Canada and the United States...

One example of an anti-authoritarian peace pact with greater longevity than most treaties between states is the confederation enacted among the Haudennosaunne, often referred to as the Iroquois League. The Haudennosaunne are comprised of five nations that all speak similar languages, in the northeastern part of the territory appropriated by the United States and the southern parts of what are now considered to be the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

The confederation was formed around August 31, 1142. It covered a geographically huge area, considering that the only options for transportation were by canoe and on foot. The Haudennosaunne were sedentary agriculturalists who lived with the highest population densities, averaging 200 people per acre, of any inhabitants of the Northeast until the 19th century. Communal farming lands surrounded walled towns. The five nations involved — Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk — had a long history of infighting, including wars spurred by competition for resources. The confederation was hugely successful in ending this. By all accounts the five nations — and later a sixth, the Tuscarora, who fled English colonization of the Carolinas — lived in peace for over five hundred years, even throughout the genocidal European expansion and trading of guns and alcohol for animal pelts that caused so many other nations to split or war with their neighbors. The confederation finally fractured — only temporarily — during the American revolution, due to differing strategies about which side to support to mitigate the effects of colonization.

The communal economic life of the five nations played an important role in their ability to live in peace; a metaphor often used for the federation was bringing everyone to live together in the same longhouse and eat from the same bowl. All the groups of the federation sent delegates to meet together and provide a structure for communication, conflict resolution, and discussing relationships with neighboring societies. Decisions were made using consensus, subject to approval by the entire society.