Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Health and wellness service providers

Recommendation 63: We call upon all governments and health service providers to provide necessary resources, including funding, to support the revitalization of Indigenous health, wellness, and child and Elder care practices. For healing, this includes teachings that are land based and about harvesting and the use of Indigenous medicines for both ceremony and health issues. This may also include: matriarchal teachings on midwifery and postnatal care for both woman and child; early childhood health care; palliative care; Elder care and care homes to keep Elders in their home communities as valued Knowledge Keepers; and other measures. Specific programs may include but are not limited to correctional facilities, healing centres, hospitals, and rehabilitation centres.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Health and wellness service providers

Recommendation 64: We call upon governments, institutions, organizations, and essential and non-essential service providers to support and provide permanent and necessary resources for specialized intervention, healing and treatment programs, and services and initiatives offered in Indigenous languages.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Health and wellness service providers

Recommendation 65: We call upon institutions and health service providers to ensure that all persons involved in the provision of health services to Indigenous Peoples receive ongoing training, education, and awareness in areas including, but not limited to:

• the history of colonialism in the oppression and genocide of Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples;
• anti-bias and anti-racism;
• local language and culture; and local health and healing practices.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Health and wellness service providers

Recommendation 66: We call upon all governments, educational institutions, and health and wellness professional bodies to encourage, support, and equitably fund Indigenous people to train and work in the area of health and wellness.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Health and wellness service providers

Recommendation 67: We call upon all governments and health service providers to create effective and well-funded opportunities, and to provide socio-economic incentives, to encourage Indigenous people to work within the health and wellness field and within their communities. This includes taking positive action to recruit, hire, train, and retain long-term staff and local Indigenous community members for health and wellness services offered in all Indigenous communities.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Police services

Recommendation 72: We call upon all governments to fund an increase in recruitment of Indigenous Peoples to all police services, and for all police services to include representation of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, inclusive of diverse Indigenous cultural backgrounds, within their ranks. This includes measures such as the following:

1. Achieve representative First Nations, Inuit, and Métis diversity and gender diversity within all police services through intensive and specialized recruitment across Canada.
2. Ensure mandatory Indigenous language capacity within police services.
3. Ensure that screening of recruits includes testing for racial, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation bias.
4. Include the Indigenous community in the recruitment and hiring committees/process.
5. In training recruits, include: history of police in the oppression and genocide of Indigenous Peoples; anti-racism and anti-bias training; and culture and language training. All training must be distinctions-based and relevant to the land and people being served; training must not be pan-Indigenous.
6. Retain Indigenous officers through relevant employment supports, and offer incentives to Indigenous officers to meet their unique needs as Indigenous officers serving Indigenous communities, to ensure retention and overall health and wellness of the service.
7. End the practice of limited-duration posts in all police services, and instead implement a policy regarding remote and rural communities focused on building and sustaining a relationship with the local community and cultures. This relationship must be led by, and in partnership with, the Indigenous Peoples living in those remote and rural communities.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Police services

Recommendation 78: We call upon all levels of government and all police services for the establishment of a national task force, comprised of an independent, highly qualified, and specialized team of investigators, to review and, if required, to reinvestigate each case of all unresolved files of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people from across Canada. Further, this task force must disclose to families and to survivors all non-privileged information and findings.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Social workers and those implicated in child welfare

Recommendation 84: We call upon all federal, provincial, and territorial governments to recognize Indigenous self-determination and inherent jurisdiction over child welfare. Indigenous governments and leaders have a positive obligation to assert jurisdiction in this area. We further assert that it is the responsibility of Indigenous governments to take a role in intervening, advocating, and supporting their members impacted by the child welfare system, even when not exercising jurisdiction to provide services through Indigenous agencies.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Social workers and those implicated in child welfare

Recommendation 85: We call upon on all governments, including Indigenous governments, to transform current child welfare systems fundamentally so that Indigenous communities have control over the design and delivery of services for their families and children. These services must be adequately funded and resourced to ensure better support for families and communities to keep children in their family homes.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Social workers and those implicated in child welfare

Recommendation 86: We call upon all governments and Indigenous organizations to develop and apply a definition of “best interests of the child” based on distinct Indigenous perspectives, world views, needs, and priorities, including the perspective of Indigenous children and youth. The primary focus and objective of all child and family services agencies must be upholding and protecting the rights of the child through ensuring the health and well-being of children, their families, and communities, and family unification and reunification.