#JusticepourJoyce: free speech

Joyce Echaquan died at the hospital in Joliette last Monday, shortly after filming herself on Facebook asking for help, while nurses covered her up with racist insults. “Joyce could only report the situation with her phone, and that's why we know what happened to her, and that's why we know what happened to her, but it happens every day and we don't always have the means to film it,” Nakon said. Uset, the director of the Montreal Native Women's Shelter, last Wednesday.

The death of the Atikamekw woman pushes several Aboriginal people to publicly denounce on social networks and in the media the racism they are experiencing or have experienced in the health sector.

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“It's okay, she's going to go back to sleep”

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Christina Bégin on the vigil for Joyce Echaquan in Joliette. Picture: APTN

It was upon learning Joyce's story that Christina Bégin felt the need to talk about her experience at the Joliette hospital nearly 30 years ago. In 1992, Christina was pregnant with her boy. She went to the hospital in Joliette to give birth by cesarean section. During the operation, she wakes up and hears the gynecologist make several racist comments about the Aboriginals. “He said that the Aboriginals were all a gang of alcoholics,” she told us during the vigil held for Joyce Echaquan in front of the Joliette hospital. Christina then moves her head to show that she is aware.

“The nurse realized that I was awake and told the gynecologist, but he said, “It's okay, she's going to go back to sleep.” I know he said other degrading things about me, but I didn't remember them because I went back to sleep right after.”

The next day, she woke up crying and told the nurse about it, who did not follow up on the incident. “She didn't even come to console me,” she said sorry. Her cousin also told her one day that she had experienced a similar problem with the same doctor. “It has been working for me since yesterday, I would like to file a complaint. Hopefully it's not too late.”

“We should inject him with a toxic product”

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Georges-Hervé Awashish at the Chicoutimi hospital. Photo: Courtesy of Shawnok AwashishishIf the tragedy that occurred in Joliette gives Christina Dubé the courage to denounce the past, others denounce their present, such as Georges-Hervé Awashish. The latter was admitted to the Chicoutimi hospital last week. He has several health conditions that require specialized care. It is therefore from his hospital room that he gives us a telephone interview. He wants to share his experience “so that people know what is happening with Aboriginal people”, he whispers to us on the phone.

Two days after the death of Joyce Echaquan, the Atikamekw man from Obedjiwan said he heard the nursing staff at the Chicoutimi hospital make death threats against him. On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, around 3 am, he gets up to go to the bathroom. When he returned to his room on the fourth floor, he heard the staff talking in the hallway.

“They were talking about Manawan, Mr. Echaquan, and then it was laughing,” he said. Upset, Mr. Awashish did not say a word in his room, which was close to the nurses' office. He sits in his wheelchair. “After that, I heard one of the nurses say, “We have one, we have an Indian one here, lying in the room.” And then another one says: “We should inject him with a toxic product, then his problem will be solved, he will suffer the same.” After that, they went off laughing. It was laughing in the corridor,” he said. Freeze, Georges-Hervé Awashish said nothing.

After regaining his composure, he phoned his son and paid for a taxi to pick him up. “He called me in the night to get him, he didn't want to tell me on the phone what had happened,” says Shawnok Awashish. “He was traumatized. After hearing the death threats, he could no longer lie down in his room,” he continues.

A few hours later, Mr. Awashish left the hospital with his son. A nurse who would have heard the words of her colleagues tried to restrain them, say Georges-Hervé and Shawnok. Following this incident, Georges-Hervé stayed with his sister, Louisette, in La Baie, near Chicoutimi. He didn't want to go back to the hospital. But his health problems require him to follow up with a doctor.

“The police picked me up at my sister's house to take me to the hospital on Saturday,” he said. He is now on the second floor of the hospital, where his doctor has assured him that no one from the fourth floor will come to harass him. But Mr. Awashish is far from reassured: he fears for his life. “I can't sleep, I'm not comfortable here, I can hear their voices in my head. I have to take pills for anxiety,” says the 53-year-old man, who says he is afraid of suffering the same fate as Joyce Echaquan. “My life is at stake, I am experiencing a lot of anxiety. It's really disappointing what's going on, I think it's very disappointing.”

In an email sent to La Converse, the Centre Intégré Universitaire de Santé et de Services Sociaux du Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean confirmed that an investigation was opened last Thursday following the alleged events.

“We are in the process of collecting information and validating the facts. If such a situation were to prove true, it is clear to our establishment that it is a shocking and unacceptable event,” said Amélie Gourde from the Communications and Government Affairs Department. Asked whether the staff reported by Mr. Awashish were still in place, the CIUSSS du Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean indicated that no action would be taken before the investigation report was submitted and that allegations were still at this stage. The team of Mr. Awashish's doctor, Mathieu Leblanc, directed us to media relations at the medical institution, which refused to allow us to conduct an interview with him. For his part, Georges-Hervé said he was waiting to leave the hospital where he received death threats.

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Resources

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• A petition en Ligne calls for the application of recommendations 74, 75 and 76 of the Viens Commission.

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Barely 4 Calls to action, out of the 142 that are recommended in the final report of the Viens Commission, have been fully completed since the report was submitted last year. Thirty-three of these calls to action focus on health and social services.