Lido Pimienta’s album La Papessa has won the 2017 Polaris Music Prize.
The $50,000 award, which honours the best Canadian album of the year, was handed out Monday night in Toronto.
"I don't really know what to say. Perhaps the only thing that I can say is that I hope that the Aryan specimen who told me to go back to my country two weeks arriving in London, Ontario, Canada is watching this," Pimienta said.
Referring to "white supremacy" in Canada, she recognized Indigenous people as "the real people of this country."
The Polaris Music Prize honours an album “solely on artistic merit, without consideration of genre or record sales” and is chosen by a jury of music industry insiders.
La Papessa was chosen from a 10-album shortlist that included releases by Gord Downie, Tanya Tagaq, Feist, and the late Leonard Cohen.