Yellowknife (Oct 25/04) - Aboriginal youth in Canada can win up to $500 for a story about their history.

The Canadian Aboriginal Youth Writing Challenge is open to aboriginal youth between the ages of 15 and 18 and those in high school.

The first prize winner will receive $500 and a trip to Ottawa, and the rest of the top 10 will receive $200 each. Stories are to be fictional accounts of moments in the history of Canada's aboriginal peoples.

Rachel Qitsualik of Iqaluit will judge the entries, along with author Lee Maracle, playwright Drew Hayden Taylor and actor Tantoo Cardinal. Qitsualik is an author and a columnist for Nunavut News/North.

The Canadian Aboriginal Youth Writing Challenge is sponsored by the Dominion Institute, an organization that promotes Canadian history.

"What I would like to see is the telling of folktales in modern prose," said Qitsualik.

"I think young aboriginal people have to break out of the folkloric way of talking and speak out in an imaginative narrative voice. Aboriginal stories come from such a different experience than mainstream society that I think it's important to bring that imagination out."

Qitsualik said she became serious about her writing as a student in Ottawa after she was paid $250 for a bilingual story about Christmas.