My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell by Arthur Bear Chief
For all the reports of abuse at residential schools, most of us have a dim idea of the resulting childhood trauma. My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is Arthur Bear Chief’s rendering of the permanent damage done to him in the name of progressive social policy.
When he was sent to Old Sun, there were no other schools. Like now, it was illegal to not send children to school. Law was a concept too remote for a six-year-old to understand why he could no longer have love and kisses from his mother. He was rebuffed by his new teachers when he sought ordinary comfort from them. Students were beaten for crying. Seemingly, the understanding was absent that young children and teenagers need a nurturing environment to succeed in life. The law was executed – and no more.
As an adult, Arthur Bear Chief came to acknowledge that his own cold, violent, uncaring nature was a direct consequence of being treated similarly for ten formative years. He didn’t know until his last and final marriage that kindness, small gestures, and unconditional love were part of building family. His inability to become attached to spouses and children was simply a pattern he unconsciously absorbed in the residential school. He only went home for a couple of months in the summer, where other people were leading lives apart from him and his experiences. In his own defense, he bottled up all his feelings, learned to a be a loner, and shut down all expectations.
Arthur must have been a bright boy, because despite such a poor education, he became relatively influential in positions with local, provincial, and federal governments. For a while, he even taught in an Ontario residential school, where he worked hard to give the boys a warmer and more satisfying experience than his own.
Writing his book was a painful journey of remembrance and discovery. The wounds were re-opened by the pathetic efforts of the federal government and the Anglican church to investigate, compensate, and apologize for the experiences in residential schools. The cold legal approach of the formal processes didn’t lead to much. Arthur Bear Chief dug into his own emotions and personal harms to create a book of insight. Old Sun is an hour away from Calgary; Arthur’s school experience is a galaxy away from my own.
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