Recommendations to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

Band councils

Recommendation 50: Aboriginal governments should provide mandatory training for band councillors and community leaders to ensure that they treat the issue as a high priority.

Recommendations to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

Band councils

Recommendation 51: Aboriginal governments should increase funding for education and programs regarding violence prevention directed at children, youth, and adults with an emphasis on consent, sexual education, and healthy relationships.

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 to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

Band councils

Recommendation 53: Aboriginal governments should adopt the principle of equal representation of women in governing councils and decision-making bodies, and introduce pay-equity policies on reserve.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Recommendation 55: Implement a human rights, Indigenous rights, and gender based analysis in the conception and implementation of all poverty reduction strategies, policies, legislation, and decision making.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Recommendation 56: All levels of government must coordinate on an Indigenous specific poverty reduction plan, complete with specific goals, targets, timelines, and accountabilities.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Employment security

Recommendation 77: Rectify Indigenous women’s exclusion from the economy by:

1. Developing equitable and inclusive hiring policy and standards.
2. Creating a diversity of low-barrier jobs in the DTES with priority hiring and support for Indigenous women of the community.
3. Creating peer-based employment programs including navigation positions throughout the housing, mental health, substance use, and income support systems.
4. Ensuring Indigenous women peer workers are paid a living wage, have full benefits, and have the right to unionization.
5. Creating jobs that value and compensate skills such as weaving, beading, drum making, food harvesting, and traditional healing, and support the creation of an Indigenous women’s cooperative in the DTES.
6. Improving employment supports and workplace accommodations for Indigenous women who are single parents and/or in recovery to ensure that they are not setup to fail in their employment due to systemic barriers.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Employment security

Recommendation 80: All levels of government should pay living wages to all direct and contracted government employees, and encourage other employers to do the same.

Recommendations to keep Indigenous families together in the DTES

Recommendation 111: Implementation of and full funding for federal Indigenous Child Welfare legislation that is attentive to specific First Nations, Metis, and Inuit needs. Ensure that Indigenous nations resume sole jurisdiction—and not simply service delivery—over child welfare for child-members of the nation who are on reserve and off reserve. This is in accordance with the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Recommendations to keep Indigenous families together in the DTES

Recommendation 112: In full partnership with First Nations, INAC must immediately:

1. Fully redress the inequities and structural problems of funding for First Nations children.
2. Support funding and policy options proposed by First Nations for child and family services.
3. Ensure that a formal compliance and reporting program be established specifically for the First Nations Child and Family Services Program.