From What the Ju/’hoansi can tell us about group decision-making | Aeon Essays - posted here.
Context: Ju/’hoansi decision-making is always consensus-based.
Bolds mine:
Biesele (…) [a]s founder and director of the nonprofit Kalahari Peoples Fund, she has devoted her career to documenting and aiding the Ju/’hoansi’s transition to modernity. She recorded and translated meetings of the Ju/’hoan people’s organisation that would go on to become the first internationally recognised Conservancy in the new nations of Botswana and Namibia. Biesele has written eloquently about how the Ju/’hoansi have been resistant to give up their old ways of making decisions through consensus. Challenges arose when individuals or small groups were designated as representatives to act as a connection to the government. ‘This was a very foreign idea,’ Biesele said, ‘but the people could see the need for interacting in this way with the new administrations, so they debated how they could possibly do it successfully.’ This task was undertaken with considerable hesitation. One Ju/’hoan said: ‘We never wanted to represent our communities: that was a white people’s idea in the first place.’ As Biesele documents, the Ju/’hoansi have favoured cooperative institutions that tap into their deep history as decision-makers.