Three years to the day after the death of Joyce Echaquan under a shower of racist insults at the Lanaudière Regional Hospital Center, her memory will be honored Thursday evening during a march in Joliette.
Participants in the commemorative march will meet around 6 p.m. in front of the Lanaudière Native Friendship Center. Ms. Echaquan’s spouse, Carol Dubé, and the chief of the Atikamekw Council of Manawan, Sipi Flamand, will take part in the event.
Ms. Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, revealed in Quebec, on September 28, 2020, the treatment she was receiving at the hospital located in Joliette, through a video broadcast live on Facebook in which we heard employees of the establishment insulted him, shortly before his tragic death.
Coroner Géhane Kamel ruled in her report concerning the causes and circumstances of Ms. Echaquan’s death, filed in September 2021, that “the racism and prejudice that Ms. Echaquan faced were certainly contributory to her death.” The report concluded, however, that the death was accidental.
The death of the mother of eight, from Manawan, must not be forgotten, insists Jennifer Petiquay-Dufresne, executive director of the Joyce Principle Office, which helped organize the march.
“It is important to have this duty to remember the woman she was, what she did in the community, who she was as a woman, as a mother, as a person in general, and to say: how do we become allies? together so that things change from today? », Says Ms. Petiquay-Dufresene, in an interview.
“In the community it is still very significant. These are situations that happened before Joyce (and) that continue to happen since Joyce,” she indicated, stressing that events of discrimination against indigenous people in the health network are reported to the Office of the Principle of Joyce “every week”.
The office opened its doors last July in Manawan. The organization aims to enforce the Joyce Principle, which aims to “guarantee all Indigenous people a right of equitable access, without any discrimination, to all social and health services, as well as the right to enjoy best possible state of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health,” we can read on the Office’s website.
“We have several projects in progress, which we hope to be able to start talking about in more detail towards the end of fall, beginning of winter,” declares the Director General of the Office. Ms. Petiquay-Dufresne specifies that these projects “will have concrete repercussions for the security and equity of access to health for Indigenous people.”
The Office also continues its mission regarding the promotion and adoption of the Joyce Principle with various partners, both in the areas of health, educational resources and different levels of government.
The Quebec government does not recognize systemic racism, and has not adopted the Principle.
For Ms. Petiquay-Dufresne, to tackle discrimination, “we need to recognize the problem, and we need to be able to move forward with it.”
The Office of the Joyce Principle, however, offers hope. “We hope that the rights of indigenous people can be respected in the short and medium term,” she maintains.
Musical performances by Laura Niquay and Mikon Niquay Ottawa will be presented during the event in honor of Ms. Echaquan, which aims to “honor her life.”