Saskatchewan poet Louise Bernice Halfe took home two awards from the 24th Saskatchewan Book Awards on Saturday in Regina. Her book, Burning in this Midnight Dream, published by Coteau Books, won the Rasmussen, Rasmussen, and Charowsky Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award and the Saskatchewan Arts Board Poetry Award. It was also shortlisted for the Saskatoon Book Award.

“It was a pleasant and humbling experience to receive the awards. I had a good cry in front of all the people at the podium, so that’s a bit embarrassing,” Halfe said.

Burning is a book of poetry about the damaging impacts that residential school had on herself and her family. She attended for a total of seven years, while her older siblings went for longer.

“Both my parents were residential school survivors,” said Halfe. “There was family violence, lack of emotional love. It really put some distances between my siblings and myself. I think what it did to the community at large is we forgot about kinship.”

Halfe wrote the book because she doesn’t see enough being done about the violence in communities that is a result of residential schools.

“I’m hoping that people can now talk more honestly about it and do something about it…so that the Canadian public at large will also know what happened with their efforts at colonizing us and trying to take the Indian out of the child,” she said.

It’s been nearly two years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report was published. Halfe wrote some of the poems in Burning in response to the TRC process.

“There’s been a national conversation going on about residential schools and this work is a personal story of how they have affected families across Canada,” said Courtney Bates-Hardy, executive director for the Saskatchewan Book Awards. She said Halfe’s book is powerful and moving.

“It’s important and necessary work to read and to know how that history has affected so many people,” she said.

Originally from Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, Halfe lives in St. Denis near Saskatoon. She keeps busy with writing workshops and talks with students. She is also an Elder at the University of Saskatchewan. Her background in social work helps inform her writing.

“A writer’s life is solitary and we need to fill our artesian well with all sorts of things to brew,” she said.

Halfe plans on saving her prize money ($4000) to buy a new computer since her current one gives her trouble. “It’s an old thing and all sort of weird things pop up,” she said.

What Halfe hopes readers will take away from Burning in this Midnight Dream is “a better understanding of the Canadian shame.”

“It’s explains why people are the way they are but what we need to do as individuals is to live in the present and deal with those ghosts that haunt us,” she said.

Saskatchewan Book Awards’ Winners

Awards for Writers

Regina Public Library Book of the Year Award

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (Penguin Random House)

Muslims for Peace and Justice Fiction Award

New Albion by Dwayne Brenna (Coteau Books)

University of Saskatchewan Non-Fiction Award

A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 by Bill Waiser (Fifth House Publishers)

Rasmussen, Rasmussen & Charowsky Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award

Burning in this Midnight Dream by Louise Bernice Halfe (Coteau Books)

O’Reilly Insurance and The Co-operators First Book Award

Along Comes a Wolfe by Angie Counios and David Gane (Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing)

Saskatchewan Arts Board Poetry Award

Burning in this Midnight Dream by Louise Bernice Halfe (Coteau Books)

Young Adult Literature Award

The Pain Eater by Beth Goobie (Second Story Press)

City of Saskatoon and Public Library Saskatoon Book Award

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (Penguin Random House)

City of Regina Book Award

Towards a Prairie Atonement by Trevor Herriot (University of Regina Press)

Jennifer Welsh Scholarly Writing Award

No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience by Bohdan S. Kordan (McGill Queen’s University Press)

Prix du livre français

La voix de mon père by Madeleine Blais-Dahlem (Éditions de la nouvelle plume)

Awards for Publishers

Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport Publishing Award

University of Regina Press

Towards a Prairie Atonement by Trevor Herriot

Advancing Education Award for Publishing in Education

University of Regina Press

Measures of Astonishment: Poets on Poetry presented by the League of Canadian Poets

Indigenous Peoples’ Publishing Award

Coteau Books

Burning in this Midnight Dream by Louise Bernice Halfe