Active Indigenous women’s leadership

Recommendation 2: All levels of Canadian government, national aboriginal organizations, and nonprofit agencies must ensure the active leadership of Indigenous women in the design, implementation, and review of programs and policies that are directed to increase the safety of Indigenous women. Strengthen and support solutions that restore the role of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people as Title-holders of their lands, traditional knowledge keepers, sacred life-givers, and matriarchs within extended kinship networks.

Eliminating structural violence against Indigenous women and girls

Recommendation 3: Increased state enforcement alone cannot eliminate violence against Indigenous women and girls because structural violence is connected to individual acts of male violence. A comprehensive national-level integrated action plan to eliminate violence against Indigenous women and girls must address all the socio-economic factors impacting Indigenous women’s, girls’, trans and two-spirit’s safety including equitable access and self-determination over land, culture, language, housing, child care, income security, employment, education, and physical, mental, sexual and spiritual health.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 4: Implement independent civilian oversight of officials responsible for responding to and investigating violence against Indigenous women. Ensure that administrative, disciplinary, or criminal measures are available to hold such officials accountable when officers are found to have failed to act on reports of missing women or to have carried out biased or inadequate investigations of violence against Indigenous women.

Guaranteed public services

Recommendation 34: Establish free public bus transportation between each town and city located along the entire length of Highway 16 and all other highways, with a number of safe homes and emergency phone booths along the length of all the highways.

Recommendations to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

Band councils

Recommendation 52: Aboriginal governments should fund community-based education to ensure that the historical and cultural importance of two-spirit identity is widely understood, supported, and promoted.

Recommendations for Indigenous women’s wellness in the DTES

Culturally safe healthcare

Recommendation 186: End the medical pathologizing and diagnosing of gender identity. Train healthcare professionals to provide gender-affirming care that is safe for and respectful of trans women and two-spirit people.