Sharron Proulx-Turner

One Bead at a Time is the oral memoir of Beverly Little Thunder, a two-spirit Lakota Elder from Standing Rock, who has lived most of her life in service to Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in vast areas of both the United States and Canada. Transcribed and edited by two-spirit Métis writer Sharron Proulx-Turner, Little Thunder's narrative is told verbatim, her melodious voice and keen sense of humour almost audible over-top of the text on the page. Early in her story, Little Thunder recounts a dream from her early adulthood, "I stared at these lily pads for the longest time and I decided that there was one part of the pond that had lots of lily pads and no frogs. I said, 'I want to go there because there's lots of lily pads but no frogs and I like creating community.'" And create community she does. Little Thunder established the first and today, the only all-women's Sundance in the world, securing a land base in the Green Mountains of Vermont for future generations of Indigenous women's ceremony. She was active in the A.I.M. movement and she continues to practice and promote political and spiritual awareness for Indigenous women around the world. A truly remarkable visionary.

This book is one woman's examination of her role as an otepayemsuak, a Métis, in this 500-year era of resistance and change. We are in a time when many Indigenous prophecies are reaching into the present - those of the ancient Mayan, the Hopi, the Iroquois, the Cree, the Métis. As with the ancient Mayan, where December 12, 2012, marks the end of the long count calendar, according to the prophecy of the Mohawk's seventh generation, we have reached the time to restore Indigenous stewardship of the land. The words that follow the title of the first chapter of the trees are still bending south, are those of Louis Riel: "My people will sleep for one hundred years. When they awake, it will be the artists that give them back their spirit."