Louise-Andrée Éthier aka Sundance Aquero Sharp
Biography

Sundance's Corner:

Born near Montreal, in Verdun near Lachine across the river from the Kanawake reservation; a cold winter night Feb. 24, 1944, almost fifty-nine yers ago. Around 7:00p.m., my Mother began her six mile trek from her sister-in-law 's home in Lachine when a sudden blizzard almost made the feat impossible. Falling in the snow, my mother came into labor and almost never made it home. I was born safely at Verdun Hospital that night around ten thirty p.m. Those were the circumstances of my birth in the cold Canadian winters during World War II. My father, an insurance man, was travelling to study his profession at the Travellers Co. in Hartford, Connecticut during the week and came home on the weekends. He was away the night I was born. Being a proud and ambitious French-Canadian man, he bought me two sets of encyclopedias on the occasion of my birth (how the card read): one in French and one in English! I lived in Canada for eighteen winters before moving to New York City with my mother and her new American husband.

My parents decided to send me to English school so that I would be bi-lingual. In high school, I attended the Convent of the Sacred heart, Sault au Recollet, where co-incidentally, three of my ancestors had been brought there to the nuns for a time after being kidnapped by the Mohawks and French Canadians in the Deerfield Massacre of 1704, three hundred years ago: Abigail Stebbins, Thankful Stebbins and four year old Joseph all of whom were put in the keep of a Mohawk woman named Ganarstarsi. In those days, young children who were kidnapped were in great demand especially by Indian families who had lost their own children in wars. There is controversy surrounding Joseph's upbringing and little was written down on him so it all depends on which historic view one looks at or seems most credible in view of the times as to where he was raised the longest. It is certain however, that he and three of the Stebbins childrens chose to remain with their captors after the family had been redeemed several lyears later. The Mother and Father returned to Deerfield without four of their eight children.The Stebbins lines in Canada became what is known as the Mohawk lineage.

I married in 1965 and in 1967 flew to California to raise my family. My profession was to do art and to write. However, as a stay-at-home Mom, most of my work was in the production phase and little of the business. I was happily married for at least eight years and then tragedy struck and a divorce ensued ripping the family apart. I returned to New York City in 1980 and began my career in the arts. I painted and exhibited my work and I was hired to teach French at the Hudson School for the gifted, a private school in Hoboken New Jersey. I had one class that taught Native American Art in French. I also sang Indian songs with my own group of one classial guitarist and a Bolivian flute player. We gave concerts and made public appearances regarding the environment called In Balance with Mother Earth and Father Sky from 1982-1986 when I moved to Arizona to further my work advocating for human and Indian rights as well as for the conservation of Mother Earth's resources. The Bahai Center in New York City was very supportive of my speaking on these issues.

We held candle light ceremoinies for Peace on Earth and lit the flame of brotherhood on the day of the commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Since 1989, I have been living with my husband and youngest son. My husband passed away September 2002; he was a social worker for Indian Health Services. We assisted an existing Dance group whose director had become very ill at the time and taught traditional dance to the youth and The Talking Circle. All these from the traditional perspective. Prior to our coming there were youth dying in car accidents every week. The mortality rate in these two tribes went down. Let us say that I have lived from the North East to the South West (full circle from the very cold to the very hot weather) where I am today researching my roots and Késsinnimmek wherever I go for all of family is the key to Peace and Unity in this world. I recently became a proud member of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook/Abenaki People and rejoined the most ancient of my roots and ancestors, this ancestor being an Algonquian maiden by the name of Mite8ameg8k8e who married a French soldier Pierre Couc Lafleur in the 1600's bearing many children and descendants.; and the beautiful Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha to whom I had great devotion as a child especially at the Sacred Heart Convent where lived an elderly nun, Mother Nealis who taught art classes and who was the one who had painted such a famous picture of Blessed Kateri that we see on holy cards today. Each link in the fabric of life seems to have placed me in modern times in the ancestral nest without knowing it at the time, but very much being surrounded by the spirit of the ancestors especially at the Sault. In my ancestral memory, I see how the workings of the spirit drives us to do and to be who we are especially if we search for the truth. Our ancestors and relatives never leave us. As remote as Yuma, Arizona is from Lachine, Chambly and Montreal, due to this new gift of the creator, the internet, I am able to find family "Késsinnemek " through my roots, racines as I have ever been able to in the past which is an affirmation that we are all connected, and all related.

Zobi Widobaid and metandossantz8angan!