Rosanna Deerchild and Tanya Talaga among finalists for 2025 Indigenous Voices Awards
The awards have recognized emerging Indigenous writers across Canada
Rosanna Deerchild and Tanya Talaga are among the authors shortlisted for the 2025 Indigenous Voices Awards.
Since 2017, the IVAs have recognized emerging Indigenous writers across Canada for works in English, French and Indigenous languages. The shortlists have been announced for two $5,000 categories: Published Prose in English and Published Poetry in English.
Deerchild's poetry collection She Falls Again is a finalist for the published poetry category.
She Falls Again follows the voice of a poet attempting to survive as an Indigenous person in Winnipeg when so many are disappearing. Riddled with uncertainties, like if the crow she speaks to is a trickster, the poet hears the message of the Sky Woman who is set on dismantling the patriarchy. Through short poems and prose this collection calls for reclamation and matriarchal power.
Deerchild has been storytelling for more than 20 years, currently as host of CBC's Unreserved. Deerchild also developed and hosted This Place, a podcast series for CBC Books around the Indigenous anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold. Her book, calling down the sky, is her mother's residential school survivor story. Deerchild is currently based in Winnipeg.
Talaga's book The Knowing is a finalist for the published prose category.
In The Knowing, Talaga charts the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and the violence she and her family suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church and Canadian government. The story aims to show Canadian history in its reality, focusing on how decades of government-sanctioned violence have generational effects.
Talaga is a journalist, author and filmmaker of Anishinaabe and Polish descent and a member of the Fort William First Nation. Talaga also wrote the nonfiction work Seven Fallen Feathers, which also won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing in 2018. Seven Fallen Feathers also received the RBC Taylor Prize and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award.
Other notable writers on the shortlists include Wayne K. Spear, Georges Erasmus and Trina Rathgeber.
Spear and Erasmus are shortlisted in the published prose category for Hòt'a! Enough!: Georges Erasmus's Fifty-Year Battle for Indigenous Right. The autobiography chronicles Dene leader Erasmus's decades-long fight for Indigenous rights, including his pivotal roles in the Berger Inquiry, the Oka Crisis, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
Spear is a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) educator and writer. His other 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 in Toronto.
Erasmus is the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, president of the Indian Brotherhood of Northwest Territories and chair of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. He is a recipient of the Order of Canada and is based in Yellowknife.
Rathgeber is shortlisted in the published prose category for Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival, a children's graphic novel illustrated by Pete about Rathgeber's grandmother Ilse Schweder, who, as a young girl, survived alone in the wilderness for nine days during a harsh Canadian winter 80 years ago — relying on traditional knowledge.
Rathgeber is a children's author and member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. She is the author of French Fries Are Potatoes and The Bunnies Talk Money.
Pete is a nehiyaw artist and writer from Little Pine First Nation in western Saskatchewan.
The complete list of shortlisted authors is below.
Prose in English
- Hòt'a! Enough!: Georges Erasmus's Fifty-Year Battle for Indigenous Rights by Wayne K. Spear and Georges Erasmus
- Hummingbird/Aamo-binashee written and illustrated by Jennifer Leason
- Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival by Trina Rathgeber, illustrated by Alina Pete
- Niizh by Joelle Peters
- The Knowing by Tanya Talaga
Poetry in English
- Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen
- Once the Smudge is Lit by Kelsey Borgford and Cole Forrest, illustrated by Tessa Pizzale
- KINAUVUNGA?/ᑭᓇᐅᕗᖓ by Aedan Corey
- She Falls Again by Rosanna Deerchild
- What Fills Your House Like Smoke by E. McGregor
The winners will be announced on National Indigenous Peoples Day, which is June 21, 2025.
Past recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, jaye simpson and Brandi Bird.
The IVAs also announced the winners of their unpublished categories, who were awarded $500 and possible publication from Yarrow Magazine. Yarrow is a digital magazine co-founded by Jordan Abel, Conor Kerr, Jessica Johns and Chelsea Novak that focuses on Indigenous prose, poetry and nonfiction in English.
The list of winners are as follows:
Unpublished Poetry
- houses made of pollen & other poems by Henry Heavyshield
- Homecoming by aleria mckay
- And Then by Dawn Amber Tonks
- Shapeshifter by Kevin Wesaquate
Unpublished Prose
- Archive of Forever by Jesset Karlen
- Intertribal by Kieran Rice
- White Ash Falling by Chantal Rondeau
- Life is Water by Nolan Schmerk
- Selected Stories from 'K'wootxw' by Jennifer B.S. Williams
