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“Yes, I was emotional,” said Réal McKenzie, chief of the Matimekush-Lac John Innu community in northern Quebec. “Their parents were watching and said they cried along with me.
“It was the life that Napa (André’s nickname) lived, a life of misery. It’s the daily life of many communities. It’s a worldwide problem,” McKenzie said.
André was a chronic alcoholic who had lived on the streets of Montreal for years. “We have a serious problem of addiction in our youth, in the 18-30 age. But we have hope.”
Primary among the issues plaguing their village, and many other Innu and Indigenous communities across Quebec, is a lack of housing, McKenzie said. Often there are 14 people living in one house, and no resources to build more homes. Combined with the scars from the residential school era and the racism that permeated the nearby mining town of Schefferville, Innu and Indigenous communities are in need of far more funding to counter the issues that drive their young people to move away.
McKenzie expressed hope the findings of the coroner’s inquiry wouldn’t be shelved, as so many reports and commissions into Indigenous affairs have been in the past.
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Coroner Stéphanie Gamache assured McKenzie that the death of André would not pass unnoticed.
“Since May 13 we have heard from 44 witnesses, and what has become evident to me is how many of those people spoke of how André had touched their lives. He spoke of his life, his spirituality, his family,” she said, breaking down momentarily.
“But he also touched people in his death. He touched (more than) 108,000 people after his death, because that’s the number of people who went to find safety and warmth in the emergency warming shelter that was erected in his memory between February 2021 and April 2022.”
With the collaboration of the dozens of witnesses who testified, Gamache said she would prepare a report with recommendations aimed at protecting human lives.
“We must never forget that in a society like ours, we are all responsible for each other,” she said.
Later in the day, Dr. Stanley Vollant of Notre-Dame Hospital, who is Innu and works with a commission seeking better health care for Indigenous Peoples, noted that many people from Indigenous communities seeking medical services in Montreal are sent to francophone hospitals in the city, despite the fact they only speak English. The result is many in those communities are hesitant to seek health care they need.
“Sadly, our health-care system does not recognize the needs,” he said. “It wants to give services in French, but I think we need to respect the language of the people using the system. I saw many instances where people could not understand each other. And it is not helping the sense of cultural security, which is very important to First Nations because it has been affecting us for years.”
For an Innu like André, who grew up in the cold, to die outdoors surrounded by buildings “makes no sense,” Vollant said, adding that organizations working on homelessness in Montreal need to do a better job of communicating with one another. Wet shelters, where people are allowed to drink alcohol indoors under supervision, need to be opened, he said. And more shelters should allow dogs, because they are often very important to members of Indigenous communities, Vollant said.
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