Finding Dahshaa by Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Just as dahshaa, a rare type of dried, rotted spruce wood, is essential to the moosehide-tanning process in Dene culture, self-determination and the alleviation of social suffering are necessary to Indigenous survival in Northwest Territories. But are self-government agreements an effective path to self-determination?Finding Dahshaa describes self-government negotiations as they have unfolded between Canada and the Dehcho, Délînê, and Inuvialuit and Gwich’in peoples. By contrasting accounts of negotiating sessions in city boardrooms with vibrant descriptions of Dene moosehide-tanning camps on the land and community meetings in small northern communities, it shows why Canada’s Aboriginal policy has failed to alleviate the causes of social suffering in the North. Social suffering is not a relic of the past, it has become part of the process as government negotiators have dismissed it as irrelevant to self-government or used it as a rationale to minimize Indigenous authority. Ethnographic descriptions of tanning practices, which embody principles and values central to the project of self-determination, by contrast, offer an alternative model for negotiations. An informed and passionate account, Finding Dahshaa draws on the author’s experience working for Indigenous peoples and includes a foreword by Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus. It is the first ethnographic study of self-government negotiations in Canada. Website link: www. findingdahshaa. ca | Finding Dahshaa by Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters