This unit includes reproductions of both the original audio and the original transcript, as well as photographs from the Seminole Slide/Tape Project, produced by the Florida Folklife Program.
Mary B. Billie has been a dollmaker since she was 17. She learned the skill by watching her mother, who had learned it from Mary's grandmother. Seminoles used to make dolls mainly as toys for their own children, but now Billie, like other Seminole dollmakers, depends upon the craft to earn her living.
"If you are planning on making dolls, first of all you have to find a palmetto. And for that, you have to have knife and an axe, a file, and maybe some water. And you don't know where you are going to find the palmetto fibers. You got to look for the nice ones. So you have to go 30 or 40 miles to look for that stuff." - Mary B. Billie (translated by Claudia C. John)
In the interviews in this unit, Seminole doll maker Mary B. Billie and her daughter, Claudia C. John, discuss the history and practices of Seminole doll making. The interviews were conducted at the Big Cypress Indian Reservation by folklorists Doris Dyan and Peggy Bulger in June 1980. Mary Billie speaks in Mikasuki. Her daughter Claudia C. John translates.
In this lesson plan, students study Seminole doll making as art and history.
