Column: Jim Billie makes a living building huts

Thursday, May 17, 2007  

"He was the noncandidate who loomed over this week's tribal election like the Seminole Council Oak.

He was the chief the tribal council tossed out of office in 2001, who would have been chief again, except the council finagled a way to keep him off the ballot.

Two days after the Seminole tribal election that should have been his comeback triumph, James Billie was building a chickee hut. Wrap your mind around that. James Billie -- who during his 23-year reign as tribal chairman raised Florida's Seminoles from dismal poverty to extraordinary wealth; who virtually invented Indian gaming in 1979 -- was in Tequesta on Wednesday, building a thatched-roof hut.

This is the chief whose audacious 1979 experiment with high-stakes bingo opened the way for the $25 billion-a-year Indian gaming industry; the tribal leader who defied the state and federal governments and fought off powerful corporate gambling interests and did more to bring wealth and influence to Native Americans than all the soul-stealing programs ever invented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

He builds chickee huts.

''It's not a bad way to make a good healthy living,'' Billie told me, when I suggested how counterintuitive this would seem to someone unfamiliar with the maverick Indian leader, country singer and one-time professional alligator wrestler. Billie went on to describe how he charges $25 a square foot to build the authentic Seminole hut and constructs about 100 a year."

Get the Story:
Fred Grimm: Chief Billie shrugs off his fall from power (The Miami Herald 5/17)
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Relevant Links:
Seminole Tribe - http://www.seminoletribe.com

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