I would like to tie Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir about “his time in residential school, writing candidly about the sexual abuse he suffered and the long-lasting ramifications of that trauma”(Arthur Bear Chief… ) to Carter’s journal article about “silences” or “gaps” in archives, hypothesizing that the memoir could fill such a gap.(Carter 217). Arthur Bear Chief is an aboriginal, belonging to an indigenous group of people who were (and can be argued still are) being oppressed by the powerful in society. Carter points out that the “powerful,” can be defined by being “aligned with the state and its apparatus… includ[ing] certain racial, ethnic, and religious groups, the wealthy and [the]educated” (Carter 217). In this case, the government of Canada, as well as the rest of its predominantly white population, comprise the “powerful,” who have attempted to “erase” the aboriginal societies, and perhaps persist. This “erasure” created what Carter calls an “unnatural silence”, [a “gap”] which “occur[s] when the individual or group is silenced, through the use of power, both overt and covert” (Carter 228). Arthur Bear Chief attempts to challenge this “silence” by recounting the struggles that he had to endure in the residential school in his memoir, My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell (Carter 228). Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir, though it may not intentionally fill a “gap” in the archives, can be used as a document for that purpose (Carter 217).

Arthur Bear Chief says that he wrote this memoir because, “I wanted people to hear about residential schools from an individual who actually went to one. I was talking for those I went to residential school with who did not survive; those who met their early demise in some way” (Arthur Bear Chief ….). I argue that this perspective of Arthur Bear Chief illustrates Carter’s point that “archives are ‘how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies” and that “identity is extremely important … particularly [for] the marginalized who feel the need to assert a strong identity in the face of the power structures that attempt to stamp them out” (Carter 221). Arthur Bear Chief  has put his stories on paper to represent not only his own story, but the story of others, allowing them to be heard, and creating a work with which his people can identify and relate.

Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir has been discussed in the context of filling a “gap”, as defined in Carter’s work, which is essential to recognize its power. But his work is, in a way, similar to what our ASTU class is currently doing for our archive projects. The memoir, My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell, by its publication, has made Arthur Bear Chief’s memories and personal experience, once hidden, available to a wider audience than simply by placing it in an archive.  I would argue that this dissemination of information is also the goal of most of the groups in our class: to make unique works found in the Rare Books and Special Collections section of Vancouver’s UBC library (comparable to his memories and personal experience) more accessible, thus filling a “gap” in the knowledge of the more extensive community (Carter 217).

Works Cited

“Arthur Bear Chief on the devastating experience of writing about being a residential school

student.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 07 Feb. 2017. Web. 19 Mar. 2017. <http://www.cbc.ca/books/2017/01/arthur-bear-chief-how-i-wrote-it.html>.

Carter, Rodney. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.”

Archivaria [Online], 61 (2006): n. pag. Web. 19 Mar. 2017