For the sole reason that she is an attic, A year ago, Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old young woman and mother of seven, died in a Quebec hospital due to racist slurs.
We know this because she was filmed in the middle of nowhere, frustrated. A year later, we remember this tragedy.
On Thursday, Canada also celebrates the first National Truth and Reconciliation Day, commemorating the tragic fate of thousands of tribal children, missing children and survivors of poor residential schools.
In this country, the venomous legacy of deep racism against the First Nations – brutally embedded in infamous Indian law – still haunts us. He calls on us to take decisive action on state and individual, recognition, compensation and reconciliation.
In Quebec, the Legalt government moved. After the death of Joyce Echaquan, Prime Minister Ian Lafrenier was appointed Minister in charge of Home Affairs. An action man and it must be heard.
He was the one who appointed former journalist Anne Banasuk as advisor to the families of missing or dead tribal children. An expert in this field, he is also the author of an in-depth and essential book: Azad: Searching for missing children.
Realize
On the health network, Minister Lafrinier ordered mandatory cultural protection training on tribal realities. However, only a small section of the staff would have followed suit. Hence, the request to the Minister of Health, Christian Dube, to actively increase the pace.
Like other Canadians, the Cubs have been increasingly aware of the great damage done to the First Nations over the years and decades.
Of these, the option for Legalt State to act is not in question. The problematic thing is the refusal to recognize the existence of formal anti-indigenous racism.
At the political level, we understand his desire not to be subjected to another collective “trial” of the Cubs, often falsely accused of being incomprehensible racists.
What is less understood is the fact that he refuses to accept the grounds of the formal racism perpetrated against the indigenous people in Canada.
Quebec is not an island
Is Quebec the only state in the world to be exempt? Obviously, no. Until further notice, not an island, but Quebec, including boarding schools, participated.
It is to be welcomed that over the past decades Quebec governments have adopted more progressive policies towards first countries. Surely.
However, as in other parts of the country, they have not prevented the persistence of formal anti-racism in our institutions. In 2020, in Quebec, Joyce Echakuan died in it.
Just like people’s lives, there are words in our lives that really hurt, destroy and chain. But there are also words that calm, adjust and release.
They translate liberating words to do better by recognizing the real and the will.
To move forward together, do we not agree to talk about the “systemic racism” reality in Canada, of which Quebec is a part, and not liberate us?
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