Connie Walker talks about her new podcast and why continuing to cover MMIWG is important to her
Stolen: The Search for Jermain focuses on case of Jermain Charlo, missing in Montana
Connie Walker, an award-winning Cree journalist from Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, continues to investigate the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in a new U.S.-based podcast.
"The issue of violence against Indigenous women and girls is an issue I care deeply about as an Indigenous woman," said Walker.
Stolen: The Search for Jermain, is an eight episode series that focuses on the disappearance of Jermain Charlo, a 23-year-old woman from the Flathead Reservation in Montana who has been missing for two and a half years.
Walker learned about Charlo's disappearance when she met Lauren Small Rodriguez from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in southeastern Montana. Rodriguez works with human trafficking survivors in Missoula, Mont., where Jermain Charlo went missing.
Walker said exploring the issue is "incredibly important because there is a crisis of violence in our communities."
"There's so much that we need to understand and learn and feel the weight of, what that means and how that's impacting and continues to impact people and families and communities."
Amplifying MMIWG stories
Over Walker's 20-year career with CBC News, she reported for The National, produced the 8th Fire documentary and made her first podcast series Missing and Murdered: Who killed Alberta Williams? in 2016. Two years later the second season, Finding Cleo, was released.
In both podcasts Walker investigates the cases of missing and murdered women and girls by connecting with their families and communities and paints a broader picture of the systemic issues that might have led to the tragic deaths.
"It's really important to expose that and to talk about it and to amplify those stories," said Walker.
"It's a way into helping to understand the bigger story about what it means to be an Indigenous person today in Canada or the United States."
The reporting for Walker's new podcast took place during the COVID-19 pandemic which presented some unique challenges.
"Building trust with families is integral to this kind of work and and it's very, very difficult to do remotely over the phone, especially in communities where they don't have great cell service or the Internet is not really great," said Walker.
She said she felt like a stranger when she was finally able to visit the Flathead Reservation.
"I actually spent three weeks in her community or in Missoula, Mont., to do a big reporting trip," said Walker.
"The trust that needs to be established in this kind of reporting, it's very difficult to do remotely."
Reporting and responsibility
Walker said that, as an Indigenous woman, she feels a sense of responsibility to families and communities when reporting on these stories because of the harm that has been caused by past media coverage.
"We have a responsibility to at least understand that harm and to understand the history of reporting on individuals, communities and how harmful that has been and try to do a better job."
She spoke for example about how Cindy Gladue's case was handled by the media, from when she was found dead in an Edmonton hotel in 2011 through a trial, two appeals and then a second trial. Her family has said that by focusing on the events of the night she died, the fullness of her humanity was obscured.
"I think that the truth is that a lot of reporting about Indigenous people has been done by non-Indigenous people," said Walker.
"It's really been only in the last few years that we're starting to tell our own stories and we're starting to kind of take a new approach to reporting in Indigenous communities."