Guiding recommendations

Recommendation 1: Broaden the concept of human rights to incorporate international human rights principles as reflected in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Indigenous legal traditions, in the Code and BCHRT operations and practice.

Guiding recommendations

Recommendation 2: Advocate to add Indigenous identity as a protected ground to the Code. Current grounds of discrimination under the Code (including based on race, colour, ancestry or religion) do not adequately address the discrimination Indigenous Peoples report experiencing. This would send a message of inclusion and reflect the individual and collective nature of Indigenous human rights.

Guiding recommendations

Recommendation 6: Increase the training for and number of lawyers available to support Indigenous Peoples in bringing human rights complaints, with an emphasis on Indigenous lawyers.

Immediate procedural steps

Recommendation 7: Consider these recommendations remedial measures, and implement active and concerted efforts to address the underrepresentation of Indigenous complainants accessing the BCHRT. Create an affirmative access program for Indigenous Peoples.

Immediate procedural steps

Recommendation 8: Create a staff/tribunal committee tasked with developing the Expanding Our Vision Implementation Plan. Indigenous lawyers and cultural leaders or academics with knowledge of human rights should be recruited to join these efforts. The Expanding Our Vision Implementation Plan should include immediate steps to be taken in the first 6 months, and then be renewed on a yearly basis.

Incorporate Indigenous laws

Recommendation 10: The BCHRT should actively engage with Indigenous Peoples, working with the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, Indigenous lawyers, and law schools, to incorporate Indigenous laws into a renewed human rights process which reflects Indigenous approaches for protecting human rights.

Public outreach to Indigenous communities

Recommendation 17: Create a public education campaign for Indigenous Peoples which addresses human rights from an Indigenous perspective:

1. Make materials easily accessible at Band offices, Métis organizations, Friendship Centres, Indigenous political organizations, and universities.
2. Emphasize cases where Indigenous individuals have successfully brought human rights claims.

Addressing systemic racism

Recommendation 22: Develop a baseline of information and understanding of the racism that Indigenous Peoples experience so that individual complainants are not put to a process of proof again and again. Advance research or statements about common areas of discrimination experienced by Indigenous Peoples. This would operate similar to judicial notice of facts that are beyond dispute, as encouraged by the Supreme Court of Canada in cases such as Williams, Gladue, and Ipeelee.

Addressing systemic racism

Recommendation 24: Empower the ability for Indigenous organizations to file collectively, to advance claims on behalf of individuals, similar in context to a “human rights class action.”

Settlement

Recommendation 31: Include Indigenous dispute resolution models, mediators and peacemakers in BCHRT mediation or settlement discussions. Consider use of co-mediation or joint processes involving Indigenous Peoples.