Indigenous representatives and relatives of Raphaël André braved the biting cold on Tuesday afternoon to honor the memory of the homeless Innu who lost his life in the streets of the metropolis a year ago and to demand action. concrete measures to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.
“I miss him so much,” sighed Tuesday afternoon the cousin of the deceased, Gloria André, during a brief interview at the Duty. “It’s been a tough year,” she added, tears in her eyes.
On January 17, 2021, Raphaël André, a 51-year-old homeless Innu, was found dead in a chemical toilet in downtown Montreal, near a shelter that was closed that evening. This tragic death, which shook Quebec and the political class, led to a strong mobilization of various Aboriginal communities, who helped each other to achieve the establishment last February of a heated tent in Cabot Square, near the station. from Atwater metro station. The facility, open from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., serves hundreds of hot meals daily and has a capacity of about fifteen people who can spend the night there.
“Since her death, the Innu community, the Mohawk community and the Aboriginal community have come together to put in place all the resources,” the director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, Nakuset, recalled on Tuesday when met in margin of this event.
It is also in front of this tent with a white roof that a dozen people gathered on Tuesday, shortly after 2 p.m., to pay tribute to Raphaël André, whose installation inherited the name.
“It’s important to remember that he was a member of the community who was loved. By remembering him, he doesn’t just become a number, a statistic,” Nakuset mentioned in an interview, when asked about the importance of holding this event a year and a day after the death of Raphaël André.
“We must do better”
The tent erected in Cabot Square, which will continue to operate until the end of March, is struggling to meet demand, its traffic having increased significantly in recent months, despite the addition of several resources for the homeless in different areas of the metropolis.
“We just don’t want a tragedy like this to happen again,” insists Nakuset, who is also president of Resilience Montreal, the organization that manages this tent. “If we don’t have something here, it will happen again. We have to do better,” she insists.
Nakuset is thus calling for the conversion of this temporary installation into a permanent building on the site of Cabot Square, where homeless Aboriginal people meet in summer and winter. In fact, between February 2, 2021 and January 16, this tent served 72,888 people, according to the coordinator of this installation, Alexandra Ambroise. “It’s huge,” she said during the ceremony to emphasize the importance of meeting the needs of homeless people in this sector of Ville-Marie.
“They are used to being here, they should not be sent to the other end of the city either”, she launched, in reference to the various refuges set up since the start of the pandemic in the metropolis.
“We must use our heads and our hearts to find solutions so that our people do not need to freeze in the cold”, also pleaded Charles Patton, the elder of Kahnawake.
Nakuset called on the City of Montreal to ask it to take action in this file.
“We are in a city rich in resources. You can see multi-million dollar condos across the street and the fact that you’re in a tent in a park is something, but I think we could do better,” said she insisted.
At the City, we remind you that a hotel in the city center has been requisitioned to allow the organization Native Projects of Quebec to concretize its project aiming to create a temporary shelter for homeless natives open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. . The site will have a capacity of 50 people and will open its doors next Monday.
“There are advances, but we must always remember that we are a partner on this file, which comes first and foremost to Quebec”, reacted the person in charge of homelessness on the executive committee of the City, Josefina Blanco, who took part in this event. Thus, if the City says it is in favor of the Résilience Montréal project on the Square Cabot site, it reminds us that the money must come from the provincial government. “The primary responsibility lies with Quebec,” she insisted.