Manitoba poet, CBC Radio host Rosanna Deerchild among winners for 2025 Indigenous Voices Awards

CBC Books

· Posted: Jun 23, 2025 1:41 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

Wayne K. Spear, Georges Erasmus and Rosanna Deerchild are among this year's winners of the Indigenous Voices Awards (IVAs). 

Since 2017, the IVAs person recognized emerging Indigenous writers crossed the state for works successful English, French and Indigenous languages. The awards person fixed a full of $247,000 to writers implicit their eight-year history. 

Spear and Erasmus won the $5,000 grant for published prose successful English for their publication Hòt'a! Enough!: Georges Erasmus's Fifty-Year Battle for Indigenous Rights. 

The autobiography chronicles Dene person Erasmus's decades-long combat for Indigenous rights, including his pivotal roles successful the Berger Inquiry, the Oka Crisis, the Royal Commission connected Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Healing Foundation. 

"For Indigenous peoples this publication is an inspiration. A vivid look into the sacrifices and sheer determination of a idiosyncratic and his assemblage successful the continual conflict for designation of our rights," said the assemblage successful a citation.

"For non-Indigenous peoples this publication is an oculus opener into what has and continues to spell into the changeless conflict for designation and respect and the relation that Georges has played successful that."

• Dene person Georges Erasmus reflects connected rights, absorption and politics 

The jurors for the English prizes were Cody Caetano, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Liz Howard, Jessica Johns, Conor Kerr, Jónína Kirton, Cecily Nicholson, and Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek. 

Spear is simply a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) pedagogue and writer. His different books include Residential Schools, with the Words and Images of Survivors and Full Circle: The Aboriginal Healing Foundation and the Unfinished Work of Hope, Healing, and Reconciliation. Spear is based successful Toronto. 

Erasmus is the erstwhile National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, president of the Indian Brotherhood of Northwest Territories and seat of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. He is simply a recipient of the Order of Canada and is based successful Yellowknife. 

Deerchild won the $5,000 award for published poesy successful English for her postulation She Falls Again.

The rubric follows the dependable of a writer attempting to past arsenic an Indigenous idiosyncratic successful Winnipeg erstwhile truthful galore are disappearing. Riddled with uncertainties, similar if the crow she speaks to is simply a trickster, the writer hears the connection of the Sky Woman who is acceptable connected dismantling the patriarchy. Through abbreviated poems and prose this postulation calls for reclamation and matriarchal power.

"With precision, humour and love, Deerchild invites america into trickster conversations, taste and familial memory, the quality and absorption of Indigenous life and the revolutionary powerfulness of Sky Woman's return," said the IVA assemblage successful a citation.

"Deerchild instructs that 'these stories are scars one crook to stars/set escaped successful the entity of telling,' where the bushed of Cree 'carries/[her] backmost to bony memory,' and assures america that it's the lovers who volition prevention america all."

• This Place podcast, hosted by Rosanna Deerchild, explores 150 years of Indigenous absorption and resilience

Deerchild has been storytelling for much than 20 years, presently arsenic big of CBC's Unreserved. Deerchild besides developed and hosted This Place, a podcast bid for CBC Books astir the Indigenous anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold.

Her book, calling down the sky, is her mother's residential schoolhouse subsister story. Deerchild is presently based successful Winnipeg.

The French prizes went to Émergence insoumise by Cyndy Wylde and Trouver la maison by Océane Kitura Bohémier-Tootoo.

Previous winners see Alicia Elliott, Brandi Bird, Cody Caetano, Emily Riddle, Brian Thomas Isaac, jaye simpson, Tanya Tagaq and Jesse Thistle. 

The IVAs are a crowd-funded non-profit enactment with further enactment provided by the Canada Council for the Arts, Pamela Dillon & Family Gift Fund, Penguin Random House Canada, Scholastic Canada and Douglas & McIntyre.