Papusza received the Nadodrza Cultural Award in 1978, one of several honors bestowed on her that year in recognition of her poetry.
Alongside the Minister of Culture Award, Papusza was also honored in 1978 with the Nadodrza Cultural Award, a regional Polish cultural distinction recognizing figures who had made significant contributions to the cultural life of the Nadodrze area and the broader western Polish cultural landscape.
This award formed part of a notable cluster of honors granted to Papusza in 1978, decades after her groundbreaking debut publications of the early 1950s. By this stage of her life, she was living quietly and in declining health, largely withdrawn from public life and cared for within her family circle, yet still remembered and honored by Polish cultural institutions for her singular contribution as a pioneering Roma literary voice.
The Nadodrza award, like the other honors she received in this period, reflects a broader pattern in which Polish cultural authorities sought to formally acknowledge Roma cultural heritage and Papusza's specific role in bringing Romani oral poetry into the written literary canon, even though the exact date of the award ceremony is not documented in currently available sources. Her recognition in this era helped lay groundwork for later, more extensive scholarly and cultural interest in her life and work, including biographical studies, documentary films, and eventually a major feature film dedicated to her story.