60 Minutes - 04/05/2026: Return to Ram, Ghost Train, The Mardi Gras Indians

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

As the affordable care marketplace has seen premiums rise and Medicaid faces its biggest cuts ever, correspondent Scott Pelley revisits one charity, Remote Area Medical, that delivers aid to Americans cut off from healthcare by location and cost. At one of RAM’s free, pop-up clinics, Pelley meets patients sleeping in their cars and standing in line, many hundreds of miles from their homes, in desperate need of care. Countries around the world have built high-speed rail - why has it failed to catch on in the U.S.? An ambitious state-run project connecting L.A. and San Francisco is vastly behind schedule and has seen costs balloon. One private company is hoping it can succeed where the public sector hasn’t – but that too faces challenges. Correspondent Jon Wertheim reports on the state of high-speed rail in the U.S. – which has become a stand-in for a broader question: can America still build big things?  Every year on Mardi Gras Day, Black revelers roam the backstreets of New Orleans in dazzling, hand-sewn suits that take an entire year to create. Correspondent Bill Whitaker meets the Mardi Gras Indians, also known as Black Masking Indians, one of America’s last secret societies, who are preserving a culture that dates to at least the 1800s. It’s a tradition marked by resilience and resistance that honors their ancestors. Nichole Marks is the producer.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Parking for the free clinic fills days early. People sleep in their cars for a chance at medical care. If you didn't have remote area medical, what would you do? What's up? No other way around. With millions losing insurance, we saw desperation meet compassion. Looks good. Californians got on board for a $33 billion high-speed train

that was supposed to connect L.A. to San Francisco. by 2020. Instead, they have this, an unfinished line connecting, wait for it, Bakersfield and Merced. Why have 20 other countries managed to build high-speed rail while America hasn't? We've heard people saying what happened in the past is the past, failure is not an option. Failure is always an option. Every year on Marty Graw Day, an extraordinary season. Every year on Marty Graw Day, an extraordinary site emerges from the back streets of New Orleans. They call themselves Mardi Gras Indians, or black masking Indians, and they roam the neighborhoods in dazzling hand-sown suits.

This Easter Sunday, take in the sights and sounds of one of America's last true secret societies. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelly. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alphonsey. I'm John Worth time. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories and in our last minute, an article of faith by evangelist Franklin Graham. Tonight on 60 Minutes. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. About one-third of Americans say they have skipped meals, borrowed money, or cut back on utilities to pay for health care.

That's in a Gallup poll released in March. The Trump administration has lowered prices on more than 50 drugs, but it also let premiums rise, even double in the affordable care marketplace and made the biggest cuts ever to Medicaid. Already, three million have lost insurance. and it's estimated it'll be $10 million in three years. All of this reminded us of our story in 2008 about a charity called Remote Area Medical. Ram started out parachuting doctors into South American jungles, but in the 1990s it turned to another isolated people, Americans, cut off from health care by the cost.

Recently, we returned to Ram at one of its free pop-up clinics. For Americans long on pain and short on hope, Ram is a ray of mercy in the darkness. The parking lot in Knoxville, Tennessee, began to fill early. In a frigid February, many drove hundreds of miles in desperation. Nearby, remote area medical would open a clinic inside an empty exhibit hall, but Ram can take only so many patients on a weekend, so they joined the line days before.

We met Sandra Talent at 5 a.m. Sandra, where did you come from? Huntsville, Alabama. And how long have you been in the parking lot here? Since 4.30, Wednesday night. Wednesday night? Yeah. So Wednesday night, Thursday night, and this is Friday morning.

Two nights sleeping in her car, a 200-mile drive, all for lack of dental. insurance. If you didn't have RAM, how would you get your teeth taken care of? I wouldn't. A few spaces over, Dave Byrd spent the night in his truck, aching, for a full set of dentures. What happened to your teeth? Several things. I had an uninsured drunk driver run a red light doing 80. He hit on. Almost killed me. Two years of rehab and three surgeries, and 140,000 later, I was able to go back to work. At work one day I'm drilling to a basement wall and the drill hangs up on a piece of rebar and comes around, smacks me in the mouth, cracks my jaw, and broke him back out again.

By then I was pretty, pretty fell on money to do much about it, so I didn't have a lot of choices. I just kept working. But working was rare. Employers on construction jobs just assume he lost his teeth to meth addiction. Burge told us his only habits are nicotine and caffeine, and right now he could use a cup. He's wrapped in four layers against 27 degrees. If you didn't have remote area medical, what would you do? Stuff, below the way around.

Life changing. Life changing. When they hand you your life back, that's life changing. doesn't what teeth mean to me. I can be a normal feeling again. I sure do appreciate you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Good luck.

Scott. You're indentures. Okay, you're going to be over here. He had the luck of being near the head of the line. You all go right in here. Which stretched to 1,200 patients in Knoxville over a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Hold on to that. When you go up there for service,

You've got to bring them that ticket if you don't have a program. Brad Sands, a former paramedic, is a RAM clinic coordinator. I'm number four. Number four, head on up. Who are the people in the cars? Everybody. I mean, it's your neighbors. It's your parents.

It's your friends. It's the community around you. It's everybody. And it's nationwide. Somewhere in America, Brad Sands sets up a clinic like this most every weekend. It's all comers. Mm-hmm. No questions asked.

No insurance needed. You don't even have to give me your real name. We met a woman at Aram expedition who was so grateful for the help she received. But she said, I just hate to ask. I'm not going to judge your story. Nobody here that's working or volunteering today is going to judge any person that comes through that door. We are here to help. Can you see any of those lines out there?

About half of the patients have no insurance. The rest have insurance they can't afford to use because of copays and deductibles. And many health insurance plans have no dental. Correct. No vision care? Correct. No hearing care. Correct.

This is our triage area. Chris Hall volunteered at Ram when he was 12 years old. Now, he's CEO. So when you look at the patients that come through our door, 65% of those patients are requesting dental service. 30% of those patients are requesting eye exams and glasses. Only 5% are requesting medical care. Dental and vision are two things that are isolated

that people do not have access to or can't afford the access to. Are you a diabetic? There's also screening for blood sugar, blood pressure, breast cancer, skin cancer, and more. Depending on the size of the clinic, RAM will spend between $100,000 and half a million dollars over a weekend. How do you pay for all of this?

It's the generosity of the public. Over 81% of our supporters are individual donors. People that write 5-10, $20 checks every month. Those checks are leveraged with donated clinic space, donated supplies, and volunteers. 887 volunteers on this Knoxville weekend alone. This sheet here is extremely important. Medical professionals paid their own way from 30 states and brought medical students with them.

Treat these patients with dignity, with respect. Talk to them like their human beings, please. If you ever lose faith in humanity, go spend 10 minutes at a RAM clinic. You're going to see hundreds of people there that are donating their time, and they're coming out and they're donating large swaths of their own money slash time to help their neighbor. I remember there was a guy many years ago who had a broken tooth, and he told me that he tried to remove it with a screwdriver.

So if that doesn't move you to help, you know, that's the desperation. Let's see what we got here. Dentist Glenn Goldstein volunteered from New Jersey. He sees patients suffering from a past without health care and no hope for the future. You know, I've had young people in, you know, I said, well, you know, some of these teeth can be saved. You know that, right? Because, yeah, I don't care.

Please, I don't have any money. I don't have any way to get these fixed. So please, please take them out. I got a bunch of loose tooth and gross tooth and it doesn't bother me to break them all out. And it's heartbreaking to take all the teeth out. It's terrible. Patients ask you to take all of their teeth out. All their teeth.

Let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty, four, and sixteen. Because they know going forward, they will not be able to take care of them. One hundred percent. Relieving pain was the mission of Ram's late founder, an eccentric Englishman, Daredevil Pilot, and Amazon Cowboy. Tell me about Stan Brock. Stan was a magnificent leader, magnificent man. humble.

We've basically had... We met Stan Brock and Ram in 2008. We're very happy that you're here this morning. We've got a lot of really fine volunteer, doctors, dentists, eye specialists. Stan was an adventurer

who once walked 26 days in the Amazon to be treated for an injury. So he started his airborne medical charity with an Army Surplus C-47 that flew on D-Day. When we met, he was 72, had no family, took no salary, lived in an office donated to Ram, and showered with a garden hose.

He died in 2018, in the office. He was perhaps the most dedicated person I've ever met. I agree with you completely on that. I joked around a lot when I tell people working with Stan, And it was really hard to ask for a day off when your boss hadn't had a day off in 20 years. When we met in 2008, Stan Brock was staging 12 clinics a year. After our broadcast, $4 million in donations poured in along with thousands more volunteers. Ram has grown from a dozen to 90 clinics a year.

It's because of you. In your story back in 2008, that brought me to almost a few. tears. And as soon as your segment was over about this organization, I immediately went online, looked it up and registered down here. I'm from Jersey. I understand that volunteering at RAM has become a family thing. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We've got one left. So my son, who's here with me now, my wife has been here, my daughter-in-law, my daughter, my other son, they've all been here multitude of times. Sounds like you get as much out of this as the patients do. Maybe more. Did you have high blood pressure or anything like that? Only when I'm in pain. Remember Sandra

Talent, the woman we met in her car? And Dave Burge, who lost his teeth in two accidents. They're here for dentures, a process that would take weeks, were it not for this trailer? And the 22-year-old engineer who helped build it. Connor Gibson uses computer design to make dentures with 3D printers. They can print a set in an hour or so. Gibson has slept in here to keep the printers running nonstop. He's inspired by something he calls the mirror moment. We say it's worth a million dollars, but truly it's priceless. When you give them that mirror, you just see all that stress melt away. And no matter if they're 18 or 80,

we see grown men cry sitting in the chair. And so it was. For Dave Burge, the man who told us in the parking lot that he wanted to be a normal human again. You're a new man. Thank you. There you go. And the mirror smiled on Sandra Talent.

Looks good. Yeah. Happy tears. Yeah. What does this moment mean to you? I don't know what I do. You know, the Lord would make a way, but I feel like he has made away through Ram. Over the Knoxville weekend, Ram allowed more than 500 patients to see.

700 live without pain, and restored the smiles of 24. With insurance out of reach for growing millions, Ram will hurry to another city to make health in America a little less remote. Do you think they look pretty? Yeah, you look gorgeous. Good. Seriously. Good.

It looks so pretty. Thank you for being here, honey. Have a great day. You too? Have a great life. Get some sleep. There are my gloves. Come on, heat.

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Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027-volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. It's hard to exaggerate the role of the train in the American story, or the romance of train travel, those iron horses galloping down tracks of steel. Why then has high-speed rail so common in other countries not cracked in the U.S.? An ambitious state-run project connecting L.A. and San Francisco has lurched, derailed, cost billions and may never happen. One private company is betting that it can succeed where the

public sector is not, but that too has had its bumps. As U.S. high-speed rail remains a mirage, a ghost train, it's become a stand-in for a broader question. Can America get its act together and still build big things? The very model of modern engineering, it hums across the fruited planes at a top speed of 200 miles an hour. It's revolutionized travel. It's a sort of of national pride in Morocco. Here in the U.S., high-speed rail looks like this, hardly passenger-ready. America's hopes for its first high-speed rail were kindled in 2008, when California voters approved a ballot measure for a train connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco

in less than three hours. The estimated price tag, $33 billion. Completion date, 2020. It would cut pollution, revitalize. local economies, clear gridlock. Status update. Today, the state's high-speed rail authority is preparing to lay its first tracks at roughly the same cost. Only slight course correction here.

Instead of L.A. to San Francisco, it will run one-third of that distance, connecting, wait for it, the metropolis of Bakersfield and Mersed, population 96,000. Oh, and when will it open? 2033. Maybe. I think that the California high-speed rail nightmare is the probably quintessential example of government waste and mismanagement. You say this needs to stop. Nees to stop.

Congressman Vince Fong, a Republican from Bakersfield, sits on the House Transportation Committee. He says that when California voters first approved high-speed rail, the promise and price tag were more marketing campaign than realistic projection. We're now in 2026. There are no trains. there's no track laid, it's a complete bait and switch.

If I vote for a mansion in Malibu by next year and someone says, actually, you know what, in five years we're going to have a doghouse in Modesto, how do things go so off the rails? The business plan that was put out in 2008 was very theoretical. This is what we think is going to happen. And it became very clear that they didn't have the specifics worked out. On that point, management doesn't disagree. Tokes on a shock in is California's Secretary of Transportation,

and Anthony Williams are rail authority board member. Both are relatively new to the job left to answer for their predecessors. There were mistakes made. Some of the criticism on this project, I think, are very fair. What happened? I don't think the voters fully understood, and neither did we in the public sector, what it was going to take to actually get this project delivered. To get the necessary political buy-in from the whole state,

the plan called for the train to run inland, threading the farmland of the Central Valley. Yet the rail authority hadn't answered basic questions, like precisely where it could lay down its tracks, what's known as right-of-way. Three thousand parcels had to be negotiated just for the segments that we're working on today in the Central Valley. It seems to be one farmer doesn't want high-speed rail going through his field,

and you've got a guy that can gum up the works for a long time. Yeah, that's what happens sometimes in these processes. More snarl, California's exacting environmental regulations, which triggered all manner of reviews, lawsuits, and delays. As anyone who's renovated a home knows, delay adds to price. So did the high U.S. labor and construction costs, at least compared to many other countries. And while the federal government contributed modestly under the Obama and Biden administrations, the burden fell largely on the state. When construction started, was the financing there to, complete this rail?

It wasn't. Let's be real. We had a lot to learn and we had a lot of growth to do. And it's arguable whether we should have been clearer about that. By 2019, cost ballooning in the timeline years off schedule, bipartisan political pressure mounted. Newly elected, Governor Gavin Newsom said this in his first state of the state. Right now there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from

San Francisco to LA. Under Newsom, who didn't respond to repeated interview requests, California decided to focus on that initial Central Valley segment, a route few clamored for, and fewer are likely to ride, though the ultimate goal remains connecting northern and southern California. When you have a project like this, and when the budget no longer permits you to finish it the way you wanted to, you start cutting off your arms and legs.

Lou Thompson helped found Amtrak in the 1970s, and until 2024, sat on California's high-speed rail peer review group. We've heard people say time to cut bait. We've heard people saying what happened in the past is the past. Failure is not an option. Failure is always an option. Is that what's going to happen here? No, I don't think so. But I think what will happen in the short range is that they will cut back and do the best they can with the money they have available.

Here outside Fresno in California's Central Valley, one of the few signs of concrete progress, literally, structures like this. Locals here jokingly refer to it as their own Stonehenge. Ideally, these bridges and viaducts will one day be used to support California high-speed rail. But for now, these are curiosities in a field, monuments to promises that haven't been met and plants that haven't been executed. ironic because American rail was once the world's envy. In the 1800s, the U.S. government oversaw the birth of the transcontinental railroad, stitching the country together as it expanded westward. In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration decided that the transportation vanguard was off the tracks,

creating and critically continuously funding the interstate highway system. And the family car is in tip-top shape. fueling the world's proudest car culture. Meanwhile, Japan's famous bullet train opened in 1964, and today more than 20 countries have high-speed rail, generally defined as cruising at 150 miles an hour or more. Yes, Germany and France and China, but also Turkey, Indonesia. Egypt has broken ground.

The obvious question there is, like, how can it be that we can't get it done and they can get it done, right? We know we can do this. It's an economic engine. Mike Reininger is managing director of Brightline West, a private company that believes it can achieve what California has it. Oh, wow. Next stop, Zurich. It's just like a European train system.

This train, which opened in 2018 and runs between Miami and Orlando, hits top speeds of around 125 miles an hour. Not quite high speed, but close. It's akin to a beta test for Brightline's next project. A bullet train connecting L.A. in Las Vegas in just over two hours, a trip that can take five hours by car. Brightline West will be true high-speed rail first time in the country, and we'll operate at speeds of about 200 miles an hour maximum. Out west, Brightline is solving the right-of-way issue by running on the median of the I-15 highway. Construction has already begun on some of the station structures. The plan is to start service in 2029. What are you telling people to get them out of their cars or getting them to avoid the airport?

It's more enjoyable. It's safer. It's reliable. This really is all about changing people's behavior. You don't think we're just, this car culture is intractable. It's so hardened and it's so much a part of the American psyche, it just can't be cracked. I don't think so at all. Cultural questions aside, Brightline's Florida trains run at street level through crowded neighborhoods. And according to numbers compiled by the the Miami Herald and local public radio, more than 200 people have been hit and killed by the

trains in the near decades since operations began. Brightline says that running rail in the desert out west, where track crossings won't be at street level, will be a safer proposition. Then there are the finances. The stratospheric costs of building and running a rail line vastly outstripped revenues. Analysts have downgraded Brightline's debt to junk, raising questions about private rail, as a business. To what extent big picture do you worry about the future financial viability of Brightline? The business has built slower than we originally expected it to build. We thought we would be carrying more passengers today than we are. The business is in fact growing month over month, year over year. That's a great thing. That solidifies in our mind the viability of the business.

Brightline's West Coast project has already received some federal funding and is hoping for a $6 billion loan from the Trump administration. If you look around the world, for the most part, the infrastructure systems are funded by the public sector. You do see a role for government here. Absolutely. We welcome it. Back in California, the rail authority insists state funds can cover the cost of the central valley leg. As for the rest, just to be clear, as we speak right now, are the funds there to complete L.A. to San Francisco? The entire amount of money we need, not there today, but do we believe we can get those funds to get the project done, absolutely. How much do you estimate it's going to cost to connect high-speed rail, San Francisco to L.A.?

Today, we estimate with the right optimization, just over $125 billion. I think $126 billion is the current estimate for that. That's more funding than Amtrak has received in its history and still leaves a shortfall of roughly $90 billion. That's a big gap to fill. It is a big gap to fill, but again, we haven't understood. of how to get there and to fill that gap. A gap the authority hopes to fill

with a new plan to cut costs, lure private investment, and connect to bigger cities much sooner. But there's another challenge to building anything today, the swirling winds of a political climate in which one party pushes and the other reflexively polls.

Remember Gavin Newsom's pessimism? In recent months, he's championed the project. This is not just a transportation project. This is about reimagining the future of this region. Meanwhile, in 2025, President Trump canceled $4 billion in federal grants for the train, swiping at a political nemesis in the process. Did you ever hear of Gavin Newscom? That train is the worst cost-over run I've ever seen.

In a statement to 60 minutes, Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, said the administration is in favor of high-speed rail, but this project has, quote, wasted billions in taxpayer dollars yet delivered nothing. Can this be done without help from the federal government? This initial segment, we believe so. The ultimate 494 miles of building this out without the federal government's help will be challenging. There's no doubt about that.

Is this a non-starter to build a project like this without federal funding? Well, not only can't it be done, it shouldn't be done. because a lot of the benefits of the project, the reason why you build a project is public. Pollution reduction, congestion reduction, improved safety, comfort reliability. All of those things are public benefits. There are other ideas for U.S. high-speed rail, say Dallas to Houston, but nothing else in the building stage, leaving that uneasy overarching question. Morocco has high-speed rail.

And Serbia and China, Japan, and Western Europe, why don't we? What's your simple answer? Well, the simple answer is they've decided they want to do it and pay for it, and we haven't. You think we will in our lifetimes? I don't know. I'm dubious. I'm dubious. Absent a national political will to work with the states to create some of these systems, I think it's going to be in, of course, my lifetime almost certainly not. But maybe yours, I don't know.

Every year on Mardi Gras morning, something extraordinary emerges from the back streets of New Orleans. Groups of black revelers most tourists will never see. They call themselves Mardi Gras Indians or black masking Indians, and they roam the city's neighborhoods in dazzling, hand-sown suits. The tradition dates to the 1800s as a way to honor their ancestors, and according to Mardi Gras Indian lore, is rooted in profound respect for native. Americans said to have sheltered enslaved Africans who had escaped. It's an expression of joy, protest, and pride passed from generation to generation.

On this Easter Sunday, you'll meet the artists and musicians preserving the culture and take in the sights and sounds of one of America's last true secret societies. If you're lucky enough to find them, you'll discover a vibrant tapestry. of African, Caribbean, and Native American threads, part of the cultural gumbo that is New Orleans. These extravagant suits, plumed, bejeweled, beaded and sequined are handcrafted in secret for an entire year to be unveiled on Mardi Gras Day.

Chawa! That's Big Chief de Man Malanxan of the young Seminole hunters, announcing his arrival. his arrival. Chawah! Chawah! Who the best? Who got the best bee work?

Who got the best rhinestones? Who could sing the best? Who got the biggest tribe? Who don't? That's what it is. There are dozens of groups calling themselves tribes. The leader is known as the Big Chief, who along with his big queen and their crew, strut through historically black neighborhoods, searching for other tribes.

When Big Chief DeMahn meets another big chief, big chief. You big chiefs and bowed out the big chiefs. They square off in mock battle, competing to show whose suit is, in their words, the prettiest. We saw Demand face down tribes all over the city. What does happen back then? Look like he just bowed out of it. But you won.

Yeah, I think I did. You were the prettiest. Yeah. We all fight. We all fire you. We don't fight you. Who are you on Marty Grande? When I put that suit on, I'm Big Chief de Maulam alone, so...

Is that different from the DeMond who's sitting here in front of me now? Yes, indeed. How different? Somebody that's ready to honor everything that I was taught by my elders, and I'm ready to kill you there with the needle and thread. Needle and thread to do the work of his heart and hands. Big Chief DeMond and his wife Alicia, meticulous as surgeons, sew beads the size of chia seeds on a canvas

and stitch rhinestones in place with dental floss, painting with beads, making artwork for his suit. What to you makes a suit pretty? The hookup. What do you mean? How it's laid out, how the velvet gets around it, how you break the feathers, how you manipulate the feathers, how many rows of rindstones you have around the beadwork.

That's the perfection of knowing your hookup if you're that good. Oh, wow. This year's suit tells the story of the Amistad, a slave ship seized by the captive Africans in 1839, led by a man called Sin K. This panel shows when the Africans won their freedom in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. Look at this. John Quincy Adam, he was one of the lawyers on the case. My God.

So you're doing this, like, nonstop? I sold some six in the morning and 12 at night. And this is every day? Every day. Every day. Why? I said, man, without these beads, I couldn't breathe. And every breath is hard earned. It can take thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to design and sew a suit.

For years, Big Chief DeMond was laying concrete and cooking lobsters pouring all his spare time and money into his creations. He now makes a living as an artist. This year's suit cost $25,000. But this flamboyant display is not a beauty pageant. It's the flowering of deep roots. The community is what makes me, it's my fuel, the people. Your fuel.

Yeah, it fused the fire. Because you're doing it for them. Like, you do this for your community and your people. It is the greatest kept secret in America. Been throughout the world today is the Mardi Gras Indian culture. culture. This culture is date back to slavery days. I have hope. Howard Miller is the president of the Mardi Gras Indian Council, a governing body for the tribes, and chief of the Creole Wild West. He told us it's a culture shaped by resistance

to oppression and sustained by resilience. How would you explain the Mardi Gras Indians to people who don't have a clue what they're about? Well, we weren't allowed to go to those big parades and stuff. So this in our community was about a lifting our people in a proudly manner. There's no one definitive origin story, but historians have found references to the tradition dating back to the mid-1800s. According to stories passed down through generations, when enslaved people escaped New Orleans, Native Americans in the bayous gave them refuge. Today, many tribe members claim indigenous and African roots, masking some of some say, began as a way to honor those indigenous tribes while disguising or masking their

African identity. Because here in America, especially here in the South, everything about Africa was forbidden. So we went behind a mask as innings to practice our culture. Was it easy to join a tribe? No, it wasn't. In 1969, it took then 12-year-old Howard Miller six weeks just to get in the door of a big chief's house, the tribe's headquarters. I had a friend of mine, he was in it, and I would go around there with him, trying to get in. But they wouldn't let me in the gate.

Wouldn't even let you in the gate? No, I had to stay outside of y'all while he go in there. Eventually, I got on the porch, and I was watching all this here magic with the suits and what they was doing and started rainstorm, thunder, lightning, raining hard. I'm getting wet. And the chief said,

that boy's still on the porch. And somebody said, yep, tell that boy to come on in here. That's how I got in the house. We visited the home of Joseph Pierre Boudreau, better known as Big Chief Monk of the Golden Eagles tribe. Big Chiefs aren't just heads of their tribes, their mentors and community leaders, and Big Chief Monk is one of the most respected.

But the working-class neighborhoods that sustain the tribes have been thinned and scattered by Hurricane Katrina and gentrification. 84-year-old monk Boudreau is determined to hold on to the community and legacy and is preparing for his 72nd year of masking. We can't do it. We can't do it. Let the world know that we're here and we've been here. We ain't just got here.

We've been here. We joined the Boudros in a sewing circle before Mardi Gras. For decades, Big Chief Monks sewed suits for his children and grandchildren. This year, they gathered and helped him sow his. My whole family's talent, you know, by just sitting there watching me for all these years, you know, as kids. They were always right there while I was sewing sitting right there. All those long hours of sewing inspired a song. In the 1970s,

Monk was one of the first to marry Martigra Indian chants to New Orleans funk. His albums earned two Grammy nominations. His son Joseph and grandson Juan often sang backup. We met them, Monk's daughter Winoca and grandson Marwan, at one of Monk's favorite New Orleans clubs, Tipitinas. What's his impact on the culture? The impact that Michael Jordan had on basketball. Yeah, it's like, it's like that.

It's like, you can't mention my undergrad without mom. Yeah, I'll achieve you. I never saw him take a break. Like, I never saw him say, oh, this year I'm not coming. You know, my father, he took something that was made for the culture in the streets, and he was one of the pioneers that took it global. There's not a person in the city of New Orleans that so was an Indian suit, and they don't put on his music.

Big Chief DeMond, included. Shing, Lord. That man makes me cry. Like monk. He do me something. He's moved by the music and the weight of his calling.

The expense almost left him destitute. You sacrificed a lot to make these suits. You lost a house because you were so consumed with making your suit. Yeah, yeah. Because it's hard. It's hard. I know it's hard, but losing a house didn't make you stop. What? Why? Why? Because you got put out of your house.

No, indeed. I'm preserving the culture. And the fine art world has taken notice. His suits and beaded portraits have been displayed in museums and galleries all over the world. It's allowed him to buy a new house, every inch of which was covered with plumes and patches the evening before Mardi Gras. Y'all ready? After working through the night, Big Chief Demand emerged transformed in a suit that stood more than 10 feet tall

and weighed 120 pounds. He used a U-Haul to move from place to place, but he tells us there was something else carrying him along. The spirits come down every time we put it on, especially with me. My elders live through me, and it's an opening up the gates. What do you mean?

That means it can. down, they're coming through me to walk in their shoes on the streets of New Orleans, like they taught us. So what we're doing is we're preserving it for that nice generation to be able to walk like I walked. It's going to change my life. The spirits, it seems, are opening other gates for him. His work will be featured next month at the Venice Biennale in Italy, the world's most prestigious art exhibition. You think your success in the art world will encourage a younger generation?

a younger generation to carry on with this culture? I pray it does. And I pray one of them picks up a need and wants to do what I do, you know? Preserving tradition for the next generation. We heard that a lot here. It's what big chief monk lives for. But this year, he was too weak to march with his tribe. Just before Mardi Gras, he was diagnosed with cancer.

But he came out on his porch to see the... tribe off with the Mardi Gras Indians most sacred hymn. What's it like for you to see your tribe march off and you're not joining them this year? Well, I know that time was going to come, but I didn't know when. But you got to see it this day. Yeah, right. Well, I was going to see this day. And the day is coming, he told us, for him to pass his crown on to the next chief.

Like I say, if you don't keep it going, if you lose it, it's gone forever. It's finished. You know, I think this dissipated? Not here in New Orleans. Not here in New Orleans? No. Uh-uh. You keep it rolling.

Keeping it rolling and chanting and showing off. A culture in full bloom. Too pretty, too rooted to fade. Just yet. The anatomy of a showdown. It's a war film. It's basically a battle. at 60 Minutes Overtime.com.

The last minute of 60 Minutes. Evangelist Franklin Graham has preached in all 50 states and provided disaster relief to more than 100 countries. For tonight's reflections on America, we ask Graham, which value does he believe shaped the nation the most? Faith. Faith in God is the value that most shaped America. Remember the pilgrim?

They came from this land to find freedom to live out their faith. And it's people of faith who have been the bedrock, the driving force behind our nation. In years past, where did people turn after a disaster, not FEMA, not to the government? It was a church that took them in, fed them, gave them shelter, clothed them. It was people of faith who established our health care in this country. Our higher education was started by people of faith. Harvard, Yale, Princeton were founded to train ministers of the gospel. From the remote villages of Alaska to the tip of the Florida Keys today, you'll find

houses of worship. And people of faith making a difference. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I want all people to know that God loves them, that he cares of them. So I see faith as the most important defining value in our nation and in every single life. I'm Bill Whitaker. be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Happy Easter and a joyous Passover.

CBS Fridays are a smoke show, and they're hotter than ever. This is the greatest job in the world. First up, Marina Bakeran stars in Sheriff Country. We do whatever it takes to protect our people. Followed by an explosive fire country. I'm right here with you, no matter what. Then it's Donnie Walberg and Seneca Martin Green in Boston Blue. Got him?

Yeah, I got him. CBS Fridays, starting at 8.7 Central and streaming on Paramount Plus.