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 5: Remove discrimination from the Indian Act by making women and men equal in the ability to pass on status, repair situations where discrimination against women has disadvantaged those claiming status through the mother’s line, and remove the two-parent rule for transmitting status and the 6(2) cutoff that withholds status from the children of many women who are unable or unwilling to provide the father’s name.

Legislative reform to reduce Indigenous women’s manufactured vulnerability

Recommendation 6: End the apprehension of Indigenous children and prohibit the placement of Indigenous children into non-Indigenous foster and adoptive families.

Recommendation 15: Implement an Indigenous reparations tax on top of property taxes on residential, commercial, and industrial properties, with all revenues going to implementation of an Indigenous poverty reduction plan.

Immediate services needed in the DTES

Recommendation 16: At least one multipurpose Indigenous Women’s Centre in the DTES that is run by and for Indigenous women with long-term funding and wrap-around supports including healing support, communal kitchen, child care facility, elder accompaniment, artisan training and vending, and 24/7 educational, cultural, recreational, and empowerment-based programming to bring Indigenous women together collectively. This would also serve as a single point of access to connect to integrated services.

Guaranteed public services

Recommendation 29: Provide all residential school survivors with a guaranteed livable income for the rest of their lives. Increase federal pensions and provincial income and disability rates to the Market Basket Measure. Eliminate barriers to accessing income and disability assistance by reducing unnecessary eligibility criteria and simplifying the application processes. End clawbacks, increase earnings exemptions, and raise all asset limitations for those on income and disability assistance.

Recommendations to end Indigenous women’s displacement from land

Recommendation 39: Compensation for the disenfranchisement and lack of protections for women and their descendants as a result of the discriminatory Indian Act and matrimonial real property laws.

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 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

Recommendation 57: Implement an Indigenous reparations tax on top of property taxes on residential, commercial, and industrial properties, with all revenues going to implementation of an Indigenous poverty reduction plan.