Indigenous leader tells coroner’s inquest community haunted by Joyce Echaquan’s death
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MONTREAL — Indigenous leaders are renewing their calls for the Quebec government to recognize systemic racism in the province’s health-care system.
Paul-Émile Ottawa, chief of the Conseil des Atikamekw de Manawan, testified today at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Joyce Echaquan and said her passing has left an open wound in the community, located about 250 kilometres north of Montreal.
Ottawa’s recommendations include having doctors and other health-care staff trained in school on the realities of the country’s Indigenous peoples, simplifying the hospital complaints process, and recognizing systemic racism.
Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw mother of seven, filmed herself on Facebook Live as a nurse and an orderly were heard making derogatory comments shortly before her death last September at a hospital northeast of Montreal.
