Ideas - Acclaimed Journalist Connie Walker on the Importance of Storytelling

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

She’s one of Canada’s most decorated journalists, having won a Pulitzer Prize, a Peabody and a Columbia-Dupont Prize for her podcast series, Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s. Yet Connie Walker had been reluctant to feature stories about her family in her journalism. Until she realized her family's survival in residential schools embodies the defining reality for virtually all Indigenous Peoples in Canada. She discusses this with Nahlah Ayed at the Samara Centre for Democracy's annual, In Defence of Democracy live event.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Thank you very much. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. What a special and what a privilege for me to be here at this end of this conversation. This conversation took place on stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto and was put on by the Samara Centre for Democracy. Hello. Thank you so much for coming.

I was about to talk with someone Time magazine called one of the world's 100 most influential people, Connie Walker. I'm like embarrassed a little bit. Connie's modesty belies her stunning achievements in journalism. Her work has won her so many accolades and honors, I can't name all of them here. Thank you, Connie, for being here tonight. Thank you, Nala. But you should know that in 2024 alone, Connie won an astonishing trio of honors, a Pulitzer Prize, a Peabody, and the Columbia DuPont Award.

I don't want to minimize the Pulitzer or the Peabody or, you know, the DuPont Award, but to be named as one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine, what did that feel like? That was amazing, actually. The recognition was incredible, but the night of the gala was also really fun because I took my kid, who's 12 years old, and we sat at the table with Michael J. Fox and Uma Thurman, Kylie Minogue, and it was really, like, it was such a surreal night, and their favourite, Dua Lipa, was performing, so it was very, very fun.

Oh, my God, how did you pull her away? I know, it was really, it was great. It was such a dream come true, honestly. All of it feels so surreal, you know, but really still does all this time later. Hope you feel the hometown pride. You can even hear it here tonight. Yeah, it's so nice.

So many fans. So many fans of Connie Walker. Thank you. Connie's based in Toronto now, but is originally from the Okenese Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan. She's spoken widely, including here on Ideas, about her conviction that Indigenous people must be the ones telling their own stories. And she's put that conviction into practice with her investigative journalism, as in her award-winning podcast series, Missing and Murdered and Stolen, Surviving St. Michael's. In prelude to my first real question, let me just say this,

that we've often heard the phrase truth and reconciliation. What we haven't necessarily heard about as often is the relationship between truth and reconciliation, how reconciliation requires truth and how a healthy democracy cannot function without truth, without facts, and without reliable information. And I'm hoping that our conversation, you know, is going to be a journey with you through your career, how you became Connie Walker, who's sitting here right now, and kind of this journey of becoming an investigative journalist to uncover the truth or truths, however disquieting they may be. So I want to go back to the beginning.

And I want to pause here and mention that we will be playing some audio clips from Connie's work. And of course, some of this concerns sensitive topics like violence against women and abuse. And so to just flag that for you and to please take care. So going back to your high for you and to please take care. So going back to your high school years and to 1995 and to the story of Pamela George. She was 28, she was a mother of two,

and she had been found beaten to death on the outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan. Now, the police arrest some suspects, about whom you will hear in a moment in the clip. But before we play the clip, could you set the context? Before the trial happened, how much attention did this case of Pamela actually garner among the media? You know, to be honest, like, I wasn't a teenager who paid much attention to the news, honestly. And, you know, I grew up and I watched Murphy Brown and E&G and those kinds of shows.

Those were kind of like my introductions to journalism. But I didn't really think about that as a career until Pamela George. And I didn't know Pamela. Like, you know, as you said, she's a Soto woman and she was from a nearby reserve, like just across the valley. I visited her community. We went to powwows there when I was a little kid with my grandma. But I think that like the reason it resonated so much was because of how the trial was covered and because of the way that Pamela was spoken about in the media. And 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 that, because of what media was saying about Pamela and what they said about her life and how we all felt it when we heard it. The accused are young and clean-cut. Steve Comerfield, a basketball star. Alex Ternowetzki, a hockey standout. They come from middle-class families.

The victim was aboriginal and a prostitute. The two men admit they were cruising Regina's streets one night last year looking for a hooker. In this area known for prostitutes, they admitted picking up Pamela George, taking her to a remote roadside, beating her and leaving her behind. Her body was found the next morning by police. In court, a friend of the accused testified that Comerfield told him, we drove around, got drunk and killed this chick. And that Ternowitzky told him, she deserved it, she was Indian. The accused denied making those comments. They also testified they didn't hit Pamela George that hard, that she was alive the night

they left her behind. The defense has suggested that a third person may have come along and inflicted the beating that actually killed her. In his charge to the jury today, Judge Ted Malone called that scenario highly unlikely. But Malone also told the jury a first-degree murder conviction may not be appropriate. He reviewed evidence that the young men were drunk and may not have fully appreciated what they were doing that night. It's certainly not something that they're proud of,

but it was something that went on with two 18-year-old guys who've got a serious alcohol problem and did it that time. Oh, great spirit. But at an aboriginal prayer service outside the courthouse attended by the victim's mother, one woman said the case is about more than two drunks being charged with murder. It's more of a case of they think that just because a Native woman is walking down the street, they can go and take advantage of her and then go and kill her. The RCMP beefed up security around the jurors and the courthouse today.

They say it's just a precaution in a high-profile case. Eric Sorensen, CBC News, Regina. So when you saw that report, as you mentioned, you were a teenager. What went through you? I mean, I think that I don't want to single out the CBC. I feel like that's an example, but really there were also newspaper headlines

that called Pamela, you know, a prostitute but didn't say much else about her life. And you can even hear in that report, like there was so much attention paid to the fact that these were two university students, you know, just, you know, clean cut, the basketball star, the hockey standout. And I remember, you know, I think that I remember how I felt more than I could kind of process it really in the moment. What was that feeling? I mean, I was so hurt. I was so angry.

I was so upset. And I think looking back, it's because 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. or they would say that about my aunties or my cousins. And that was such, and I think it was like growing up in Saskatchewan, growing up in small town Saskatchewan, I grew up on my reserve and we were bused into town.

But racism and discrimination is just part of life there. But it also was part of something that you knew that was, you know, upsetting and hurtful. And I remember, you know, my grandma used to always say, like, don't let anybody say that they're better than you. But, you know, when you hear those taunts on the playground, they hurt. They're upsetting. And this was such a clear, egregious example that it felt like it was too big to ignore and too painful to ignore. And there have been, like, that was, you know, the first one that I remember. And there have been others since then.

But it was the first time I thought about, you know, who gets to tell our stories? Like, are there any Native people in newsrooms covering this trial? And that's when I thought about becoming a journalist. So tell me about that. You said you felt anger and hurt. How did you channel those feelings? I wrote something for our high school news. We didn't have a newspaper. We're a very small school. Like, went to the same school, K to 12. And I graduated with 28 or I was one of 28 kids in my class. So we had a very small school, but we had a newsletter. And I wrote something for the newsletter. Thankfully there are no archives, honestly. Do you remember what you said? I mean, I think it was more of an editorial than a news story necessarily. And I think I was really just so idealistic

and wanting to call out what I saw as like this grave injustice. And it's like, it felt like that, right? And I think collectively we all hear that and we can all feel it now. But back then it was a different time. Yeah, that was the norm. It was the norm, yeah.

So there was a trial and the men were convicted of manslaughter in the end and sentenced to six and a half years each. You wrote that article, your first sort of act of journalism in the school paper. I'm just curious where you ended up filing that case in your mind. Yeah, it stayed with me, honestly, and it still stays with me. I still think a lot about Pamela George. I spoke at the University of Regina a couple of years ago, and one of her relatives was in the audience and came up afterward. And, you know, I think that there's such a great, like, terrible, terrible example of why it's so important that the media, you know, has better representation, has Indigenous people

to help tell these stories. And it's such a terrible example of the harm that it can cause when we mess up. So you did go on and you did you know live up to that ambition and that desire that you had to to help tell the story yourself just like murphy brown and you found yourself you found yourself you got yourself to see to the national to that very show that you had criticized or had been concerned about the coverage of so we're talking sort of circa 2014 approximately? Yeah, yeah, I can't remember, yeah. So back then, I wonder if you could talk about that many years later after Pamela,

what was, how would you characterize the coverage of Indigenous stories at that time? Well, in 2014, I feel like it was kind of just the beginning of what we've seen now 10 years later is, or at least what I kind of quantify now, is like a huge transformation. And I feel like 2014 was kind of the beginning of that wave that was really, I think, caused by the shift to digital. And obviously we can all look back now and see how the shift to digital has changed all of our lives. But back then, it was in particular, I think, even

more transformative for Indigenous communities. Because, you then, it was, in particular, I think, even more transformative for Indigenous communities. Because, you know, so many people in our communities, like my mom, never even had dial-up. Like, you know, we didn't have internet on the reserve back then. And then people were being able to access it through their phones. And so I think Indigenous people across the country really kind of adopted it in this really profound way, that it was just starting to change. And although I had, you know, gotten into journalism to try to focus on these stories, it was, I think maybe I had filed two stories that were about Indigenous people up until 2013, 2012. Yeah. So, but tell us about that. I'm just curious what it was like for you

when you pitched those stories, you know, to editors, to others, just what kind of reaction would you get? Oh, I mean, it was not great, to be honest. Yeah. I mean, the first, my first experience in the newsroom, and I joined the newsroom, like in 2000, I was an intern at CBC in Halifax. And that was around the same time that Comerfield and Chernoweski were released on parole. Like they, they were sentenced to six years, but it was ended up serving four, four and aifax. And that was around the same time that Comerfield and Chernoweski were released on parole. Like they were sentenced to six years, but it was ended up serving four, four and a half years. And I was actually on the East Coast and a chase producer for the morning show. And like, just to give you an example of kind of the attitudes that I immediately encountered was I had booked the chief of a local reserve to come on the show to talk about

the fisheries dispute that was happening. And my senior producer was like, did you tell him what time it was? Does he know exactly where to go? Because it was a morning show. It was a really early morning. And this is a Friday. And he was coming on the show on Monday. And I said, yes, he knows. And she said, because you know those Indians, they'll go out drinking all weekend and they won't show up on a Monday morning. And that was something that was, again, I was like, I just remember looking around. Like, I just remember freezing, actually. Just being like, you have that fight or flight response. And I'm definitely a freeze person in those moments.

But I did look around to see if anyone paid attention. And those moments were, like, not constant in my journalism career. But I think left enough of a mark on me. And so, you know, I pitched other stories and had other, you know, disappointing encounters. But then, you know, I think it just started to kind of gel and change a little bit. And you persevered.

I mean, you stuck around. I really needed a job, honestly. I was like, this isn't my job. It must have been a hard thing to do, hearing that kind of language and not having the response you want. But that really began to change in 2015 when you became involved.

Well, it was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and you actually were covering the TRC. Yeah, by 2015, it was really such a radical transformation because I had I remember I followed the story the year before for the national and and there was a feeling then that we couldn't have more than two indigenous stories in one night like it was just that was a bit too much but I was I remember 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 like, I still have, you know, 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. And it was, for me, like one of the, you know, the biggest moments in my career, absolutely, like filing for the lead story for The National, because it was the biggest story in the country that day, not just for CBC, but every network. But I remember it was also really hard. Like it was such a difficult day because they played testimony of survivors at the event. And I remember late Justice Marie Sinclair saying to everyone

that there's not a single Indigenous person in Canada who has not been touched by the legacy of residential schools. And he knew that was true because of the work he had just finished, you know, six years of traveling the country, hearing from over 6,000 survivors, this like incredible like testimony. And I believed him when he said it, you know, because of my own lived experiences. Like all four of my grandparents were residential school survivors. My father is a residential school survivor. But I also, you know, so I remember thinking about my grandparents in particular that day because I knew the most about their experiences, even though I knew very, very, very little about their experiences. And it was really, and it was hard. It was like, this is, I want to be doing this. I

want to be the person who helps to tell this story and helps to amplify the voices of survivors. And I still remember Vivian Ketchum was a survivor I interviewed that day. And she said she didn't want her story to become like a souvenir, like something that people are like excited about today, but then that gets put on a shelf and it gets forgotten about and collects dust. And she didn't want that to be. And I remember feeling like that's like a responsibility

that she's handing to me. You know, that's like, this is not the end. This has to be the beginning of something. I think I would venture to say that a lot of people in this audience, and I certainly do remember your reporting during that time. And that really kind of, in my mind, you know, I remember Connie Walker, that Connie Walker. The question that I have is your storytelling is taking flight. You're inhabiting that role that you had sort of envisioned for yourself. you're inhabiting that role that you had sort of envisioned for yourself. Did you also at that moment have a sense that people were apprehending the relationship between the truth and

reconciliation, that it wasn't just important for the Indigenous communities, but it was also important for shoring up, you know, our very democracy? Yeah, I think that it was like, it was dawning on me. Like, I think that the work we do as journalists and in helping to strengthen democracy, absolutely. But it also felt like it was starting to change, that it was like, we were now being able to prove that this was something that was important, not just because we're the CBC, but this is something important to Canadians. You know, I think, again, the shift to digital when we launched, it's called CBC Indigenous Now, but when we launched, it was CBC Aboriginal. We pitched that in, I think it was 2012, and we launched it in 2013. And we were getting very good traction with

our stories. And we could actually say, this is how many times this story has been read. this is how many times it's been shared on social media and in terms of the metrics which were all I'm sure you remember like so important back like behind the scenes at the cc it was like we could actually there was like traction and I feel like then it was it was like proof it was like we don't have to rely on our own judgment about what Canadians think about what Canadians are caring about we actually can rely on these. Just making a turn to the next kind of important moment in your career, your podcast series Missing and Murdered was in 2016, just one year after your turning point at the National with the TRC. You had worked in print previously, you'd worked on television, which is where we all, many of us met you.

At what point did you realize that actually radio storytelling and podcasting was the right medium to tell the kinds of stories that you wanted to tell? Well, I remember, I'm sure, like every podcaster who has been working in podcasting for the last few years probably was inspired by Serial, season one of Serial. I remember also my husband, my my boyfriend then but my husband now we sat in the living room across from each other on our couches and like listened on it like a speaker and we just sat there and you're just listening and we were so excited about it and I remember as a journalist like feeling like it was so transformative because so much of it felt like

like so much of the work that you do is behind the scenes and then eventually you you know you work for days or weeks or months and you then come on and you say cbc news has learned x y and z and this was a chance to kind of peel back the curtain and and that was the thing that initially honestly grabbed me because we had at that point started reporting on some of the unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. And the first story that Marnie Luke, my producer at CBC and I took on

was the unsolved murder of a 15-year-old girl named Leah Anderson, who was killed in her community in Northern Manitoba, God's Lake Narrows. And I remember Marnie and I traveled up to the community and we were there for about a week and we were focused on trying to get to know Leah through her friends and family, but also kind of uncover what happened to her

as much as we could and retrace her steps that weekend. And I remember we were just hearing from so many people because this was prior to that the only article about Leah's death was another CBC story but that didn't have a photo that had a photo of her community in it and was just a couple hundred words and so I think people wanted to obviously in her community wanted to to have her story have this murder be solved like I think people wanted to, obviously in her community, wanted to have her story, have this murder be solved. Like I think it was a very small community. And so we were so focused on the mystery element.

And I remember thinking like, this should be a podcast. This could be a podcast. But to be honest, it wasn't until a long time after that I realized that, oh wait, this is actually the most, like the best way to tell stories about First Nations or Indigenous communities.

So why? Tell me why. Well, because it was actually, it was following the death of Colton Boushey. I think you all remember that. Like, again, it was, you know, it really reminded me of Pamela George and the way that Colton's death was covered in Saskatchewan was just such a raw and very difficult and sensitive time for First Nations. Like I remember,

it just kind of heightened all of the racial tensions that obviously were still really prevalent in Saskatchewan. And even though I wasn't living at home, I still, I go back home a lot and I'm so close to my family. And so I felt like this was such a visceral thing. But some of our colleagues in Saskatchewan, Betty Ann Adam and Mervyn Brass and Jason Warwick, had organized a conference for journalists to try to help journalists from across the province come together to try to do a better job of telling these stories. And one of the keynote speakers that day was one of the commissioners

of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Marie Wilson, who's also a former journalist. And she gave her keynote at lunchtime. And I remember I was sitting like front row center and I was so eager. And I felt like she was talking directly to me as well. And she used her keynote. I mean, she imparted so much wisdom about her work, for sure. But I felt like she used her keynote to kind of give us all heck and say, you guys aren't doing a good enough job.

Like, this is your job as Canadians. And something she said that day really stuck with me. And we're going to hear that. We're going to hear that exact clip that you're talking about. But before we play it, I was wondering if you could just set the context. What do we need to know about just that day and what was going on? Well, I mean, at that point, I was writing the first season of the podcast, Missing and Murdered. And I was so focused on the unsolved murder of Alberta Williamss who was the indigenous woman who was killed whose case we were covering and and i you know we had done a lot of reporting and there was a lot of pressure and deadlines and and all the rest and then i heard this clip from marie and

it really changed the trajectory of our podcast but honestly all of my reporting. Don't skip the context, and that is the hugest trap I know for all working journalists when time is of the essence and there just isn't enough. And if you can't explain it in this story, explain it in the follow-up. Explain it. You know, when did this story actually begin? And I think you are in the most privileged profession of all

for that ability to start connecting the dots for us as Canadians. How do these things fit together? Because you do have time. My eldest daughter, when she was little, one time said to her friend, to the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? And she said, I want to be a journalist like my mom. And she said, how come? And she said, because you to be a journalist like my mom. And she said,

how come? And she said, because you get to sit around and watch TV all day and read papers. But it is a luxury, you know, a privileged amount of time, however strained it may seem. And so help connect those dots. When did this story actually begin? So for example, did the TRC begin with the opening or the closing of the schools? The apology that was spoken, it was the news of the day, but what did we know or what were we told about the beginning of that publicly told story? Well I've made my point on that and I don't want to go on for the sake of time with other examples of that. But I would just say, and I hope this doesn't sound corny, I hope it sounds like it speaks to your calling to this profession, to listen patiently. It's

our most, it's the most important part of our job is listening and listening with our hearts. It's not about thinking. These were children after all. It was really the question about when did this story actually begin? Because I think up until that point, I was, again, 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 you know witnesses that had never spoken to police and that question made me i thought about alberta williams you know she was you know a young woman when she was killed in 1989 but when did her story actually begin like it wasn't with her murder and then i thought it in some, it wasn't even with her birth,

that she was connected to this bigger story that we were, you know, trying to shed light on and connect the dots. Like, how was MMIW connected, as the TRC said, to residential schools? And it changed the way we wrote that episode, episode four, and really tried to connect the dots in Alberta's life to that history. And also connect the dots, you know, because Alberta's story actually came about because we received a tip from the former RCMP officer who was the lead investigator in her unsolved murder. And, you know, we used that podcast to also try to explain

the history between Indigenous communities and the RCMP, and why people didn't feel comfortable talking to him when he was investigating Alberta's case, and why, you know, when we came 27 years later, they talked to us about things that had happened that weekend that they had never told this police officer. And so it was like a light bulb moment for me that this is actually, okay, this is meaningful. And also with a podcast, you have the space to do it. You're listening to Ideas. We're a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca

slash ideas. You can also find ideas on the CBC News app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app.

Connie's illustrious career as an Indigenous journalist mirrored the way that First Nations stories were treated in times past. At first, they weren't really front and center, but have now become a fixture on our media landscape. So when I spoke with her on stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto, I wanted to get deeper into that. I think in a way, your work, at least in my mind, sort of conjures up this image of you holding up a mirror to us and having us look back at ourselves. I wonder what it is that you wanted most for us to see in that mirror. I mean, I think it's to see the humanity of Indigenous people,

which, again, should be the bare minimum and should be the most basic thing that you can see. But if you think back to the Pamela George or Colton Boushey or other stories that have really kind of like proved unfortunately again and again how there's so many stereotypes that exist about Indigenous people First Nations people in this country what we have grown up with and what we have just kind of absorbed in Canada, those attitudes that exist in Canadian society exist in Canadian journalism, you know, like we can see that truth, we know and can understand that. And I think it was really about trying to create space for empathy and

create space for people to hear about Pamela George and the way that we hear about her now and have empathy for a young single mom who was struggling to raise her family. And that is something that I think is definitely my goal. It's kind of a difficult time for storytellers, I would say. I think everybody here would agree, many people would agree, that there's no shared truth anymore the way we knew it maybe 20, 30 years ago. I wonder if you could talk about the importance of the work you do in trying, I mean, you know the Samara Centre does research

on the state of democracy. Their latest research was about the Toronto mayoral election. But it feels like every year we've done this, some of the same results come up over and over again. You know, there's abuse of the candidates, you know, online, there's, you know, contested basic truths. I wonder where you see your role as a storyteller and investigative journalist in trying to counteract some of those things that are chipping away, again, at our democracy. Yeah, it's so hard, I think.

And I mean, I feel like, or what I'm kind of led by are things that I respond to in storytelling, like as an audience member. Again, you know, with documentaries or with films, and the thing that I think I've tried to kind of mirror again is the transparency that we can have in journalism and how that is a way to like acknowledge

how my lived experiences as an Indigenous woman absolutely affect every part of my life, but also every part of my work. You know, I'm informed by that. And this idea of, or this myth, as some people say, of objectivity in journalism and just being transparent about that, I feel like is a way of kind of peeling back that curtain. And that's something that has felt like, honestly, a big tool for me. So for the last part of this, I wanted to talk about your latest project and your,

you know, surviving St. Michael's. And I want to start that by asking you about your family. You come from a very large family. Very large, very, very large. 13 siblings. Yeah. I mean, I always have to count them because, but yeah. And your mom and dad had also a large family. Yeah. On both sides. Like my mom, again, I would have to count them, I should know this, but over a dozen siblings. And my dad was one of 16 or 17 kids in his family. And so very big families, very, very big families. So given that complicated, I guess, that large, complicated family, I'm curious just how aware you were as you were growing up of the context, as we talked about.

Yeah, not aware at all, honestly. Residential schools. No, I mean, I think I, I'm sure I'd heard of residential schools for sure, but no, not at all aware. In fact, like, so my mom was a young mom. Like, she was 17 when I was born and still at home with my grandparents.

So I was very close to my grandparents and they helped raise me. And in particular, my grandpa and I spent a lot of time together, you know, in the car, he would pick me up after ball practice or, and then when I got old enough to drive, I would drive him around to garage sales and we just spent so much time in the car together. But it wasn't until I was in university and I was taking an oral history class or Indian studies class focused on oral history. And one of my assignments was to interview somebody to record their oral history so I went home and interviewed him and it was through this interview that I I learned that he was sent to residential school when he was six years old and I was so shocked by that I just I

didn't I had no idea um and and he didn, I could tell, like, he didn't want to talk too much about his experience, but he did share some things with me. And I just remember, like, yeah, just that it was, you know, I was in my 20s after spending so much time with him, you know, before. And my grandmother, like, I never spoke to her about her experience at residential school. I only heard about it from my mom after my grandmother passed away that she ran away from the residential school. She was, we were like,

we're in Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. And she was sent to Manitoba to residential school, Birtle, Manitoba. And she had a friend ran away and walked home like over days and they made it home. And whatever happened to her there that made her want to run away, it also made her adamant that her kids wouldn't go. So my mom and her brothers and sisters didn't go to,

and I didn't go to residential school. But again, you learned all that later. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's curious, your award-winning series, Surviving St. Michael's, does delve into your family history and specifically your father's experience at residential school. And you've said out loud, even this week in some of your media interviews,

that you've been reluctant to kind of feature yourself and your family history in your reporting. I'm wondering when it is that you realized that this was not an impediment to your journalism, but actually something that could inform it as a really important tool to help explain and elucidate the story of residential schools. I think it was gradual, for sure. But I feel like, especially in the first 10 years of my career,

I was really wary of of being the aboriginal reporter and I think that especially at that time like there was a feeling that you would you would be seen as more of an advocate than a journalist and and that that you would be biased and so I think it was like dipping my toe in here and there. And then it was the podcasting and it was the ability that like as the host of an eight-part series, like an investigation, like you're kind of bringing people along with you as you like knock on someone's door and your inclusion in this story is different than the way that I, up until that point, had been telling stories. How was that? How was that? I actually love that. I love that part of it. It's very good. It's very effective. Yeah. I mean, I just, but I also just like that feeling of, like, we're just kind of opening, opening it up, and, and here it is. And, I mean, and then, I mean, maybe sometimes

a bit too transparent about some of the things we're doing and the mistakes we're making. But the parts of you in the library and looking through archives and going, oh my God, you know, incredibly, you do bring us along, very effective. And the archives, like, I mean, some of the most exciting places you could ever visit. Like, wow, it was like, I remember the second day

we only had a limited amount of time there for Surviving St. Michael's. And I remember I had so many, I requested so many boxes and I was like there and I was there by myself that time. And I was like trying to get through as much as I could. And I left the library and I was like all sweaty and disheveled. This is so exciting. But what do you do? Do you bring a microphone with you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you just kind of get used to doing this, like recording conversations with yourself as though you're talking to somebody else.

And sometimes I will, like in Surviving St. Michael's, I actually, because it was such a personal story and I was doing the interviews, like in my dad's community of Beardies and Okamasis, but I often would drive back to Saskatoon because my family was with me sometimes and we were staying in the city. And on those phone calls, I would call my husband Chuck

and I would just kind of debrief what had just happened and what we had just learned. And some of those, like we were recorded and made it in the podcast too. Incredibly difficult terrain to navigate, not just on the emotional level, talking to some of your family, you know, about things you've never talked to them about,

but also the actual, you know, getting the information. Yeah. Just what kind of hurdles did this process throw up in your work? Well, I think initially, you know, I was, the goal was to try to learn. I had learned after, in May of 2021, I had learned that my dad was abused by a priest at the residential school. And, you know, and it made me want to know more about, like, it answered so many questions that

I had about him, because I didn't know really anything about his residential school experience, but it also brought up so many more questions. And so 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. And then once we started interviewing other family members,

because my father passed away in 2013, so I couldn't interview him or talk to him about it, but I was interviewing his brothers and sisters who were with him at the school and hearing about other abuse that they had experienced. And then it kind of broadened out and became bigger. And we wanted to try to get a sense of actually like, what was the scale of abuse at this one school? And then we started wanting to talk to as many survivors as we could and interview as many survivors from this one single residential school.

And at the archives, you know, I learned that that school was open for over a hundred years and that four generations of my family went to the school. Like starting with like my great-grandfather, my chaplain in 1903 or something like that. It was open since the late 1800s. But it was the first time my family had had any of this information.

And it just made me want to know as much as I could about this school, especially because from the survivors, we were hearing about widespread abuse and widespread sexual abuse and physical abuse. And, you know, I think that one of the things that was so enlightening about it was that, you know, as a journalist, I had been reported a bit on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but also the final event, but also the IAP process, which is a process that was part of the residential school settlement where survivors, 26,000 survivors participated in the IAP

and testified in detail about abuse they experienced at residential schools. What's the IAP? It's called the Independent Assessment Process. And it was part of the residential school settlement. Like survivors experienced like a common experience payment, like $10,000. And then I can't remember if it was a couple thousand for each year attended. But if they experienced abuse,

they could go through the IAP process for additional compensation. So 26,000 survivors did do this and testified in very graphic detail about abuse they experienced at residential school. But all of 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. That information was essentially what we were seeking

for surviving St. Michael's for this one school. But all of that information, you know, to protect the privacy of survivors has been kept private. And it's actually going, all of that, all of those records are going to be destroyed in less than three years, in September 19th, 2027. And so we couldn't access those IAP documents to learn about this one school. So we had to try to find another way to get that information. And what was that other way? producers, Chantal Belrichard, had an idea because what led to the residential school settlement was the fact that, you know, in the 90s and 2000s, thousands of survivors started coming forward and suing the federal government and the churches for the abuse they experienced in residential schools. And eventually it became one of, you know, what was then the largest class

action lawsuit in the country. And so thousands of survivors sued the government about residential school abuse. So we thought if we could A-tip those lawsuits, we could get a sense of what happened at this one school. And so we A-tipped file numbers for survivors of St. Michael's and then we traveled to courthouses, which are also very exciting places to visit, in Regina, in Saskatoon. Extraordinary. Yeah, and then we were able to access 500 lawsuits from this one school. Okay.

What surprised you the most and what you uncovered in that? Honestly, it's just, it's so heartbreaking. Like, I think that maybe naively, I had an idea with, like with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the incredible work that they did, and not just the work of collecting testimony of survivors, but then the work of putting it all together through the calls to action and then through all of the volumes that had survivor testimony throughout that, you know, there was such a thorough, you know, sense of what was happening at residential schools and what survivors endured. But I think that, you know, what this process made me realize is how much truth there is still yet to uncover about residential schools and about individual residential schools. So in those lawsuits, you know, there were like over 220 allegations of sexual abuse

against kids by 17 priests and 13 nuns at this one school and 15 staff members, including some of my relatives. You know, we saw some of their lawsuits. And I think that then, you know, being able to, because I was the daughter of a survivor and the niece of other survivors, like I could see and connect through how that rippled through my father's life and then through my life and then through so many other people in our family and community. And just the tip of the iceberg, one school. Yeah, of the 130 schools across the country. Well, I thought we'd play maybe a clip from the podcast, if you don't mind. What do we need to know about this particular clip? Well, when we decided to

broaden the scope of our investigation and try to talk to as many survivors as we could from this one school, one of the survivors we spoke to was Eugene Arcand, who knew my dad and was at the school with him, but also, you know, knew him throughout his life. And he really kind of, he also worked a lot with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And he really, you know, it was such an incredible interview, but really cautioned me about the responsibility of telling these stories. And, you know, told me what an elder had told him when he started working with other survivors. And he said, don't play with this, that this is a big responsibility. And it impacted the way that we did the podcast. And we wanted to create a space to hand the mic

over for survivors to tell their own stories in their own words. And really what it ended up being was a whole episode really where you just hear their voices, but also myself and Betty Ann Adam, who also did a lot of the interviews with survivors, kind of reconstructing the school through their voices and memories. I know, I know what happened. I lived it. What happened? I lived it for all the years, my growing up years that were taken away from me, that were taken away from me brutally when I should have had those memories. When I think of it, it's sad memories.

When I think of it with sad memories. And I think of it. Has there been anything that has helped you to heal? My sweat lodge. Sometimes we cry for each other. We don't sit there and share tears because we're crying for ourselves. It's for each other. We don't sit there and share tears because we're crying for ourselves. It's for each other. Like, who has been held accountable for the things that they have done to us? Nobody.

Is there any way for justice? No. The only justice I got out of that was the way I treated my kids. I've never hit my kids. Never. I hugged and kissed my kids and told them I loved them. You know, and we raised them right.

That's the only injustice I got, was the way I loved my kids so much. I just love that last clip of Frank Badger, because I feel like that's what I felt, honestly, like in spite of the fact that there was this painful history that my family endured, that we were shown so much love, like my grandparents and my parents and my aunts and uncles, like we have such a close-knit family and they showed us so much love and they taught us the importance of family and community and responsibility. And I'm so grateful to them, especially now that I have a better sense of what they survived and what they endured, that they were able to persevere. And my dad, you know, this process was about finding out more about him and I didn't get all of the answers maybe,

but I think, you know, I was able to see how he persevered and kept going and reclaimed the culture and language and spirituality that they tried to take from him. I feel like through that process, I got to know him better as well. I'm sorry. So given the trajectory of your career, here we are so many years later after Pamela and that article you wrote for the school paper. How would you describe the change between that time and this moment?

You as a Pulitzer Prize winner, again, one of the top 100 influencers in 2024. How would you describe the change that's happened in this period? I mean, for me, it feels like it's been like just a huge transformation. It's like I still can't believe it. And I feel like, you know, because, you know, it was a long time before it actually happened in my career, I feel like an urgency. Like I have to keep going. Like there's this space right now, but who knows what's going to happen in three years or five years. And now it feels like there is this acknowledgement. There's like so much change in terms of like the recognition of the

importance and also the recognition of supporting Indigenous people to help tell our own stories. But I also feel like there's so much out there. Like, how could it be 2022 when our podcast came out that we're just learning the truth about this one school? Like, how can that be? Like, 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. Like-

How broad? Well, I mean, every school. I think it should happen for every school, especially because of the IAP records and the destruction of those records, you know, that's going to be happening in three years. Like, that's what is going to be lost with that information, you know, like that history, that truth about residential schools. Like, I know now as an intergenerational survivor, as a journalist, as a Canadian, as a mother, how important it is for us to protect

as much of that truth as we possibly can, but also preserve it for future generations. I can feel and hear the urgency and understand the reasons why you say it is. Could you broaden that and explain why this should be urgent for all of us? I mean, one of the things that I was in Berlin a couple of years ago at a journalism conference, and I remember just walking around and just seeing everywhere all of the public displays of their history. Like every building that you pass has a little brass marker

with the names and birthdates and where they, of the people, Jewish people who used to live there, who were killed in the Holocaust and where they died and what happened to them. And then also all of the big public displays as well. And just the juxtaposition of here in Canada. Like, you know, we have this incredible work of the TRC, which is so important, but what else, like, you know, what else do we have? Like, I feel like this is such an important history in Canada that we're just beginning to, at least I feel like,

so much of my career has really been about, you know, my own journey to learn about myself and my own part of this history. I feel like it's so important for all of us. We started talking about you as a high school student. We heard from Mary Wilson about how this is about children. The focus throughout your work has been about children. That's who was the victim at those residential schools.

And so now you're a mom and you have a daughter. And I wonder as a final note, if you could say what you would like reconciliation to look like for her as she grows up. I mean, it's so emotional to think about that, honestly, because it is about you know my child but it's also about all of my nieces and nephews and all of you know my my cousins and their kids and our all of our families and communities like we you know we we have all been shaped by this legacy and this history in really painful ways. Um, but we've been

able to, to have, you know, so much love and, and support in spite of that. And for them, I mean, I, I feel like we're doing better than we have before. And I think about, you know, how brave my grandma was to run away from that school, but also to always tell us, don't ever let anybody say they're better than you. And she was the kind of person who, when we went to eat in town and people would stare at us because we were Native, she would look back and say, boo.

So I feel like, and my mom was such a strong, incredible woman, and that I want to be a positive example for them so that they don't have the burden. And I know that I don't have it in the way that my mom had it and the way that my grandmother had it as a survivor. But to hopefully make things better for them. Well, you're such a positive example to all of us.

An inspiring one and one we're all very proud of. Thank you very much, Connie, for taking all're all very proud of. Thank you very much, Connie, for taking all my questions. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. That wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Oh my gosh. I was so nervous. I feel better now. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. You were listening to my conversation with Connie Walker on stage at the Winter Garden Theater in Toronto. with Connie Walker on stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto. The event was entitled In Defense of Democracy and was organized by the Samara Center for Democracy. Special thanks to Sabrina Dellen, Aisha Jarrah, and Kayla Beck.

Connie Walker is from the Okenese Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan and is now based in Toronto. Her investigative podcast series, Stolen, Surviving St. Michael's, won an astounding series of awards and honours, including a Peabody Award, a Columbia DuPont Award and a Pulitzer Prize. What was also astonishing while being on stage with her was how she could delve into these dark corners of Canadian history and Indigenous experience and yet maintain her positive spirit. I can tell you firsthand that the audience left the theatre feeling uplifted. The web producer for Ideas is Lisa Ayuso. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval. Our senior producer is Nikola Lukšić.

The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly. And I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.