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Book and photo of Betty Mae Jumper |
Betty Mae Tiger was born in 1923 in a small village in the Everglades to a full-blooded Seminole mother and a French trapper father. She grew up in a traditional Seminole community in Indiantown, Florida. With little opportunity for education in the area, Jumper attended an Indian boarding school a thousand miles away in Cherokee, North Carolina. This is where she learned to speak English at age 14. In 1945, she and her cousin, who also attended the school, became the first Florida Seminoles to graduate from high school. She then enrolled in a nursing program at the Kiowa Indian Hospital in Oklahoma. She returned to Florida the following year and worked to improve health care in the Seminole community. There she married Moses Jumper, whom she had met at the boarding school in North Carolina. They had three children. In addition to her public health career, she launched a tribal newsletter called the Seminole News (which later became The Seminole Tribune) in 1950.
The Seminole tribe of Florida received federal recognition in 1957, and Betty Mae Jumper was elected as one of its representatives. She continued to work in tribal government in various capacities, and in 1967 she was elected head of the Tribal Council, the first woman to serve as leader of the Seminoles. She left office in 1971 and became publisher of the Seminole Tribune newspaper. From her autobiography, "A Seminole Legend", she discusses topics as war, the impact of encroaching settlement on traditional people, and the development of the Dania/Hollywood Reservation. Betty Mae Jumper also collected stories and legends of the Seminole and has lectured widely about Seminole history and culture. She has not only worked in health care, government, and media positions to improve the fortunes of her people, but she has also sought to preserve Seminole culture and educate others about it.
Betty Mae has received numerous honors, including a Florida Department of State Folklife Heritage Award and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Florida State University (both in 1994). In 1997 she received the first Lifetime Achievement Award ever presented by the Native American Journalists Association and was named Woman of the Year by the Florida Commission on the Status of Women. She lives in Hollywood and Big Cypress, Florida.
Quotation
"As a young girl, I knew that I wanted to help my people and I do believe that I have made a difference to the Seminole people of today."
Source
Infoplease - (c) 2006 Pearson Education, Inc
"A Seminole Legend: The Life of Betty Mae Jumper"
Florida Information Resources Network (FIRN) - Florida Department of Education
