Special bureau launched in response to Joyce Echaquan's death

A bureau promoting equitable access to health and social services for Indigenous people -- formed in response to Joyce Echaquan's death at a Quebec hospital in 2020 -- was officially launched on Saturday.

The Bureau du Principe de Joyce is named for the philosophy it's designed to enforce: "Joyce's Principle."

In September 2020, Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, livestreamed her interaction with staff at the Joliette, Que. hospital on Facebook.

The video captured workers hurling racist insults at Echaquan, who had checked herself in for severe stomach pains. Staff assumed she was suffering from drug withdrawals and she died because her symptoms weren't taken seriously, Quebec's head coroner later determined.

The footage exploded online, leading to nationwide calls to improve conditions and services for Indigenous people within the health care network.

A call to action, Joyce's Principle, was formed in the following months.

"Joyce’s Principle aims to guarantee to all Indigenous people the right of equitable access, without any discrimination, to all social and health services, as well as the right to enjoy the best possible physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health," according to the movement's official documentation.

And now, the Bureau du Principe de Joyce, designed to oversees the principle's application, was inaugerated at a Pow-Wow in Manawan, the community where Echaquan was from.

"Its main mandate is really to promote the Joyce Principle in various organizations related to health and social services [and] in the field of education. And to ensure followup on the application of the principle," bureau executive director Jennifer Petiquay-Dufresne told The Canadian Press.

Several unions, universities and professional orders, including the College of Physicians, are among the institutions signed on.

The Quebec government, however, is not one of them.

"I believe that if we worked together, if the Quebec government adopted the principle, we could greatly change the paradigm of public health, where we take into consideration the cultural identity of the different peoples in Quebec and Canadian society," said Sipi Flamand, chief of the Atikamekw of Manawan Council.

Click here to read the Quebec coroner's list of recommendations following Echaquan's death.

With files from The Canadian Press.