Hear more from Connie Walker in this week’s episode of Origin Stories.
About Origin Stories
Have you ever wondered how your favorite movie, book, podcast, TV series, or documentary came to be? Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer sits down with a writer or director to unpack the creation of a work close to their hearts (and ours). The conversations cover everything — the frustrations and the joys, the setbacks and the breakthroughs. Intimate and eye-opening, Origin Stories is the ultimate podcast for anyone curious about the creative process.
In this episode
Connie Walker, the award-winning Cree journalist and host of Stolen, shares the backstory of Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's — her deeply personal investigation into Canada’s Indian residential school system. Reported while she was at Gimlet, then the biggest podcast company in the world, the series earned her both a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award in the same year — the first podcaster to do so.
To Connie, all great audio documentaries begin with a central question:
“It doesn't have to be the question you end up asking the whole way through,” she explains. “But initially, you have to start with that.”
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Episode 7: An Unfinished Rug
An unexpected development in Ella Mae’s case raises questions around justice and closure for families like hers, and Kristina’s.
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Episode 6: The Carrizo Mountains
As we go deeper into Kristina’s circle, a surprising connection takes us back to the start of our investigation, back to Sweetwater.
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Episode 5: The Shooting
Violence erupted at home not long before Kristina went missing. Could her disappearance be an act of retaliation?
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Episode 4: Farm Road
Jiní news, nunchucks, and a gruesome discovery near where Kristina Carrillo lived.
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Season 3: Trouble in Sweetwater
Violence. Retaliation. Disappearances. The Navajo Nation is 27,000 square miles of remote terrain with just over 200 tribal police officers. This season on Stolen, Connie Walker’s investigation into the cases of two missing women leads her on a search for justice in a place where people say you can get away with murder.
Reporting for Stolen: Trouble in Sweetwater was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s (IWMF) Fund for Indigenous Journalists reporting on issues related to Missing & Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) with a concentration on women, girls, Two-Spirit, and transgender people.
Season 2: Surviving St. Michael's
Last May, investigative journalist Connie Walker came upon a story about her late father she'd never heard before. One night back in the late 1970s while he was working as an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he pulled over a suspected drunk driver. He walked up to the vehicle and came face-to-face with a ghost from his past—a residential school priest. What happened on the road that night set in motion an investigation that would send Connie deep into her own past, trying to uncover the secrets of her family and the legacy of trauma passed down through the generations.
In Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's, Connie unearths how her family's story fits into one of Canada's darkest chapters: the residential school system.
Season 1: The Search for Jermain
In 2018, a young Indigenous mother named Jermain Charlo left a bar in Missoula, Montana, and was never seen again. After two years and thousands of hours of investigative work, police believe they are close to solving the mystery of what happened to her. We go inside the investigation, tracking down leads and joining search parties through the dense mountains of the Flathead Reservation. As we unravel this mystery, Stolen: The Search for Jermain examines what it means to be an Indigenous woman in America.
Stolen is hosted by Connie Walker.
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