Book on “Indian Group of Seven” wins big

The MacKenzie Art Gallery swept the Saskatchewan Book Awards this year, taking home all three publishing awards for 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., curated by Michelle LaVallee. It received the First Nations’ University of Canada Aboriginal Peoples’ Publishing Award, the University of Regina Faculty of Education and Campion College Award for Publishing in Education, and the Ministry of Parks, Culture, and Sport Publishing Award. The jury comments for the Aboriginal Peoples’ Publishing Award stated, “This wonderfully curated book offers its readers the joy of witnessing the parallel emergence of a varied Indigenous vision assuming its rightful place in the international art world.” Other winners included Ernie Louttit, whose book Indian Ernie was nominated for five awards, won the Rasmussen, Rasmussen and Charowsky Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award, and Dawn Dumont, who was nominated for four awards, won the City of Regina Fiction Award for Rose’s Run, published by Thistledown Press. The 22nd awards ceremony celebrated excellence in books from a wide range of genres and diverse cultural heritages. The categories include poetry, scholarly, fiction, non-fiction, and young adult literature, French literature, as well as excellence in publishing