[1] Billie's first tenure was the longest "of any elected leader in the Western Hemisphere, other than Fidel Castro," at 22 years.

Barnett, a white sailor who went to Europe during World War II, never knowing that Agnes was pregnant.

[2] His mother Agnes and Betty Mae Tiger, a young Snake clan woman, intervened and saved his life by threatening to report them to the reservation superintendent.

He was orphaned at the age of nine when his mother died, but the boy was cared for by several families of the Bird clan, with whom he remains very close.

[7] By the age of fourteen, he learned to catch and wrestle alligators in tourist shows to earn money for his family.

He was worried about the young people who seemed so discouraged, and started studying more about his heritage, and speaking about the Seminole ways.

He built a highly successful business building chickees, mostly for whites who wanted an authentic Seminole tradition.

They hunted down cocaine pilots who used isolated roads in the Seminole Tribe lands as improvised airstrips.

[2] Billie was impeached by the Seminole Council in 2001 for what they claimed were financial irregularities stemming from sexual misconduct.

In 2007, the tribe purchased the Hard Rock Cafe franchise, a worldwide consortium of restaurants, hotels and casinos.

[10] In 2011, Billie defeated Mitchell Cypress, the previous two-term chairman, by winning 58.4 percent of the votes for the Chair of the Seminole Tribe.

[5] He currently lives near the shores of Lake Okeechobee on reservation lands with his longtime wife, Maria and their two children Eecho and AUBEE.