It's “yes but”. Yes, we should follow Gladue, but it is broadly misunderstood.
Gladue was the second case in time that formed a bridge between the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the history of colonization and the breakdown of the relationship between Canada and indigenous people. It bridged that background then into criminal law to say, “How do we move forward constructively given the reality of systemic racism?” Gladue has become narrowed and is misunderstood as a clarion call for rehabilitation and restraint. It was really meant to create creative space for judges in different contexts to try to divine different ways so that the system is less racist.
Until we get to a point where we're able to openly, expressly challenge systemic racism, we will continue to fall back on familiar ways of doing things and familiar stereotypes in the way that we're thinking. We'll fail to actually reduce the number of people who are in the criminal justice system and to make sentences, in the context of Gladue, meaningful for indigenous people.