Quebec's Indigenous sensitivity training falls short, say health-care workers

As the second anniversary of Joyce Echaquan's death approaches this week, Indigenous health professionals say the measures taken by the Quebec government to address racism and discrimination in medical facilities have been inadequate. 

Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw mother of seven, died in a Joliette, Que., hospital in 2020 after filming herself being subjected to insulting comments from staff.

Quebec's ministry of health and social services (MSSS) developed compulsory training for all its health-care workers after a coroner's report found racism and discrimination contributed to her death.

However, Glenda Sandy, a Naskapi-Cree nurse from Kawawachikamach, Que., says the training does little to combat racism, prejudices or harmful misconceptions in the province's health-care system.

"This does more harm than good," Sandy said of the training. 

Originally developed for civil servants, the 90-minute online awareness training on Indigenous realities was made available by the MSSS in June 2021 with the goal to "improve access and continuity to culturally secure and relevant services for First Nations and Inuit."

CBC News received access to the training from the MSSS. The first module on history and settlement focuses on creation stories, the fur trade, treaties, assimilation policies, the Indian Act, and residential schools.

It also delves into the Bering Strait theory — which recent studies have put into doubt — that migration to North America occurred when people walked across a land bridge from Asia thousands of years ago.

"It honestly felt like a high school history class," said Sandy, who works as a nurse advisor in the public health department of the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services.

She described the content as cringe-worthy and superficial, noting how few Indigenous perspectives and voices were included compared to Québécois professors.

"I timed it and there was less than two minutes for the creation story and more than five for a non-Indigenous archeologist talking about the migration of people thousands and thousands of years ago," said Sandy.

"Having non-Indigenous experts telling our story undermines and continues to put Indigenous people at an inferior level."

The second module focuses on best practices to adopt for vocabulary and toponymy, and includes a video montage of testimonies on how to better relationships with Indigenous peoples.

It also includes factual errors in a section on how to say hello and thank you in the 11 Indigenous languages in Quebec. The training states incorrectly that "migwech" is how to say "thank you" in Inuktitut. It also uses outdated terminology like "Malecite" and "Micmac."