Vincent Billie

Partial Transcript: My name is Vincent Jimmy. My Indian name, which they call me, Terochobe. I know you didn’t ask about that, but it was my grandpa’s name and a nickname. We carry the name—generations And now I carry the name. So it’s just a name. It came from—since the time began, when the first people were put on the earth. Before I say that—like the stories of Adam and Eve and how God put them in the garden. It’s the same—the same stories. But in our ways, it’s—they put us in the underground. And that’s where we—they didn’t tell—they didn’t say how long we were underground until it was time to come up. But when we came out, we were supposed to come out in order. And that’s where the Seminole tribe—the Seminole people—we have a clan system—supposed to come out in that order, but they didn’t. One clan supposedly supposed to come out, but they didn’t, so the other one came out first. So the one that was supposed to come out second came out first. So we just call each other brothers from there on. But the two clans are the ones that lead to other clans. It’s the Panther and the Wind were the leaders of the whole clan. At that time, there were many, many clans back then—Winds and Panthers, Deers—and they were named after—the clans were like the animals, the Birds, the Snakes, and all that. And sometimes there was Water clans and there was Turtle. But most of those clans no longer exist, a lot of them, just like our culture is disappearing. In each clan, it’s the uncle’s responsibility to educate the boys. It’s not the father. It’s the uncle who’s responsible. And that’s where—I remember my uncle used to come to the camp, and if we needed discipline, then he will either scratch with needles. Back then, in the olden days—not olden days, but when the earth was younger—they didn’t use needles. They used goldfish. Not the little goldfish—the big goldfish. That’s what they used to scratch—to cut your arms—to discipline. Or they give you a spanking. They did both, spanking and scratching. And I remember that, yeah. They used to do that. If you don’t listen to your mom or you don’t listen to your grandma or you actually do something, your chore is to go get wood or certain things they’re supposed to do. And the uncles would punish you. And grandparents—grandpas—are the ones that teach you the spiritual and hidden—that’s the one—he’s the one that teach you all the plants and all the healing plants. And when I was younger and living in the camp, I used to get to my—at the end of the day—I used to go to my grandma. And I would sit there and ask them about the stories, the traditional stories. And she would tell me some of the stories, like rabbits and snakes and deers and even God, even Jesus. And he will tell us—he’d tell me—in those days, I would sit there, and in my mind I could see it, like you’re watching TV, your mind can picture everything.

Partial Transcript: My favorite story. I guess it was—it’s about the corn woman. And there was a young boy that she took and she raised him. I liked that one. And the other one is the little mouse. We call it Chesegatoche. That’s my favorite, too.

Partial Transcript: I joined the tribe back in ’87, but before then I was—I was with—an independent, they call it—with not—I wasn’t affiliated with a tribe. And then I grew up along the trail—the Tamiami Trail—US 41. And we were living in Ochopee. And we used to go fishing with my sister, sometimes by myself. I’d go out in the woods. And we had dogs. Like we had—let’s see—maybe six or seven dogs. And they all followed me all the time. They’re always right there, protecting me all the time, any time I go in the woods. And I remember when my stepdad, his father would go out in the hammocks—way out in the hammocks—and that’s where they’d grow bananas and pumpkins and sweet potatoes and sugar cane. And they grew all that out in the hammock, the cypress hammock, right in there. And I remember spending—I don’t know. I don’t know how long we stayed out there, but I used to play around, and I was all by myself—no kids. So I used to—then I grew up with the elders.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. He used to—I remember him going fishing—fishing all the time—which was gigging—gigging garfish or snooks or mudheads—always hunting. And some of the—I think that sometimes they went—worked in the fields—tomato fields, squash fields—just to buy like coffee, sugar, flour and all that. But most of the time I remember going hunting, going fishing.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. Yeah. And we’d go out and—sometimes in the dry season, we’d go out in the hammocks like this and just lakes and ponds. I mean, that’s where we’d usually get fish—dogfish or bass or breams—that’s what we’d get to feed the family. Sometimes we’d go to—sometimes we’d go up to the Lake Okeechobee area, and we’d look for turtles. And sometimes we’d get soft shell turtles in that canal and some—I can’t remember the name of the other turtles, but I liked the soup. I liked the way my grandmother used to—the way she cooked it and made soup out of it—I used to love to eat that because it’s—especially you have to have eggs in it. They cook the eggs in there with the soup. And one time—one time we had a cookout in the trail. And we had the school kids over. And we cooked—we made a soup out of one of the turtles, and it had eggs in it. And they poured me one in a bowl, and I was eating it. And I got that egg, and I put it in my mouth, and I busted it. The kids were—almost threw up. (laughs) They didn’t like that. The rest of the kids—I don’t know—they didn’t want to eat that. But I used to love eating—what you call?—mutt fish. I liked that. I liked the way—they put—it’s a—you don’t have it here—but they used to put it in the soup. And it took away the taste of the fish. Like when they cooked mutt fish, they put—they cooked the head, too. They put it in there and make a soup out of it, and they put the leaves in there. And it tastes good. I like—I liked doing that. I remember that.

Partial Transcript: I guess to keep the—the village clean, make sure they have firewood, and whatever grandma wanted me to do—help fix the chikee or go fish—catch some fish for dinner. And mainly just keep the village clean—maintain the village. And so that’s what I did.

Partial Transcript: As a young’un, I was—I guess I lived mostly my culture every day. They would—with my grandmas and uncles. Uncle Stan visited and—visited us in the village. And we’d sit there—with him—we’d sit there and talk about certain issues or certain families and how do we solve the issues with them families or somebody’s misbehaving or something or they’re not listening to what other—like my aunt’s kids or even myself. They would call the uncles to come over and discipline us. And every day, yeah, we lived in our culture with traditional beliefs. And one thing they told me was—my cousins were playing with a ball. I guess they got it from the store or something. And they were playing with it. And my grandparents told me, “No. Don’t touch the ball because it’ll make you sick.” And they said, “You’ll end up just like that ball.” Because when you—if something—when you hit the ball, it goes. It has no direction. And they said you’d get—that your luck—your life becomes like that. So I never touched that ball again. (laughs)

Partial Transcript: Like hide and seek or they call (inaudible) or something like that. I can’t remember what you call it. It’s like a tag, and we used to play that. They tag and run after you and chase around and tag around and all that. We played that all the time. And this one game—I barely remember. It was—I think it was bones. It was bones. And we played that. I played that with my—and I forget how to play that. Yeah, that was—I was only like six—six or seven back then. And I didn’t go to school until I was like eleven or twelve. But back then, they told us not to go to school or don’t touch the pen or paper. That was forbidden for us to do. And pass the time, go out and do things, raccoons watching, too.

Partial Transcript: Like hide and seek or they call (inaudible) or something like that. I can’t remember what you call it. It’s like a tag, and we used to play that. They tag and run after you and chase around and tag around and all that. We played that all the time. And this one game—I barely remember. It was—I think it was bones. It was bones. And we played that. I played that with my—and I forget how to play that. Yeah, that was—I was only like six—six or seven back then. And I didn’t go to school until I was like eleven or twelve. But back then, they told us not to go to school or don’t touch the pen or paper. That was forbidden for us to do. And pass the time, go out and do things, raccoons watching, too.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, and sometimes I would go up—go to school—because I done forgotten a lot of things in my culture. Not forgotten, but it just kind of took it away. But I guess the times change. I have to—not choose really—but I have live the other side of modern ways in order to help my family. And still I don’t really accept going to school today. There’s a lot of things that I’d like to—I wish I’d learned—I had learned—but even when I went to school, I didn’t study a lot of cultural teaching. Yeah, so.

Partial Transcript: Back then—what I learned back then is—my grandma—especially my grandma and my grandpas—taught me the way they were, the way they care about the family, and the way they—they didn’t have no—they don’t say anything negative, but they always say something positive. And they always want you to learn something. They’re always teaching you. If you make a mistake, they will punish you and they’ll tell you why they punish you. And they tell you not to do that again. And they teach you how to care for others and help them. And I remember when one time my grandma said that—she was telling me about how Jesus was when he was here. And they said, “You can’t be like him, but at least try to be—remember his teaching.” Even though—like they said—even though your enemies are trying to kill you, if they fall, if he’s injured and down and needs help, always turn around and help him. Maybe one day, he won’t be your enemy no more. So that’s what she told me. So that’s what I try to do. I try to help people. Today, as a Panther town, it’s my responsibility to care for other towns—the rest of the towns—they’re all my—my people—they’re my people. And I always try to do that for them. And culturally healing, spiritually healing in traditional way or in the modern way try to help them with their legal problems or their—try to make them understand what situation they’re in and especially their families. And there is modern law. And especially the kids. And I always try to be there for them. But it’s hard to be everywhere. And it’s really—it’s every day. Every day there’s something that—every time I come to work, somebody comes to the department asking for help, either relationship or something of family or death in the family or in trouble with the law. They always come to—for your advice. And I try to give them what—try to help them the best way—what you know. And those traditional stories comes in with that.

Partial Transcript: Such as—this one is the rabbit and the bear. And what that is—I guess the rabbit wanted to be a friend—have a friendship—with the bear. But the bear told him, “We can’t. No, we can’t, because the rabbit can’t live up to the bear.”
Yeah, that’s one of the stories. And the other thing—the other one is—there’s a man that turned into a snake. And that’s another one that—that one is like teaching people how to listen when the elders are giving you advice. Yeah, just follow what the elders teaches you and give you advice in life, because if you ever make mistake, you never—can’t turn around and—once they’ve passed that line, you can’t return. So that’s another one. And there was a rabbit and a—a rabbit and a lion. That’s another one. The oldest stories I’ve used and healing, too. So, yeah, it’s the way you use it, the way you use the stories, the way you help people with the stories.

Partial Transcript: Where? Um, again, go back to my grandparents, uncles, and the grandfathers that—they tell you—they teach you about the plants—the plants and the trees. And it’s—it goes beyond that. It’s just some of the trees have names. And, like I was saying, before I went to public school, I used to know all the trees, all the names, even the grass. I knew every one of those grass, because my grandmother teach me and my grandpa and my uncles. And I remembered all the sweet grass. Now I don’t. I have forgotten some of them. But every grass here has a name. Even the banana trees. They’re different—have names—and those trees there. And even with the cypress trees. They’re all different. If you just look at it, they all look the same, but they’re all different. They have different names. Just like people. Just like us. We all have different—we’re all different. We all look alike, but we’re all different. We have different parts, different way of thinking, different way of doing. And even in culture, the Seminole people, we have—they say we have different spirits. Mine is a—mine was a snake. And sometimes—it all depends on your spirit, how you’re going to grow up, what you’re going to be. Are you going to be a teacher—a traditional teacher or a traditional medicine man or—or carry the matters that help the tribe—not the tribe, but the Seminole people. For myself, it’s—I’ve been advising people with certain issues, dealing with modern days, modern issues. Sometimes I advise my—on my own families or sometimes the laws dealing with certain issues that deal with the Indian culture—rights—and then that. And I still do it today. My brother and I went to the UN for the—what was that?—the human rights. We went to the UN. And we advised the lawyers over there. And sometimes we go to different countries. Last time—I forgot what it was—2004?—we went to—my brother and I went to Panama. And we helped them a lot. We helped them with their issues with dealing with their government. So they invited us to go out there to—for their celebration. And we spent a whole week over there. I enjoyed it.

Partial Transcript: Well, I don’t know. They said—well, let me tell you one little story. What happens is, there’s a place on the Tamiami Trail trail. We used to live there. And they had birds in a cage. I think they had like four birds in a cage. And every time I walked by, they’re always trying to run away or they try to get out of the cage and run away from me all the time. And I asked my—one of my grandpa—I said, “Why do they do that? Why are they always trying to run away from me?” And he said, “Because of your spirit.” They see my spirit. Animals can see where you are—what you are. Animals got that special gift. They sense. And—like a dog—a dog can sniff and track things down. The dog knows what he’s—just the smell and the footprint—they know what they’re after. By the smell, they can—in their brain—they can just see—see what they are. Either deer or hog or whatever it is. In their mind—imprinted in their mind. And they can sense it. Or they can see a person, and they know what kind of person you are already. Animals—animals can see. Or they tell you—tell—what kind of person you are, what kind of character you have, what you are, who you are. And when I’m hunting, and if a deer sees me, they will take off. But if somebody else, they don’t usually take off. They just stand there. But I don’t know what the other person’s spirit is. But with me, they always—animals, when they sense it—they see me or they sense it—they’ll run and hide.

Partial Transcript: Well, the snake—okay, again, let’s go back to the snake again. There’s certain—they call it a racer—the black—okay, you use that—you use that to clear your path. And I guess a lot of Native people used that and—(phone ringing)—and they use them like in (inaudible) in order to clear it, so that nothing bad will cross their path. And the spider, they use that for like protection at night for the bad spirits. And I guess—they’ve got eagles. They use that for strength, power. With the bear—sometimes they use the bear to build muscles—to build the muscles to carry logs on their shoulders when they build chikees and when they use—they use the—I guess they ask the bear’s spirits to help them carry the log. Sometimes the deer—they’re out in the woods—they run through the woods and all that—they ask the deer’s spirit to help them, because you see a deer there, you just jump right in the woods and they’re gone. And even if the bushes are thick, they’ll just go right into it and disappear. So they use that.

Partial Transcript: Well, for me, it’s—the animals here—that’s a hole in nature, a part of it. The nature doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to nature. And I have to live by nature’s law, just like the animals. And all the animals or the creature on this earth is—still live by the law—nature’s law of the animals. They’ve been doing what they’ve been doing since the time began. And it’s just the humans (inaudible). We change, and a lot I guess. But that nature’s law is still there, but a lot changes, so we are crossing over to modern time and destroying animals. Animals are here as a part of us, the spirit that connects to us. As a Seminole person, we’re—our spirit connects to nature. These spirits—spiritually we are animal helpers. It heals us, it guides us, and—make sure we don’t—we always see the animals out there, and they teach us a lot of things, in many ways, like how to care our family. And, like today, I see mothers, some of the young moms, young adult—wanting to have kids, wanting to have children. They’re supposed to deal with their kids, with their babies. No, they take them to the daycare. And they lose their connection, their spiritual connection, with their babies. But the animals, they don’t. Animals, when they have little babies—the deer, the bear—they’re always there. They’re always there for their babies. If you look at nature—sit back and you look at nature—and how they raise the babies, and you look at—some of the people of today, they don’t—they don’t live by nature’s law.

Partial Transcript: Well, today’s kids—the children are growing up without their mom’s or dad’s guidance. So they end up in trouble or end up alcoholic or using drugs because they don’t—they lose that—the relationship between the mom and the children and the fathers. And it’s—it’s—today—today’s modern society has not much—has influence on them. And they’re kind of losing their culture. Culture—in culture, there’s another—I don’t know if I should go into that—but it’s called (inaudible). It’s about stories, about how to take care of the village, how to make the village. It has rules about marriage, with raising with children, and the responsibility as a husband, and how to keep the fire, to be responsible for the whole village and your in laws—you’re married, too, to the other camp—and it’s not gone. It’s there. It’s just people don’t—don’t want to learn I guess. I mean, they want to learn, but they just don’t have—they don’t have—don’t know how to access that information I guess, because, in our culture, we don’t—I don’t want to say force—but they’re the ones that have to—you have to—you’re the one that has to go. If you want to learn something, you have to go and get it. You have to go and ask. You have to get that information from your elders. Because your elders can’t—can’t come to you and try to teach you. You’re the one that has to—want to. With your heart. With your mind. And that’s one of the things that, as you’re growing up, that’s what you—that’s what your grandparents teach you. They tell you that grandpa’s not going to go over there and tell you, “You need to learn this or you need to learn that.” They’re not going to tell you. You’re the one that has to go and want to learn. And you have to get that information.

Partial Transcript: Why is it valuable? Well, God gave us that—our way of life. He made us and put us in the ground. And when we came up, he gave us these rules—he gave us the rules and the law. So we have to—we have to keep that. But—like if I give you something—let’s say your father gives you something, and it’s really important. You’ve got to take care of that. And you can’t lose that. It’s important for your dad. It’s a gift, and you have to take care of that to the end. Even though—even not all the Seminole—no, no, can’t do it. But a few of us can do it. I mean, we advise everybody to turn back to their culture and carry on and learn how to heal—how to heal themselves and their family.
So we have to take care of that. We have to take care of that—the gift—to the end. Even the last Seminole person, man or woman, have to take care of that to the end. It’s important. It’s important to take care. We can’t lose it.

Partial Transcript: Uh, spiritually, I guess they can’t enter their spiritual world, or they will never make it to their spirit world on the other side, because they don’t know their cultural rules and spiritual rules. And cultural—I’m trying to find the right word to explain this.
Like in church, you have to pray and you have to live by the rules, and it’s similar, but in culture, you have to keep what God has given us, and the rules and the law, the natural law. And to respect his rules, and to care—to care about others, to care about your family, to care about—not just your own family, but your extended family, your—go back to the clan—my clan. My clan has rules. I have to live by that. But also I have to respect the other clan. And if they need help, I have to be there for them and make sure they don’t—nothing bad happens or no harm comes to them. I have to do that. For me, as a Panther, I have to—I have to do that. I have to watch and care for my own people. And the Wind clan is the same way, because Wind and the Panther clans are the leaders of the clans. My clan consists of Panther—not—I mean, Panther, the Wolf, Bird, and Wildcat and Deer and there’s a Wolf. The Wind clan has the Otters, Snakes, the Birds, and—I forgot the other ones—the Toad or Bigtown. That’s his people. And I have my people. That’s just together—we have to watch out and help—make sure they’re all healthy, make sure nothing harm come to them. You have to do that. That’s our duty.

Partial Transcript: Okay. Food, when it comes from the ground, from nature, it’s healthy—healthy—and if you raise your own food, it’s healthy. So, if you get it from the grocery store or market, it has too much chemicals or pesticides in it. So I think that’s what people—health—they lose their health, the body, the mind, because they get—like I said, you get pesticides and fertilizers. And nowadays we’ve got genetic—genetic corn, whatever they call it—where they don’t have no seeds. And sometimes—what the word?—make things grow faster?
Yeah, hormones. Yeah. I noticed that when I was—like back in the ‘80s—and I see their bodies. And they don’t—they had short legs and they had long bodies. I noticed that, and they’re gaining a lot of weight, eating food from grocery stores or market, especially the meat. They put preservatives in it, and it affects your body and your mind.

Partial Transcript: My niece, she lives up in New Hampshire, and she grows her own food. My sister, she’s a diabetic, but she—she eats the vegetables from the garden. And she don’t use medication or insulin. But the other thing—yeah, I noticed that a lot of people in the tribe have diabetes, not just here, but across the country, because they get their food from—it has chemicals—too much chemicals, too much hormones, too much genetic—genetic engineering or whatever they call it. And they put preservatives in there to keep it—to last longer and all that. Changing the diet—they just all became diabetics. And now my dad’s a diabetic, my mom, my sister, and my nephew. For me, I’ve always been—I’ve always tried to stay healthy. I always go hunting—hunt deer—or try to eat fresh fruits and—I always—I’m always out in the woods. I’m always out in the woods, out in the cypress hammocks. I’m always out there. I’m always out there, going here and there, and I—I have an air boat. And I go out and fishing—go out fishing and go out hunting deers or birds, wild game, wild birds, ducks—game ducks—for what meats they offer. So I’ve been pretty lucky—not lucky, but try to keep myself healthy. I’ve been doing good. I’m fifty seven, so I’ll be fifty eight next November. So I’m hoping to stay healthy.

Partial Transcript: The turtle is—like I said, the box turtle was—has a healing—in that story, there’s a healing—songs that we do. And certain turtles we don’t—certain kinds, we don’t eat them—like soft shells. And alligator snapping turtles, they always tell us not to play with it because it will cause the storm—tornadoes. And the gopher turtles, they always say—the gopher turtle is friends with the water snake. So always be careful. You don’t ever stick your hand into the hole, because the gopher turtle has friends there, the water snake. They’ll bite you. I’m trying to think of the other story that they told me, but now I can’t remember what—it was something to do with the earth. The other thing that—probably you know this—is here in Florida, we’re trying to protect our medicines. And the Forestry Service is trying to—I guess that that’s their job to burn it and clear the land. But when they do that, they destroy our medicine plants. And they do it at the dry season. When they do that, it burns the plant itself and the plant—it burns the roots—and the heat burns. And we’re losing our medicine plants. The medicine plant—it’s not just us that use the plants. It’s the animals. Animals know which plant is good—is a medicine to keep them well. When they destroy the plants, animals—they get sick. And we’re losing them. We’re losing deers. We’re losing hogs. We’re losing bears. And when nature starts a fire, it doesn’t go too far, just, you know—but when a human goes out and they say, “We’re doing a controlled fire,” they burn everything, because they’re doing it in dry season. They said they learned from the Native how to do it, but no. (laughs) No, they didn’t learn it from us, because the nature do that for us. So here we have 350 species of birds. A lot of them, I don’t see them today. They’re gone. A lot of them. I used to—when I was younger, I used to see a lot of different kind of—little birds. They’re not here. They used to be here. They’re not here. Look. Look around today, you don’t see them. Those little birds—little woodpeckers—little ones—even the big ones. Once in a while, I’ll see a big one—the big woodpecker—I forgot what they call them. I can’t remember the name, but we call it (inaudible). And the other one, the small one, that’s white with a black stripe. They call her (inaudible)—we used to call it. And they’re not here. And the insects. What it is—is that the growth, even activities I guess, it’s destroying the nature here, because they’ve got to have uncontaminated water. They’ve got to have that—fresh water. And the Army Corps of Engineers is the one that’s really, really damaging the land. And they come and they dig canal, deep in the ground. It’s like cutting—it’s just like cutting your arm—and they’re cutting the veins and arteries. Now you don’t see the spring just south of here, because the canal going through, they’re cutting off the underground water, the rivers. You don’t see that. You don’t see the springs coming out. They’re drying up. And that’s what keeps the water clean. Underground waters comes out and filters that. In Florida we call it (inaudible) that knows—the deer. That is the place the earth breathes. Now we’ve got the gas companies—oil companies. Now they’re building them pipelines. They clean up swamp lands and drying it up and destroying our—our whole life support I guess. We can’t survive without nature.

Partial Transcript: Heal it? Well, it’s—it’s greed. It’s greedy people. They’re so greedy that they don’t care what they destroy, even themselves. I don’t know—talk to—send a message to the people who’s doing it—the owners of the oil companies, the owner of the electric companies. I know the President can’t do much. It’d have to be the owners of those companies—what they’re—destroying their own—their own future—their own children’s future, their own family. They’re killing their own family. They’re killing their grandkids.

Partial Transcript: Well, people out there—the only thing I can say is that—the other day I was watching TV, and they said something about Atlantis and how Atlantis was destroyed because they went against nature. So it can happen again. And right now, it’s happening, and they’re destroying all the nature. So maybe it’s going to happen again over here if they don’t stop. I know they’re not going to stop, but at least slow down.

Partial Transcript: Seminole life is really lived by nature. We live by nature’s law. And, like I was saying, we need to stay healthy and go back to our nature, and nature provides my needs. And spiritually it helps me, too, a lot. If I—if I have too much on my mind or—I go back to nature. I go back and I will spend my days just thinking and talking to the spirit. And that’s what I do. I do it today. Over the weekend, through the week, I work out here with the people, and people have problems, issues, and sometimes they expect me to help them to solve their problems. And I can’t do that for everybody, but I go back and—go back to nature and talk to the spirits—the spirit of the nature. The spirit of nature, when I say that, it’s talking about God, you know? And Jesus. And sometimes they’ll let me know in my dreams. Sometimes I see it on—sometimes I get my answer watching TV. (laughs) Somebody will say something, and just one little word sometimes makes a lot of difference. Or talking to my mom or talking to my dad or my cousins or brothers, certain issues. And sometimes they say certain words that catches your mind, and that’s the answer. We need to go back and help people with it. Nature has all the answers, but modern times are destroying it.