Indigenous truths must be shared, says award-winning journalist Connie Walker

Indigenous truths must be shared, says award-winning journalist Connie Walker

By Belinda Nelson

Advocating for truth, sharing Indigenous stories and navigating a fast-changing media industry are all in a day’s work for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Connie Walker.

Walker and her investigative team at Gimlet Media shared journalism’s highest honour in May 2023 for Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s. The eight-part podcast series, which delved into abuse at a residential school Walker’s father attended, also garnered a Peabody Award for excellence in storytelling.

One year later, Walker returned to Treaty 4 Territory as the keynote speaker at the first Indigenous Peoples, Media and Democracy conference, hosted at the First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) on May 7.

“Journalism is essential to democracy, in having journalists help the public be better informed and understand the truth, is crucial,” she said in an interview with Eagle Feather News.

The conference doubled as a homecoming for the Okanese First Nation member.  “It’s been nice to come home…and get a chance to visit family,” Walker said.

She also had a chance to catch up with faculty and graduates of FNUniv’s Indigenous Communication Arts (INCA) program, where she studied in 1999.  

The conference was timed with the INCA Summer Institute, a three-week hands-on course led by professional journalists in print, radio and television. 

“I love the INCA program…it’s such a supportive base,” Walker said.

The Summer Institute was Walker’s first step in a successful media career. 

After obtaining a journalism degree, Walker became a CBC journalist and producer, helping establish an Indigenous Unit in 2013. She then become a senior reporter for CBC’s Investigative Unit, before striking out in the brave new world of podcasting with Gimlet Media, in 2020

Through it all, she’s maintained a strong sense of mission. 

“Journalism is essential to democracy. Having journalists help the public be better informed and understand the truth is crucial,” she said. “I think in this age that we’re in, there’s a lot of misinformation and a lot of unreliable sources.” 

Walker explained journalists “have rigorous practices, in terms of verifying the information that you’re publishing and doing all the basics in journalism to make sure you’re reporting the facts.”

The conference brought together journalists from across Canada, including several past INCA graduates.

Walker’s advice to new journalists is to try everything. “It’s good practice to do all different kinds of stories,” she said.

“One of the great things about being a journalist, especially in the context of daily news, in any context really, we don’t have to be the experts, we get to ask the questions, and we get to talk to people, who are the experts, who are essential or crucial to the story.” 

She also advises doing daily news before jumping into investigative journalism. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this work without my experience in daily news,” she said.

“I think that having experience in the newsroom, where you have to file on tight deadlines is really important — honing your craft, learning how to conduct interviews, and learning how to ask questions to get the information you need.”

It’s good training for working under pressure, Walker noted.

“You get assigned a story in the morning, you go out and do your interview and you come back in the afternoon, and you write your story, and you edit it together and then you’re live on the newscast at six.”

In contrast, investigative projects take months and even years to complete, and involve interviews that take many hours of preparation time. Holding people accountable for wrongdoing is an important role of the investigative journalist. 

“Accountability issues in general are kind of the toughest interviews, but I also think they’re the most important interviews.” she said.

With tough interviews, Walker prepares herself by, “research, a sense of questions of what I want to ask, a sense of what I would like to get out of the interview.” 

Being adaptable to media industry shifts and ready to try new things “is pretty essential” Walker noted. When new digital platforms came on board, she saw opportunity.

“Digital media really provided the proof the industry needed to show that people are interested in Indigenous stories, that there is an audience…who cares about Indigenous voices and that Canadians also care,” she said. 

As for how she chooses stories to cover, Walker said, “It’s really important for me to follow my own natural curiosity, things that I feel are important, and things that I am interested in…If I care about them, I can help my audience also care.”

“Having journalists advocate for the truth is something that helps everyone…with Indigenous people it’s incredibly important that the truth about our lives and our communities, and our side of the shared history is understood,” said Walker.

“We really try to help people understand the reality of the lives Indigenous people live in Canada and the United States.”