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.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 7: Require Gladue factors to be used as mitigating factors only, unless the victim is an Indigenous woman in which case her wishes should take precedence over an offender.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 8: End the policing practice of street checks; reduce the number of bylaw infraction tickets issued by police in the DTES; prohibit police from carrying and using all lethal weapons; develop guidelines to facilitate greater use of police discretion not to lay charges especially for minor poverty-related offences; and end the counter-charging and criminalization of Indigenous women who defend themselves or their children.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 9: Commit to using non-incarceration and alternative measures especially for minor offenses committed by Indigenous women. Governments must also provide sufficient and stable funding to Indigenous communities and organizations to provide alternatives to incarceration including community-based rehabilitation, diversion, community courts, and restorative justice methods geared towards Indigenous women.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 10: Repeal laws that criminalize or increase harm for Indigenous women in the sex trade.

Recommendation 11: End the criminalization of people who use or possess small amounts of illicit substances.

Recommendation 12: End the criminalization of homelessness by eliminating bylaw infractions and criminal charges for sleeping or tenting in public spaces, and end the displacement of tent cities.

Immediate services needed in the DTES

Recommendation 24: Fund a Bear Clan Patrol in the DTES that is led by Indigenous residents and based on Indigenous reciprocal responsibilities of safety, security, and kinship.

Recommendations to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

Recommendation 36: All levels of government and police forces must end the criminalization of Indigenous peoples who are asserting their jurisdiction and rights to lands and resources.

Recommendations to keep Indigenous families together in the DTES

End child apprehensions

Recommendation 115: End the apprehension of Indigenous children due to poverty or Eurocentric ideas of neglect that stem from a legacy of colonization. Poverty must not be conflated with neglect or mistreatment, and removing children from their families exacerbates cycles of trauma and poverty.