Nathaniel Blackjack wins Active Voice contest for poem Potlatch
Active Voice story contest selection for 2025
The Active Voice story contest is part of the ongoing Active Voice series, a collaboration between the Yukon Arts Centre, Yukon University and CBC North. The series brings together writers and artists for conversations that celebrate storytelling and connections.
This year’s contest invited writers across the Yukon to explore the theme of “Family and Chosen Family.” Writers were asked to tell a story about what family means to them, or to honour someone from their family or a person that they consider family.
Winning storyteller Nathaniel Blackjack will have the opportunity to share the stage with author and journalist Waubgeshig Rice at an Active Voice event at the Yukon Arts Centre on November 26, 2025.
Runner up stories will be featured on CBC North’s community web page.
Meet the winner: Nathaniel Blackjack
Bio: Nathaniel Blackjack is a blossoming two-spirit writer born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon. They graduated at the ILC, where they were heavily encouraged to pursue their writing. Poetry is their medium of choice, an artistic outlet for anything they find themselves crying over or laughing about later. When they’re not writing they’re either expanding their perfume collection, out thrifting, or whipping something up in the kitchen.
Nathaniel’s poem Potlatch was selected as this year’s winning entry.
Potlatch by Nathaniel Blackjack
My people don’t see me
I look at my people and see my cousins, my uncles and aunties, my family
But my people don’t see me
My cousins don’t know my name
But I do my best to remember theirs
My grandfather didn’t call me for my birthday
But I jumped at the opportunity to have lunch with him
My mother never loses me at a family gathering
Cause I’m the only other blonde haired one there
I worked at a potlatch last winter and the whole time they asked me
Who are you? Who’s are you?
I am yours
Even if I don’t know how to dance like you
At least I made my aunties laugh when I tried
They were mourning and I made them smile