Hope and sorrow felt in Manawan as community members march, 2 years after Joyce Echaquan's death

A toddler bounced on the shoulders of Carol Dubé as he walked down the streets of Manawan to commemorate his late wife and the mother of their seven children, Joyce Echaquan.

On Wednesday, a large crowd of people with purple accessories — Echaquan's favourite colour — marched quietly, save for the chatter of children and jingles on some women's skirts. They carried huge banners decorated with purple hand prints and purple bows, paintings and pictures of Echaquan, that said "Justice for Joyce."

"Seeing all the people, it makes me feel good … I was scared that people would forget her, little by little," Dubé told Radio-Canada.

"It's been two years. It's important to send the message, also, that the problem isn't solved."

Perched high, Carol Jr. looked around and clutched at his father's cap. The toddler is the couple's youngest and was only a few months old when his mother died. 

Two years after filming herself in agony as nurses berated her before her death at 37 years old at Joliette Hospital on Sept. 28, 2020, Echaquan's name continues to resonate across Quebec.

The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government still refuses to say systemic racism exists in the province, despite a coroner's assessment that it had contributed to her death, but many see what happened to Echaquan as stark evidence that it does. 

Dr. Stanley Vollant, a well-known Innu surgeon from Pessamit who works at Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal, says his own views changed after her death. 

"I didn't believe my own people and it's not because I wasn't listening to them, but because I thought the system was perfect, was good, that there were just communications issues," Vollant said on CBC Radio's Daybreak.

Vollant said the stories he'd been hearing for years, of Indigenous people experiencing racism in health care, surfaced and made him want to effect change, "to get systemic racism out of the system and to make a culturally safe environment for Indigenous people in the health-care system in Quebec." 

Since then, Vollant has given talks to several Quebec hospitals about the barriers Indigenous people face to get safe access to health care. He says he's noticed an improvement in his colleagues' understanding of Indigenous people, but he says it will take years to build trust. 

"People in communities like Pessamit, like Manawan, don't go to the hospitals close to their homes because they're still afraid they're going to be mistreated," he said. 

Sipi Flamand, the chief of the Atikamekw Council of Manawan, said people in the community have reported that not much has changed in local settler health and social services, but that there has been "an awakening in Quebec society" as a whole.

"I think Quebec is ready to admit there is systemic racism; it's the State that doesn't want to change its position," Flamand said.