OTTAWA  Singer Joni Mitchell says she has been honored a lot lately  she won two Grammies for her album Turbulent Indigo, for example, and a major Swedish music award  but the Governor General's Performing Arts Award she received on Saturday was "a highlight."

This sounds like the sort of thing you'd expect her to say, the scripted gratitude that is a tedious but necessary part of the burgeoning awards show scene. But Mitchell isn't given to glibness or insincerity.

In an interview before the National Arts Centre gala that celbrated this year's winners, the Alberta-born Saskatoon-raised superstar said she had been thinking a lot about the concept of honor. "There isn't a lot of honor in our culture," she said  towards elders, in marriage contracts, or in politics.

As for her own recent experiences, "I've been to some very colorful ceremonies in the last year but, in some ways, they didn't really honor me. They didn't address what I felt was the best of my work. In some cases, I didn't feel they knew what they were honoring."

She says she got a different feeling Friday, when six prestigious Canadian performers arts awards were feted by Governor General Romeo LeBlanc at Government House.

"I was proud to be Canadian. I found the people warm and bright. There was a lot of pomp, but everyone was quick to irreverence, too. It (the ceremony) rode the cusp quite gracefully, I thought," said Mitchell.

And in a taped interview played at the gala, Mitchell, who has spent much of her adult life in California, reaffirmed her attachment to Canada: "People ask me, 'do you still think of yourself as Canadian?' and I say, 'do you still think of me as Canadian?' I guess you do because you're giving me this award," she concluded to warm applause.

Notwithstanding the accomplishments of this year's winners  including actor Martha Henry and Quebec popular composer Luc Plamandon  the gala itself was a mostly lifeless affair, hobbled, perhaps, by the high seriousness of its purpose, the red- carpet and black-tie tone, and an awkward, bilingual format.

As in previous years, the most compelling aspect of the evening were the taped biographies of the winners  key elements in two television shows, one French and one English, that will be fashioned from the raw material of the gala and broadcast on Radio Canada and the CBC in December.

In the pre-gala interview, Mitchell, who appeared relaxed, said she is often treated as an expatriate in Canada, even though she has owned a home in British Columbia since 1970. Her B.C. retreat is where she does most of her writing and when she is in Los Angeles, "I paint Canadian landscapes."

"I'm not a joiner in any way," she says. "I'm without political affiliation, without a religious affiliation. I'm a mutt, so I'm without national affiliation in that way, and I tend to empathize with a lot of people&

"I don't really have any chauvinism, including national pride, which can be a terrible thing sometimes. It can lead to war. But I did, last night, feel a national pride."