Who Wins? The Politics of Prize Culture in Canada’s CODE Burt Awards

Abstract

This article discusses a book prize administered by the Canadian Organization for Development through Education (CODE) - the CODE Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Literature, created to prize books aimed at young adult readers. It examines CODE's statements about the prize, which solicited funding by associating the cultivation of leisure reading with socio-economic development for Indigenous communities in Canada. It also considers how the prize reinforced links between Indigenous writing and social responsibility.

Keywords:

• prizes
• literacy
• development
• cultural policy
• Indigenous writing
• young adult writing
• YA

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the major Canadian literary prizes, see Mason; Roberts; Scott and Tucker-Abramson. To our knowledge there has not yet been formal scholarship on the Indigenous Voices Awards, but we can refer readers to their website, where they deliberately disavow some of the usual practices of prize culture in Canada. To ‘support and nurture the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada’, they make it a priority ‘to resist the individualism of prize culture’ by fostering mentorship and creative collaboration (Indigenous Voices). They also support Indigenous media in their selection of titles and their promotional campaigns.

2 For further reading on the Canadian state’s ongoing role in securing privation and marginalisation of Indigenous communities, see Briarpatch; Coulthard; Gouldhawke; Reclaiming Power; Starblanket; Stevenson.

3 See Mason for discussion of the partnership between the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Frontier College, a national charity that also offers literacy instruction as a means of addressing poverty, illness, and unemployment.

4 On the dominance of YA fiction in Canada, see BookNet Canada. On the generally troubled state of the Canadian book trade, see More Canada.