Front Burner - Indigenous woman records racist abuse in her dying moments

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

As she lay dying, Joyce Echaquan clicked on her phone to broadcast a Facebook Live video from her hospital bed, as staff hurled racist remarks at her. You can hear Joyce call out for her husband to come get her, but that would never happen. The 37 year old Atikamekw mother of seven died on Monday. In response, one of the nurses captured on video has been fired, along with an orderly. Joyce's death has also sparked three investigations. Dr. Barry Lavallee, a physician CEO of Keewatinohk Innniniw Minoayawin, which works to advance the health care of First Nations communities in Northern Manitoba, spoke to host Josh Bloch about Joyce Echaquan's death, and what it says about the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada's health care system.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Before we begin, a warning that today's episode contains some disturbing audio. What you're listening to is a recording of Joyce Echaquan crying out in pain. She's in a hospital room in Joliet, Quebec. She made the recording on Facebook Live from her hospital bed as staff hurled racist remarks at her.

You can hear Joyce calling out for her husband to come get her. That would never happen. Joyce Echaquan died on Monday. She was a 37-year-old Atikamekw mother of seven. In response, one of the nurses captured on video has been fired, along with an orderly. Joyce's death has also sparked three investigations and countless questions about the treatment of Indigenous people in the Canadian healthcare system. I'm Josh Bloch. This is FrontBurner.

My guest today is Dr. Barry LaVallee. He's a member of the Métis community of Saint-Laurent, Manitoba, and a descendant of Duck Bay and Lake Manitoba First Nations. He is a physician and the CEO of Kaua'i Nukanenu Manoiawin, which works to advance the health care of First Nations communities in northern Manitoba. Hi, Dr. Lavallee, and thank you for making time to speak with me. Pleased to meet you, and thank you. I want to begin with the video that captures some of the last moments of Joyce Eshikwan's life, moments where she was attacked with these racist slurs. I mean,

what went through your mind when you were watching it? racist slurs? I mean, what went through your mind when you were watching it? I was shocked, like everyone else who's watched the video and heard about this story. But sadly, I was not surprised. I mean, what's heard on that video is deeply disturbing. You have staffers, they were speaking in French, but they were saying things like, quote, you're stupid as hell. you made some bad choices, she's good at screwing more than anything else, and we're paying for this.

I mean, these are the people who were supposed to be caring for Joyce Eshikwan. Yes, and for the audience who are listening, these types of stereotypes that they threw at her while she's seeking care and dying are very common. One of the most common stereotypes is Indians, all Indians or all First Nations people are alcoholics. There's different variations in how people use stereotypes as the proxy to racism against First Nations people. proxy to racism against First Nations people. Joyce Echaquan's husband, Carol Dubé, spoke with Radio Canada, and he said his wife went to the hospital with a stomach ache on Saturday, and then two days later, she died.

I have seven kids who now have no mother. I hope the inquest figures out who's responsible for this. We can see things still aren't improving for us. What are we waiting for? More victims? What do we know about what happened? It's a very good question, especially for Joyce's family, who I send my condolences to from our organization. We're all feeling very upset and thinking about her children

and her husband and the community. Eshiquan was speaking in Atikamit, her mother tongue, saying she was being given too much medication. On Facebook, we hear her asking for help. And the person who responds is degrading towards her. What's important here is that the actual medical condition is not so important relative to what we see in the video. I need to clarify that right now. You mentioned before that Ms. Eshiquan's case is all too familiar, and certainly her death brings

to mind other examples of mistreatment. One of them is Brian Sinclair, who was a 45-year-old Indigenous man who died in Winnipeg in an emergency room in 2008. I know you were involved in a working group looking into the role of racism in that case. But tell me what happened to Brian Sinclair? Basically, Brian Sinclair, as we understand from the information, is that he was a paraplegic, and so he needed to have a catheter into his bladder to allow the urine to drain. What's common is that they can develop infections. There are subtle signs to it. Brian apparently knew that he had a bit of belly pain and that there was clouding of his urine. And so he went to seek care. He sought care with his physician who sent him to

the Health Science Centre emergency. He went up to the triage desk. He talked to a triage nurse about a possible bladder infection. And then he remained in the ER waiting room for 34 hours until another patient alerted a security guard to the fact that he was dead. What ended up happening was that his bladder exploded in his belly, essentially, and the bacteria infiltrated the area. He died alone in septic shock. And when they found him, he already had rigor mortis. So he had expired a number of hours before. But importantly, what I want to share in the Brian Sinclair case, when you look at the information through that inquest, they use stereotyping, just like what you see with Joyce. He's drunk. He's violent. He never takes care of himself. He comes to emergency too much. He doesn't know how to speak or think.

Do you think your brother, his background and how he looked played a part in how he was not treated? I think it's kind of to do something with racist racial. What makes you say that? That's the way they treat, you aboriginals some places there may be issues related to assumptions that were made about why mr sinclair was in the hospital that day they were related to the fact that he was an aboriginal person and this is important okay when you analyze the death of indigenous people in any institution in canada and when I looked at the video of Joyce as she was dying, they hurled horrible insults to her integrity.

And the phenomena on how Indigenous people are treated in health now, we know that, as well as justice in other areas, is that we're less than human. And so we don't deserve full humanity and treatment. But along with that, and more evil, are the words and the stereotypes that these nurses, I don't know if they're all nurses, but one nurse for sure, hurled at her. poked at her own integrity as a woman, her own integrity as a mother, her own integrity as a single human being who has the right to live. And they just, as she's dying, like they're destroying her, it is vulgar. But it is true. We know that this happens all over Canada. A lot of my sister and brother live the same thing, the joys.

Okay? I don't want to go there. I'm scared to go there. I don't want to pass near of this hospital, you know? In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

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In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Well, I want to drill down a bit further into the ways that systemic racism affects the health of Indigenous communities. I mean, I know that there's a report looking into the mistreatment of Indigenous people in Quebec. It's called the Vien Report. And it found that Indigenous communities sometimes avoid medical care if they've had a negative

experience in the past. And I wonder to what extent you've seen that in your own practice. I had a patient, and she gave me permission, I'll not use any names, obviously, to share. and she gave me permission. I'll not use any names, obviously, to share. But she's a young First Nations patient of mine who in her life was forced to seek money on the street. And, you know, so my job was to support her with my team. I came in one time to my clinic on a Wednesday.

And this patient of mine came in, and she had gauze wrapped around her neck. And so I asked her what happened. She had gone into a white truck, and there was a white man there, and he wanted drugs or something, so they went to a place to get drugs for him. She came back into the truck and she explained to me that she had a sense that something was going to happen. And so she tried to leave the truck door ajar, the passenger side, so that she could leave quickly. And what happened is that she tried to leave, the door did not open. She finally got it open and she got away and she felt warmth running down the left side of her neck. He had taken a knife and tried to kill her.

What ended up happening was that she passed by the Health Science Center Emergency Department, the same area where Brian Sinclair died 30 hours after not being treated because he was indigenous. He died of racism. She passed by the emergency room. She did not go in. She would rather have risked her life than go into an emergency room and be accosted for being Indigenous, for being poor, and for being perhaps addicted, and for the work that she did.

And she waited for us on a Monday. And, you know, you asked me about the extent to which Indigenous people will not go to the police, child and family services, health care, all of the institutions that form the basis for good health and well-being for other Canadians. It happens more often than not. What's really worrisome for us for years now is that the health care system says that Indigenous people just don't care for their own health. They don't care for themselves. They don't care for their people. These are how stereotypes are used to perpetuate violence against Indigenous people. We want to

care for ourselves. People go to the nursing stations repeatedly seeking people. We want to care for ourselves. People go to the nursing stations repeatedly seeking care. They want help. The story of Joyce amplifies. When we go to try and get care, this is the risk that we can have. This is the unacceptable event that we sadly have had to endure for so many decades. We just don't understand why Native women, we have to watch through that. These are repeated stories, and as Indigenous docs,

we have people reaching out to us with stories of mistreatment in the system, misdiagnoses, oversights, and death. Right. I mean, that mistrust has long historical roots, grounded in a history of anti-Indigenous racism in health care, which goes back to segregated hospitals, to tuberculosis sanatoriums in the 1950s. The so-called Indian Hospital functioned as a tuberculosis sanatorium, and many residential school students were transferred there. How do you reconcile with an organization or a country that put you in these institutions with the intention of trying to kill you in many instances or subjecting you to different forms of diseases that many of our children died from? I mean, how important is it to understand that history when we're thinking about how systemic racism in Indigenous healthcare needs to be addressed today? Well, one of the things that I'd like to just say for a minute or so is that there is an inertia, a lack of response across our country when Indigenous people die

from racism. It's as if people somehow, their hard drive as a Canadian has been developed so that we can ignore what happens to Indigenous people. Time and again, look at the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Look how long it took our leaders to get that to the table. And the recommendations, who's following the recommendations? So this is not a new phenomena. Canadians have been confronted by this for decades, but there's a refusal,

an active refusal to do anything. All the work in this process that they like to call reconciliation has been done on one side. It has been done only on one side. If reconciliation is a bridge, then this bridge has been built only halfway. No more apologies. We need to see actions. And that is the crux of what we have to do and change in order to deal with racism,

with appropriate resources and innovation at all levels across healthcare in Canada. And do you think that knowing the history will play a role in that? You know, to tell you the truth, I don't know. Why? Because when we started opening up this idea of racism and examining it about 16, 17 or so years ago, people, the white fragility in the system said, oh, no, it's about cultural safety. It's about cultural sensitivity. It's cultural this. So rather than deal with racism, the system actually put it back on us and said that we need more elders to be involved. We need

to share our cultural nuances and values with Canadians, that that itself is the answer. It is not true. Indigenous women about these phenomena would somehow provoke in Canadians a need to feel compassion, a need to be empathetic, and by doing so would drive change. I don't think that that's the full answer. We need to have clear, clear and distinct laws, processes and consequences for named Indigenous specific racism that you can see in systems. It must be targeted. But you're also talking about a kind of stereotyping that is so insidious and permeates so many different parts and aspects of our society. I mean, it is very much foundational to our society. certain aspects of our society. I mean, it is very much foundational to our society.

How do you, so what do you mean when you talk about laws that would address this? Well, one of the things I'm just going to tell you that probably the way people change is if you affect their wallets. Now, that's not to diminish or minimize this case and the analysis and the consequences and changes that we need to do widespread across Canada, okay? Please don't use this thing called systemic racism. That's only a key way of saying that the system and structures are composed of people who action that racism. Okay, so in that case, had we not, had she not videotaped herself, it would be years, if ever, that the family would understand what really happened to his wife and their mom. You've got to know that. This is very, very important to understand that. Okay. Because

the systems like healthcare and the way to try and address patient outcomes and experiences is so convoluted. And I believe it's specifically convoluted to never tell the truth about racism. That's what that's about. In my heart, that means that wake up, stand up, all my sister and all my brother. That's enough. We are going to do something to stop the racism, you know. Look what's happened. There's been such an outpouring of grief and calls to action across the country responding to Joyce Echaquan's death.

And as you've mentioned, this is a familiar moment. I mean, we've seen so many reports and recommendations over the years of how health services need to not only improve access and outcomes for indigenous peoples, but improve the quality of care. From the VM report to the report on missing and murdered indigenous women to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report. I mean, it seems like there's been so much ink spilled on what needs to be done to address these issues. ink spilled on what needs to be done to address these issues. And I think what I'm hearing from you is that there's a deep frustration in the lack of will to take action on those recommendations. Yes, that is, I would say that must be consistent from north, south, east, west in our country here with all of our various First Nations, Métis and Inuit hoops. Yes, it is. We need action. We need Mark Miller and other ministers to hold a table, to bring our leaders together and to collectively organize power and resources

to address. The time for negotiation about how to teach people to be nice to each other is past, way past. We need actions because those actions then will at least allow us to gain access to health care systems and keep people and their racist stereotypes, keep it in your head at least, but at least deliver care, equitable care. Okay. I don't know, honestly, if all the study that i've done that we can actually change the hard drive of how canada develops its citizens but there are many good people out there i want you to know that many good non-indigenous people who are fighting with us who are our allies okay so this isn't a you know this isn't me throwing everybody uh, but we need strong government support because our leaders have been saying this for decades.

Dr. Lavallee, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Okay, thank you. Have a good day. Vigils were held on Tuesday across Quebec, demanding justice for Joyce Echaquan. Hundreds of people marched to the Joliet Hospital where Joyce died to express their sadness and anger, and to remember the 37-year-old Atikamekw woman. This is for Joyce! This is for Joyce! and to remember the 37-year-old Atikamekw woman. That's all for today. FrontBurner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Imogen Burchard,

Elaine Chow, Ali Janes, and Shannon Higgins. Derek Vanderwyk did our sound design with help from Mandy Sham. Our music is by Joseph Shabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Frontburner is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Josh Bloch. Thank you for listening to cbc.ca slash podcasts.