This is part 1 of a week-long series featuring Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell. This post features an excerpt from the Afterword, written by Frits Pannekoek.
It may seem that, by choosing to publish his story as a book, Arthur has frozen it in time. He is on his own journey of healing, and, while that journey is likewise far from over, readers cannot know its future. But no story is ever complete.
Arthur’s living story will evolve, and so will his written story, which will have its own future. It will reach a far wider audience, and it will affect others in ways that cannot be predetermined. Like listeners, readers have a responsibility not only to approach Arthur’s story with respect and open themselves up to his words but to ponder the relationship between his story and their own lives—to find in his experiences truths about themselves. Readers are also responsible for “retelling” the story by sharing what they learn with others.
In this way, what is written will become oral. It will not be archived. As any story should, it will live and grow—and in that there is hope of reconciliation. –Frits Pannekoek
Follow the series here. For more information about the book, please visit our website.
