Tansi Nîtôtemtik,
Our schedule this week includes evaluations of Calls to Action #6 through #12, which focus on reconciliation as it relates to education. However, recent events have necessitated we pause this work for today.
(Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)
Last week, an Indigenous mother of seven filmed her final moments from a hospital bed. Joyce Echaquan pleaded for help while the nursing staff made cruel and racist remarks about her.[1] This woman was treated as contemptible and worthless by the medical staff charged with her care. Joyce died of complications from hospital-administered morphine shortly after she live-streamed her inhumane treatment.[2]
Today, we honor Joyce and bring attention to the gap in adequate healthcare for Indigenous people. Joyce was an Atikamekw woman from the Manawan Reserve community in central Quebec.[3] She was 37 years old, and a mother to seven children ranging from 7 months old to 19 years old.[4] Her seven children and bereaved husband are left to pick up the pieces after her entirely preventable death.
The notion that Indigenous people experience difficulty in receiving necessary health care is not new. For her part, Joyce had struggled with heart health for some time, and had often expressed fear of the hospital.[5] Joyce is not the first Indigenous person in Canada to die needlessly in the care of our health systems due to systemic and ingrained racism. In 2008, Brian Sinclair died of a treatable bladder infection after being ignored in a waiting room for 34 hours.[6] In 2016, Elder Hugh Papik had a stroke, but was dismissed as drunk by hospital staff, and later died.[7] In 1988, Katie Ross died of an untreated gunshot wound while strapped to the hospital bed, after medical staff failed to properly assess her and diagnosed her with anxiety.[8] Today we ask what is Canada doing to ensure that all Canadians have access to the same standard of care?
Canada has a serious data deficit when it comes to collecting accurate, up-to-date and complete data on health outcomes for First Nations, Métis and Inuit.[9] We do know that health indicators like infant mortality, life expectancy, and access to health services lag behind for Indigenous people in comparison to non-Indigenous people.[10] We also have horrific and extreme accounts of racism in healthcare experienced by Indigenous people - including forced sterilization in the prairie provinces as recently as 2018.[11]
TRC Call to Action #24 calls for training for health care professionals to combat racism and understand the effects of the legacy of colonialism on Indigenous people.[12] As we will show in a few weeks, this type of training has been implemented in various forms across Canada.[13] Outside of the TRC, other reports have been released addressing inequity in healthcare. In Quebec where Joyce sought medical care, the Viens Report issued 142 Calls to Action specific to the Quebec health care system and its treatment of Indigenous people.[14]
Despite the action taken to date, in September 2020, Joyce Echaquan died in hospital of racism. Following her death, the Premier of Quebec denied any issue of systemic racism.[15] Sit with that for a second—the Premier flatly ignored the 488 page Viens Report and its 142 Calls to Action that target Quebec’s racism problem. Straight up denial is right out of the tired, old, racist playbook. It is tragic that Joyce’s husband and children would probably have welcomed her home after being treated in hospital if it weren’t for racism. It is unacceptable that in 2020 Joyce’s necessary medical care was ignored because of racism.
Today we honor the life of Joyce Echaquan, who should still be with us today. We support the protestors in Quebec who joined the Justice for Joyce march this past Saturday. Most of all, we mourn along with Joyce’s seven children and her husband at the untimely loss of their mother and wife.
(Image Credit: Global News)
A Go Fund Me has been organized for the care of Joyce’s seven children, if you would like to contribute you can do so here.
Tomorrow we will return to our evaluation of TRC Call to Action #6.
Until Next Time,
Team ReconciliAction YEG
1 We will not be providing a source for this video, as ReconciliAction does not support the plague of voyeurism of BIPOC death.
2 Jesse Feith, “Indigenous woman records slurs by hospital staff before her death”, (30 September 2020), online: Montreal Gazette <https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/indigenous-woman-who-died-at-joliette-hospital-had-recorded-staffs-racist-comments>.
3 Kristy Kirkup & Tu Thanh Ha, “Indigenous woman records slurs, taunts of Quebec hospital staff before her death”, The Globe and Mail (29 September 2020), online: <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-indigenous-woman-records-slurs-taunts-of-quebec-hospital-staff-before/>.
4 Ibid.
5 Jesse Feith, supra note 2
6 Jane Gerster, “A man was ignored to death in an ER 10 years ago. It could happen again”, (21 September 2018), online: Global News <https://globalnews.ca/news/4445582/brian-sinclair-health-care-racism/>.
7 “Review into Hugh Papik’s death calls for cultural training for health care workers”, (27 February 2017), online: CBC News <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/hugh-papik-aklavik-stroke-death-review-recommendations-1.4001279>.
8 Heather I Peters & Bruce Self, “Colonialism, Resistance and the First Nations Health Liaison Program” (2005) 4:1 Currents: New Scholarship in the Human Services 12.
9 An Overview of Aboriginal Health in Canada (Prince George, BC: National Collaborating Center for Indigenous Health, 2013) at 3.
10 Brenda Gunn, Ignored to Death: Systemic Racism in the Canadian Healthcare System (Submission to EMRIP the Study on Health, Robson Hall Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, 2016) [unpublished] at 5.
11 Avery Zingel, “Indigenous women come forward with accounts of forced sterilization, says lawyer”, CBC News (18 April 2019), online: <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/forced-sterilization-lawsuit-could-expand-1.5102981>.
12 Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada. (Ottawa: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015) at 322.
13 See “The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada :: Indigenous health”, online: <http://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/health-policy/initiatives/indigenous-health-e>.
14 Government of Quebec, Public Inquiry Commission on relations between Indigenous Peoples and certain public services in Québec: listening, reconciliation and progress (Quebec, 2019).
15 Kristy Kirkup & Tu Thanh Ha, supra note 3.
