Connie Walker (journalist) facts for kids

Connie Walker is a talented Cree journalist who has won a very important award called the Pulitzer Prize. She is known for her powerful stories, especially those about Indigenous people in Canada.

About Connie Walker

Early Life and Family

Connie Walker grew up in the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. She comes from a very big and close family. She has 13 brothers and sisters! Her parents also came from large families. Connie has one daughter.

Education and Early Career

While studying at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, Connie received a special award called the Joan Donaldson Newsworld Scholarship. This scholarship gave her a chance to work as an intern at CBC Newsworld, a major news channel. She later earned her degree in journalism from the University of Regina.

Connie says her first act of journalism was writing an article for her high school newspaper. It was about a sad event involving a young First Nations woman and how the investigation was handled.

Connie Walker's Journalism Career

Starting at CBC

From 2000 to 2002, while still a student, Connie hosted a TV show called Street Cents. This show helped young people learn about money and media. After graduating, Connie joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) full-time.

She worked as a host for Living Saskatchewan. She also reported and produced stories for CBC News: Sunday and the main CBC news show, The National. In 2009, she became a reporter for Connect with Mark Kelley.

Focus on Indigenous Stories

In 2013, Connie helped create an important documentary called 8th Fire. This film explored modern Indigenous life in Canada. Later that year, she became the lead reporter for the CBC's Indigenous reporting team.

Connie believes it's important to share more positive stories about Indigenous communities. She also wants to make sure more Indigenous voices are heard in the news. She once shared her disappointment about how some news stories about missing girls were covered differently.

In 2015, CBC Radio aired a program where Connie talked about the difficult history of residential schools through her family's experiences. These schools were a sad part of Canadian history, and Connie's grandparents were survivors.

Investigative Podcasts

Connie Walker is well-known for her investigative podcasts. These are like audio detective stories.

• In 2016, she launched an eight-part podcast called Missing and Murdered. This series looked into the unsolved case of Alberta Williams, who disappeared in 1989 along the Highway of Tears in British Columbia.
• In 2018, she released a second season of Missing and Murdered. This time, she investigated the story of Cleopatra Nicotine Semaganis. Cleopatra was taken from her family as a child during a time known as the Sixties Scoop.
• In 2021, Connie launched another podcast series called Stolen: The Search for Jermain. This series investigated the case of Jermain Charlo, an Indigenous woman who went missing from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.

Connie has since left the CBC and now works for Gimlet Media, a podcast company.

Awards and Recognition

Connie Walker has received many awards for her important work:

• In 2009, her personal documentary Okanese received an honorable mention at a film festival.
• In 2016, Connie and her CBC team won two awards from the Canadian Association of Journalists. They were recognized for their work on stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
• The YWCA honored Connie as one of their "Women of Distinction" in 2017.
• Her podcast Missing & Murdered: Who Killed Alberta Williams was nominated for a Webby Award in 2017.
• In 2018, she was recognized on a list of influential Indigenous voices on social media.
• Also in 2018, Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo won an award for best serialized story at the Third Coast International Audio Festival.
• In 2023, Connie Walker and her team at Gimlet Media won a Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting for their podcast Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's.