Full Indigenous jurisdiction

Recommendation 1: Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at all levels of government; assertion of Aboriginal Title over lands; jurisdiction over all areas of law-making; and restoration of collective Indigenous women’s rights and governance.

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 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.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 14: Amend the provincial Residential Tenancy Act to cover all housing and to strengthen tenants rights. Amend the provincial Human Rights Code and Residential Tenancy Act to make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of social condition including health status and drug use.

Immediate services needed in the DTES

Recommendation 23: Fund an Indigenous legal clinic in the DTES that can support Indigenous women in all criminal and civil legal matters including but not limited to family, criminal, mental health, and poverty law issues.

Recommendations to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

On reserve

Recommendation 44: All levels of government should fully implement Jordan’s Principle.

Recommendations to guarantee economic security for Indigenous women in the DTES

Recommendation 54: Implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.