Truth, reconciliation, democracy: Connie Walker's career connects them all
Growing up watching Murphy Brown, Walker never dreamed of becoming an investigative journalist
Connie Walker is one of Canada's most decorated journalists. In 2024, alone, she won a Pulitzer Prize, a Peabody Award and a Columbia-Dupont Prize for her podcast, Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's. The series delves into her family history, specifically her father's experience at residential school.
Throughout most of her career, Walker had been reluctant to feature herself or her family's history in her reporting. But she gradually realized that her lived experience was a vital part of informing her journalism and telling the story of residential schools.
"In the first 10 years of my career, I was really wary of being the Aboriginal reporter. And I think that, especially at that time, there was a feeling that you would be seen as more of an advocate than a journalist, and that you would be biased," Walker told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed on stage at an annual public event hosted by the Samara Centre for Democracy, entitled In Defence of Democracy.
But podcasting opened up a new format for her that was a different and better way to tell a story. Walker explains as a host doing an investigation, it felt easier to insert herself as people were joining alongside her.
"I've tried to mirror the transparency that we can have in journalism, and how that is a way to acknowledge how my lived experiences as an Indigenous woman absolutely affects every part of my life, but also every part of my work. I'm informed by that," Walker said.
"And this idea or this myth, as some people say, of objectivity in journalism and just being transparent about that — I feel like is a way of peeling back that curtain and hopefully addressing some of the mistrust that exists."
The celebrated journalist says honesty is integral to strengthening democracy.
Her journey as a journalist has been rooted in revealing truths and seeking justice, working diligently to share the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. It started with the 1995 story of Pamela George.
'Too painful to ignore'
Connie Walker grew up in a very large and close family in the Okanese First Nation, Saskatchewan.
As a teenager, she never paid much attention to the news. Her only context to journalism was watching TV and Murphy Brown. But that changed when she heard about the murder of Pamela George — a Saulteaux woman, 28 years old and a mother of two.
Pamela George's body was found on the outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan. She'd been sexually assaulted and brutally beaten to death by two young white men. Walker didn't know George, but she remembers visiting her nearby community with her grandmother when they went to powwows.
"I think that the reason [her story] resonated so much was because of how her trial was covered and because of the way that Pamela was spoken about in the media," said Walker.
She noticed an unsettling pattern in Canadian newspapers and TV reports everywhere. George was labelled a "prostitute," and nothing else was said about her life. The two suspects, however, were described as "clean-cut" university students, and standout athletes.
"Even though I wasn't somebody who paid attention to the news, I think every First Nations person in the province was paying attention because of what the media was saying about Pamela, and what they said about her life and how we all felt it when we heard it."
News depictions of Pamela George were "too painful to ignore." That story became personal for Walker.
"I knew that if they could say that about Pamela, they would say that about me. Or they would say that about my aunties or my cousins," Walker said.
So she decided to write about the grave injustice of how Pamela George's story was nationally portrayed in her high school newsletter, her first foray into journalism.
"It was the first time I thought about who gets to tell her story. Like are there any Native people in newsrooms covering this trial?"
A 'radical transformation' in journalism
Walker still thinks of Pamela George's story. It was the first example of the importance of representation in the media, in the newsroom, for Indigenous people to help tell these stories.
"It's such a terrible example of the harm that it can cause."
After graduating with a degree in journalism, Walker started at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as host of Living Saskatchewan, and then as a reporter and producer for CBC News: Sunday and The National.
It wasn't an easy task to convince editors that Indigenous stories matter to all Canadians. Walker remembers several of her stories not making it past the pitching stage. Editors told her it was "too much" to have more than one Indigenous story on a given program.
But the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report in 2015, including 94 calls to action toward reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous Peoples, was "a radical transformation," said Walker.
"I was in Ottawa in 2015 covering the final TRC event, and that led The National for five nights in a row, which at the time was — honestly, I still have goosebumps thinking about it, especially because on the night that the final report was released, the whole first 15 minutes of the show was all TRC coverage," Walker told Ayed.
"The work of the TRC, I think, was so important and integral to that transformation. And it was, for me, one of the biggest moments in my career."
'A lightbulb moment'
Digital metrics helped push Indigenous stories forward as it proved there was an audience that editors couldn't deny. Walker says it convinced her that Indigenous storytelling was not only needed — but resonant.
A year later, in 2016, a young Cree man, Colten Boushie was shot and killed on Gerald Stanley's farm in Biggar, Sask. Stanley, 56, was charged with second-degree murder in Boushie's death. He pleaded not guilty, and the jury agreed.
Boushie's death and how it was reported felt eerily familiar to Walker.
"Colten's death was covered in Saskatchewan was just such a raw and very difficult and sensitive time for First Nations. I remember, it just kind of heightened all of the racial tensions that obviously were still really prevalent in Saskatchewan," said Walker.
"And even though I wasn't living at home, I still go back home a lot and I'm close to my family, and so I felt like this was such a visceral thing."
Walker's next story was about the unsolved murder of a 24-year-old Indigenous woman, Alberta Williams, which she featured in her podcast series, Missing & Murdered.
"I was so focused on what happened the weekend Alberta was killed, and who was she last seen with, and where did they go, and who were the other witnesses that had never spoken to police. And that question made me think about Alberta Williams. You know, she was a young woman when she was killed in 1989. But when did her story actually begin? It wasn't with her murder," Walker explained.
"And then I thought it in some ways it wasn't even with her birth that she was connected to this bigger story that we were trying to shed light on and connect the dots. How was MMWG connected?"
Walker says having this revelation changed the way the podcast was written, including "the connected dots" in the storytelling.
"We use that podcast to also try to explain the history between Indigenous communities and the RCMP and why people didn't feel comfortable talking to [the RCMP officer] when he was investigating Alberta's case — and why."
"It was like a light bulb moment for me that this is… meaningful. And also, with a podcast, you have the space to do it."
Making room for lived experience
In May of 2021, Walker learned that her father was abused by a priest at a residential school.
"It answered so many questions that I had about him because I didn't know really [sic] anything about his residential school experience. But it also brought up so many more questions."
Now, her family's story would become the focus of a podcast series, the multiple award-winning Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's.
"Initially, I just wanted to better understand how that experience shaped him, and how it shaped the dad he was to me, and how that impacted my childhood."
Walker interviewed other family members since her father passed away in 2013. She talked to his brother and sisters who were with him at the school and heard about other abuse that they had experienced. What was the scale of abuse at this one school? Walker and colleagues interviewed as many survivors as possible from St. Michael's residential school.
"In the archives, I learned that that school was open for over 100 years and that four generations of my family went to the school, starting with my great-grandfather."
It was the first time Walker's family heard any information about the experience loved ones endured in this residential school.
Now, in 2024, Walker says she feels an urgency to keep going.
"I feel like there's so much more of that work to do. I would like to do what we did with Surviving St. Michael's on a broader scale — I mean, every school [all 130 residential schools in Canada], I think it should happen for every school."
Walker's urgency also stems from knowing that some historical records will disappear — such as the 26,000 transcripts of individual testimony gathered by the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) from residential school survivors detailing their experiences.
"That information has never been made public in terms of understanding the scale of abuse at individual schools, or how many people, priests and nuns and staff members, people who were charged with looking after the schools were accused of abuse through this process," Walker explained.
The documents have been kept private to protect survivors, and in less than three years, in September of 2027, all of the records will be destroyed. Walker and her team had to find inventive and complex ways to work around these sealed documents to create Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's
"What this process made me realize is how much truth there is still yet to uncover about residential schools."
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*This episode was produced by Greg Kelly.
