House of Chiefs

A House of Chiefs (or House of Traditional Leaders) is a post-colonial assembly, either legislative or advisory, that is recognised by either a national or regional government as consisting of and providing a collective, public voice for an ethnic group's pre-colonial authorities. Although often influential within the indigenous culture, its members do not usually function as a modern nation's primary law-making body (cf. British House of Lords), being neither representative (i.e. democratically elected) nor consisting of members appointed individually by the government in power, whether democratic or not. It consists of all or some of the "traditional leaders", historically known in English as chiefs, of a country or a sub-division thereof.