On April 23, 2004 Tatsea was awarded the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction.

What the juries said:
Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
Armin Wiebe made a bold choice in setting his universal story of love lost and love regained in a subarctic setting during the early contact period, and he succeeded brilliantly. Founded on impeccable research, acute observation, and some wondrous turns of the imagination, Tatsea unfolds with great compassion for and understanding of clashing lives in a forbidding landscape. It is at once unsentimental and magical, which is no easy accomplishment.

McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award
From the first sentence you know you are in the hands of an artist of the first rank; a beautiful, chilling, enthralling work which does what art must: it opens your mind and challenges all your prejudices.