Connie Walker joins Journalism at The Creative School
Journalism at The Creative School is excited to welcome Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Connie Walker (external link) , to our tenure-stream faculty.
Walker is a Cree journalist from the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, nationally and internationally recognized as a leader in the profession and community, by institutions, academics, audiences and Indigenous peoples. She was described as standing out in an outstanding field by the Pulitzer Prize committee.
She was named to Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of 2024 (external link) in recognition of her impact. She has been named as a person, journalist and storyteller of significance by publications like The New York Times, New York Magazine, and New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The Walrus, and countless others who have reported on her work and on her methodology, techniques and ability to craft new forms of knowledge generation, transforming genres like true crime to be a gateway for understanding, acknowledging and developing empathy for the experiences of Indigenous peoples.
To date, Walker has earned many honours and awards in recognition of groundbreaking journalism built on over 20 years in the profession. This includes pitching and founding CBC Aboriginal (now CBC Indigenous), co-leading development of a national database on murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, building frameworks for deep investigation into preserving justice records of residential school survivors, and creating meaningful change in a field reliant on tradition as a shield, all while moving between multiple journalistic platforms, locales and approaches.
As a journalist and public figure, her recent conversation with the CBC program IDEAS (external link) captured the spirit of her work that centres the importance of storytelling in advancing truth and reconciliation — as well as democracy itself. Starting with the key question that Walker has embraced, 'where does the story begin,' her work takes us on journeys of understanding the lives of Indigenous peoples in exceptional detail, using the power of journalism as a vehicle to explore the world deeply and with care.
At Toronto Metropolitan University, Connie will also be appointed to the Velma Rogers Journalism Chair, where she will continue her impactful journalism and storytelling through teaching and investigative research, building on demonstrated capacity to conduct foundational work focused on and with Indigenous peoples, issues and experiences, on the ground, in and with communities.
Walker’s research will continue the work she started during her podcast, “Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s (external link) .”
Chair of Journalism at The Creative School, Ravi Mohabeer says this will be a large part of her focus for the first several years.
“This involves intense, real world investigative journalism, considerations of the continuing impact of residential schools on Indigenous peoples across the country, and work with multiple institutions and people through her SRC and likely in her teaching as well.
Mohabeer added, “There is no doubt that, together with Connie, we will continue to help our students, colleagues and community build an exciting future for Journalism.”
Walker will join our community officially on July 1, 2025.