When Aubee Billie saw a workshop reading of the musical Distant Thunder as a 12-yearold, she saw her destiny in the breakout character of Aiyana Buck.

It not only turned out to be her dream role, but her first.

The Brighton Reservation resident just finished a New York run of the first musical written about, and starring, America’s Indigenous people. Billie has spent a good deal of special events and summers with family in the Everglades City area, and she’s returning there to sing in the Everglades Music Festival Saturday, Nov. 2 (see the information box for details). And she may, with composer approvals, add “Strong Enough” — her solo from the musical — to Florida folk favorites she sings that were composed by her songwriting grandfather, such as “Sawgrass Flower” and “Back to the Swamp.”

Billie came to her coveted role in Distant Thunder through serendipity. A friend mentioned the Playbill casting call announcement seeking two Native Americans for roles in the pre-Broadway New York theater production. It was a jolt to Billie; she had met Shaun Taylor- Corbett, the star who shares music and book credits for Distant Thunder, at the reading nine years previously, and he had encouraged her. “‘Maybe you could be in the show when you get older,’” she recalled him saying.

She sent her demo reel to the company, but she also emailed Taylor-Corbett, who remembered her and put her into the audition lineup. There was one issue: Billie wasn’t in the U.S. She had been invited to learn Australian aboriginal culture in New Zealand and had taken that opportunity over the summer.

“All the stuff I did was over email or submitting online, so I had to do a bunch of self-takes,” she recalled. “And then, the audition, I did it over Zoom. But I don’t think we all thought it would get to the level it is now, and for me to be here is just really, really cool.”

Not so cool: Trying to sleep amid the traffic noise of Times Square, where she roomed temporarily: “I miss hearing the frogs and the owls,” she said.

Part of the treat of working on Distant Thunder was learning from fellow actor, and fellow Seminole, Spencer Battiest. The musical concentrates on the conundrum facing a Blackfeet reservation over the wealth that drilling could bring them, but which also would damage sacred grounds. The cast brought together people from various Native American nations.

Another production of it is scheduled, but Billie is headed back to school: She’s in her senior year at Elon University in North Carolina, pursuing a degree in musical theater and arts administration, along with a business degree, and she wants to attain those.

“At the end of the day, I know I really want to go back and get my degree because I’m a first-generation student and education really means a lot to me at this point in time,” she said. “But I’ve learned so much here.”

Her family was helping her move back after they came to see her final performance last week — just as they had come to opening night.

“It was something she’s worked very, very hard to do, to go to New York,” her mother, Maria Billie, said of seeing her daughter onstage. “This was a very special moment for both her and us.”