: She Was Racially Abused by Hospital Staff as She Lay Dying. Now a Canadian Indigenous Woman’s Death Is Forcing a Reckoning on Racism #WorldNEWS When Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Indigenous Canadian

She Was Racially Abused by Hospital Staff as She Lay Dying. Now a Canadian Indigenous Woman’s Death Is Forcing a Reckoning on Racism #WorldNEWS
When Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Indigenous Canadian woman, began experiencing stomach pains, she checked herself into a hospital in Joliette, Quebec. But she did not get the help she needed. Instead, hospital staff told Echaquan she was stupid, only good for sex, and that she would be better off dead.
Screaming and crying out in pain, Echaquan began live-streaming on Facebook. In the video, which has since gone viral, Echaquan says in her native language that she is worried doctors had given her too much morphine, which her family says she was allergic to. “You made some bad choices, my dear,” a hospital staff member can be heard saying in the background. “What are your children going to think, seeing you like this?”

Echaquan died shortly after posting the video online on Sept. 28. Though the autopsy results have not yet been released, Echaquan’s family believes the high dosage of morphine she was administered could have played a part. The hospital has begun an internal review into what happened.
The death of the mother of seven, a member of the Atikamekw Nation in southwestern Quebec, has sparked outrage across Canada after a summer in which protests brought systemic racism against the countrys Indigenous people to center stage.
In June, a dash cam video emerged showing police officers beating Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan Nation, after stopping his vehicle for expired license plates. The incident sparked nationwide protests calling for reforms to policing, just as the death of George Floyd did in the U. S.
The same month, health workers in British Columbia, the country’s Westernmost province, were accused of allegedly betting on Indigenous patients’ blood alcohol levels, drawing attention to racism in Canadas state-run healthcare service. Now, Echaquan’s death has given fresh urgency to the anti-racism movement, with protests taking place across the country.
Im convinced that my partner is dead because systemic racism contaminated the Joliette hospital,” Carol Dubé, Echaquans partner, said at a news conference on Oct. 2 where it was announced his family would be filing a lawsuit against the hospital. “She spent her final days in agony, surrounded by people who held her in contempt, people who were supposed to protect her. ”
Since Echaquan’s video surfaced, the government has launched three investigations, two of which will be conducted by regional health authorities looking into both Echaquan’s case as well as into the practices at the hospital more generally. Both the nurse and the orderly depicted in the video have since been fired.