Irlbacher-Fox presents her experience with self-government negotiations in the Sahtu. She proposes the existence of a 'dysfunction theodicy,’ within which a colonial state frames a colonized community as suffering, and “shifts responsibility for suffering onto the sufferers, establishing itself through discourse and action as a necessary and legitimate interventionist agent in the lives of Indigenous people alleged to lack the capacity to recognize or alter what the state alleges to be their own suffering-inflicted actions” (107). For example, state intervention in childcare, 'substandard education,’ or 'corrupt local government’ are all manifestations of a dysfunction theodicy.

Abstract: 

Just as dahshaa - a rare type of dried, rotted spruce wood - is essential to the Dene moosehide-tanning process, self-determination and the alleviation of social suffering are necessary to Indigenous survival in the Northwest Territories. But is self-government an effective path to self-determination? Finding Dahshaa shows where self-government negotiations between Canada and the Dehcho, Deline, and Inuvialuit and Gwich'in peoples have gone wrong and offers, through descriptions of tanning practices that embody principles and values central to self-determination, an alternative model for negotiations. This accessible book, which includes a foreword by Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus, is the first ethnographic study of self-government negotiations in Canada.

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Irlbacher-Fox, Stephanie. Finding Dahshaa: Self-Government, Social Suffering, and Aboriginal Policy in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.