A 1996 amendment to the Canadian Criminal Code aimed to reduce the over representation of Indigenous persons in prison, by requiring judicial officers to take Aboriginality into account in the sentencing process and, in this context, to consider all available sanctions other than imprisonment. This article considers the impact of this initiative and considers the viability of such a regime for Australian jurisdictions. The article examines the interpretation of the new s 718 of the Code in the Canadian case of R v Gladue (1999), which imposes a significant duty upon judicial officers engaged in sentencing Aboriginal offenders to investigate fully all other sanctions apart from the penalty of imprisonment. The author then discusses important Australian decisions on how Indigeneity should be treated in the sentencing process, which rely on the rather empty notion of formal legal equality and are paradoxically careful not to place too great an emphasis on Indigeneity. The article concludes that the Canadian reform may be of significant value in the Australian context by delineating more clearly the obligation of judicial officers to exhaust in practice all sentencing options for Indigenous offenders other than imprisonment.