60 Minutes - 08/18/2024: Crisis at Pearl Harbor, Dr Kutznetzov, Indian Relay

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Soon after a fuel spill occurred close to the Navy’s main drinking water system at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, base leadership assured thousands of families in military housing that their tap water was safe. Parents later learned the truth: the water they drank or used to bathe their children was contaminated with jet fuel. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi tours the once secret fuel storage site where the water crisis at Pearl Harbor began and meets military families who blame their health problems on the Navy’s response to the spill. Scott Pelley travels to Izium, Ukraine, – one of the worst areas for landmines. He meets injured civilians, a doctor treating them, and the deminers working to clear their land, mine by mine. Bill Whitaker reports from the chaotic and high-speed racetrack of “America’s original extreme sport” - Indian Relay. As horse nation tribes unite for an exciting and dangerous bareback horse race, Whitaker looks at how the sport continues to grow and offer new opportunities of pride to the next generation of Native American youth.  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

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Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. It's an incredible feat. Pearl Harbor's Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. Seven miles of tunnels cut through volcanic rock built to hold 250 million gallons of fuel. So this is one of the tanks.

Oh my gosh. And to give you kind of a reference point, the Statue of Liberty, not the base, but the statue itself, can fit in here with enough room. Tonight, you'll hear what happened at this once-secret site and how it's affected thousands of military families. What is the scope of the mine threat in Ukraine? Unrecognizable in modern times. We watched a young deminer probing for a tripwire that could detonate a mine nearby. Russia has sown Ukraine with millions of mines. She threaded the grass, feeling for the slightest resistance. The day before, another D-miner had been killed. Welcome to the 2023 Championship of Champions. In Indian relay, as many as six thoroughbred

racehorses are brought to a start line drawn in the dirt. The horses are bareback, no saddles or stirrups. Their riders wear no protective gear. At the sound of a horn, they leap aboard and tear down the track. These horses are able to run like you wouldn't believe. But the hard part comes from jumping off. Yeah! I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. You've got unlimited access to music. We'll be right back. and earn $1,100 in average value each year. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Value is for illustrative purposes only.

When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag. Is that from Winners? Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt. Did she pay full price? The U.S. military takes pride in protecting its own. That's why military families we met in Hawaii told us they feel so betrayed. Two years ago, there was a fuel spill close to the drinking water system at the Pearl Harbor base in Hawaii. As we first reported in April, Navy leadership assured thousands of military families that the tap water was safe.

But nearly two weeks after the spill, parents learned the truth. The water they drank or used to bathe their kids contained jet fuel. Tonight, you'll hear from some of the families who say the jet fuel-tainted water made them sick. But first, we'll go to where the water crisis at Pearl Harbor began. From the air, the historic naval base is easy to spot. Eight miles from Honolulu, sparkling blue waters host battle-gray ships and memorials to those killed by Japan's surprise attack in 1941. What you can't see is the once- one secret storage site that provided fuel for the Pacific Fleet and its planes for 80 years. It doesn't look like much from the outside. Wait till you get inside. Vice Admiral John Wade led us through the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. Seven miles

of tunnels cut through volcanic rock built to hold 250 million gallons of fuel. So this is one of the tanks. Oh my gosh. That black hole is a steel-lined fuel tank so deep it's hard to see the bottom 20 stories below. To just show you how enormous this is, this tank holds 12.5 million gallons. And to give you kind of a reference point, the Statue of Liberty, not the base, but the statue itself, can fit in here with enough room. And this is just one of the 20 tanks hidden here.

This is the Arizona, writhing in death agony. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, construction was already underway to protect the Navy's fuel reserves from an aerial attack. The decision was made to embark on a herculean task to build a bulk storage fuel facility inside a mountain in secrecy. And how long did that take to do? It was a little less than three years. At its peak, there are about 4,000 men working here. Watch your head. We're going to go this way.

But this testament to American resolve became a monumental liability after this. That's jet fuel spraying from a cracked pipe. The video was recorded by a worker inside Red Hill on November 20th of 2021. The fuel, 20,000 gallons of it, was trapped in a plastic pipe. The weight caused the pipe to sag. This trolley hit it, and jet fuel spewed for 21 hours, close to the well that supplied drinking water for 93,000 people on and around the base at Pearl Harbor. According to Navy investigators, the workers who responded didn't have the right tools to contain the spill.

They also assumed there was no danger to the drinking water. They were wrong. At least 5,000 gallons of jet fuel drained into the tunnel floor and into the Navy water system. The next day, the Navy issued a press release about the incident and told the 8,400 families living in military housing the water remained safe to drink, even though the Navy had not tested the water yet. A week later, residents began to notice a problem. When did you get the sense that there was something wrong with the water?

My husband came into the kitchen and washed his hands and said, gosh, the water smells like I just did an oil change. Like the water smells weird. Brittany Traeger lived on base about two and a half miles from Red Hill with her daughter and husband, who is a Navy chief petty officer. Traeger says she began to feel sick a week after the spill. I had a cough. My tonsils were very swollen. I remember a very distinct moment where I was walking to the car and I had vertigo so bad that I had to hold on to the car. The smell was that overwhelming?

Mm-hmm. In an email to residents nine days after the spill, the commanding officer of the base reassured residents, there are no immediate indications that the water is not safe. My staff and I are drinking the water. Did you stop using water? Did you stop taking baths? So I did, my daughter did. Just because you had a bad feeling, not because anybody told you to?

Correct. They gave us an email address that we could send an email to if we wanted to have our water tested. So I emailed those people who then emailed me a phone number that I should call, and I called that phone number for days, and it was just busy. They were overwhelmed and inundated with reports. Ten days after the spill, there were more than 200 reports from six neighborhoods across the base of strong fuel odor coming from kitchen and bathroom faucets. But the Navy said its initial tests did not detect fuel. It defied logic, you know, even though there was a leak, and even though our water smelled like jet fuel, and even though there was sheen on it, they continued to say, the tests are coming back negative. After 12 days and four statements assuring residents the water was not contaminated with

fuel, the Navy reversed course. On December 2, 2021, it announced more comprehensive tests conducted by the Navy had detected jet fuel in the water. Three weeks after the spill, tests from Hawaii's Department of Health revealed jet fuel levels 350 times higher than what the state considers safe. Rochelle Dietz lives on base with her husband, a Navy chief petty officer, and their two children. That feels not something that you would even think could happen to be in your water. How were people reacting to the news? I was so sick to my stomach from that news that I actually threw up when I heard. Because why? Because my kids had just been poisoned.

Within a month, the Navy set up medical tents for residents. Some complained of stomach problems, severe fatigue, and coughing. The military moved more than 4,000 families to hotels. Small studies of military personnel suggest jet fuel exposure can lead to neurological and breathing problems. But the long-term impact of ingesting jet fuel is unknown because it's so unlikely to ever happen. Rochelle Dietz told us days after the spill,

her daughter's tonsils became inflamed and her son started suffering from chronic headaches. I can hear people saying, tonsils, headaches, kids get that stuff. How do you know it's related? Because they never had it before November of 2021. It wasn't an issue. It's unclear how many got sick, but of 2,000 people who responded to a survey

by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 850 sought medical care. The water system was flushed over three months and bottled water brought in. Brittany Traeger said her four-year-old now suffers respiratory problems, which require hour-long treatments at least two times a day. That includes a nebulizer and this vibrating vest to clear her lungs. Tell me about your daughter's health. Thirteen days after the contamination, after our water smelled like jet fuel, my daughter woke up in the hotel with a cough.

And it pretty much never went away. Three months passed before Pearl Harbor's drinking water was deemed safe again. The Navy's own investigation into the spill described, quote, cascading failures and revealed poor training, supervision, and ineffective leadership at Red Hill that fell unacceptably short of Navy standards. For the last 10 years, Hawaiians have raised concerns about the threat from smaller leaks at Red Hill. The primary water supply for the city of Honolulu is 100 feet below the Navy complex.

In March of 2022, the Secretary of Defense ordered Red Hill permanently closed. Vice Admiral John Wade was brought in to get the 104 million gallons of fuel out of the tanks and move it safely to sites around the Pacific. We've got it to fuel. That's the imminent threat. There's ongoing and will be continued long-term environmental remediation to restore the aquifer, the land and surrounding area, and then there's also a medical component for those that have been impacted. You view now this thing that was a lifeline for the fleet is a threat. That's right. That's right.

In six months, Wade's team in Hawaii successfully removed almost all of the fuel. But it took two years before the Navy issued disciplinary letters to 14 officers involved in the spill response, including five admirals. Was anyone fired because of this? At the time that the accountability came through, we had officers that had already retired, and so they had already separated from service. Meredith Berger is an assistant secretary of the Navy. We met her at the Pentagon in November. She told us the Navy has been accountable. We're talking about 20,000 gallons of fuel leak, 90,000 people had their water contaminated. It looks like people

retired or were reassigned and no one was fired. How is that accountability? It's accountability within the system that we have established and we have heard that this was too long and that maybe it didn't go far enough. Two thousand military families agree the Navy didn't go far enough and are suing the government. The Traegers and Dietzes have joined the lawsuit, alleging they were harmed by negligence at Red Hill. Are you angry that it happened, or are you angry at what happened after? It's a little bit of anger, but it's also this feeling of betrayal.

What do you mean betrayal? So my husband has been in for almost 18 years. We have moved our family cross-country, cross-oceans. We gave so much of our life to the Navy for them to ignore warnings, and then we were directly and blatantly lied to about it. Navy leadership has apologized for the spill, but has not said that the contaminated water is the cause of the ongoing illnesses. The Navy did set up a clinic on base to collect data and treat anyone who believes they have health issues related to the tainted water.

What happens in 5 or 10 or 15 years? Will those services still be available to these families? So that is part of why we are making sure that we're collecting that information to inform future actions and what the requirements are for those types of needs and care. That doesn't sound like a guarantee of care in the future. And I want to be careful because I don't do the health care part of things and so I don't want to speak outside of where I have any authority or decision. So we followed up with the Defense Department, which told us it's reviewing the question of long-term health care for military families, including more than 3,100 children. Two years after the spill, some residents have reported water with a smell or sheen. The Navy is conducting daily tests at Pearl Harbor

and says it is confident there is no fuel in the tap water. Rochelle Dietz is still using bottled water. She and Brittany Traeger, along with the other military families, are awaiting a judge's decision in their lawsuit. What is the remedy that you want? In our family, it's restoring my faith in our nation. That's a big thing to say. There's a body of government that failed.

They contaminated our water. They lied to us. They did not protect us. And they did not intervene. And accountability looks like a lifelong care plan for me, my family, and the people affected. And that will restore my faith in my nation. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered

without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire No matter how Russia's war in Ukraine ends, Dr. Yuri Kuznetsov will be battling Vladimir Putin's madness for years.

As we first reported this past spring, Kuznetsov is a Ukrainian surgeon and a national hero who stayed by his patients as they were attacked. Now, heroism is a virtue that must endure. His city was liberated, but Dr. Kuznetsov sees victims every week or so, civilians who step on one of the millions of Russian landmines across about one-third of Ukraine. There's a massive effort to clear the mines, but that will take a generation or more. Until then, there will be Dr. Kuznetsov with healing hands and eyes that have seen too much. Half his life he's devoted to Central Hospital, and here in its basement with Putin's bombs overhead, all he'd become in 52 years was laid down in service to his home.

We didn't imagine until the end that Russia would attack our country, Dr. Kuznetsov told us. When you're sitting in a basement at night and a plane is flying over you, it was impossible to predict whether you would wake up to see another day. In 2022, the basement became Dr. Kuznetsov's operating room. That's him, dressed in white. The wounded were endless. A close friend's wife he could not save, and this man who was shot and lived. Did you save more patients than you lost?

We saved significantly more people, definitely. Many of your colleagues evacuated, and you did not. I wonder why you stayed. When you have patients, and you're the only doctor or the only person who can treat them, I didn't understand how you could leave. He could not leave Izium. His city of 40,000 was occupied for six months.

The Russians laid landmines here as they ran from Ukraine's counterattack. Putin's unprovoked war on an innocent people destroyed 80% of Izyum and killed 1,000, leaving apartment buildings cleaved in two and this school built in 1882 a hollow corpse. The people of Izium clothed themselves in liberation, and yet they are not entirely free. Demining teams are still fighting Russia here. Izium, 20 miles from the front, is one of the worst areas for mines and unexploded ordnance. Throughout Ukraine, more than 1,000 civilians had been wounded by mines. Lidia Borova, a 70-year-old widow, was picking mushrooms in a forest. I turned by the tree, and then there was an explosion, she said.

I looked down at myself, and I was bleeding. My arm was injured. My leg was injured. I was losing strength. Her right foot and ankle were ripped away. Kuznetsov said, first of all, the most difficult thing is to persuade a patient

that their leg needs to be amputated. It's very difficult to explain to them that the leg is no good, no good to use. He told us a prosthetic is ultimately easier to live with. Dr. Kuznetsov saved me, she told us. I didn't realize how much blood I lost.

I don't know how I managed to survive. Ihor Bogoraz was with his wife in their garden. They found 12 mines, but there were 13. I decided to mow the weeds, he told us, and one mine was under my foot. I stepped on it, and it exploded instantly. And that's it. No leg. Sergei Nikolaev was walking in leaves from the autumn while uncovering grapevines for the spring. If it had been green, he told us, I would have noticed it. But it was brown. I didn't see it.

It blended in with the leaves. I stepped on it, and I knew right away. Kuznetsov said, the majority are those who stepped on pedal mines or anti-personnel mines. The person who invented them was an evil genius because they only weigh two ounces, but what they can do when triggered is terrifying. Pedal mines, five inches long, flutter from aircraft by the thousands, like flower petals. Eleven pounds of pressure will set them off. Vasil Soljanic found them on his roof and in his garden. There's 18 here, he told us, but in all there were over 50.

He showed us his video. That's a petal mine right there. They are so common that we were told the story of a 70-year-old woman who gathered them in a basket and took them to a police station. Soljanek told us, there's some left in the bushes over here, so don't walk around there. He dialed 101 and emergency services sent deminers Ivan Shepalev and Ihor Ovcharuk. We encounter every type of munition, Ovcharuk told us. Anti-infantry and anti-tank mines, mortars, artillery shells, rockets. It's all here.

At Solvanyk's home, a sweep revealed an unexploded cluster bomb. Those are tricky. So they blew it in place. Ivan Shepolev told us as the Russians fled, they also left booby traps. We have seen cases, unfortunately, where explosives were found in civilian homes. Obcharuk said, my team also had to work on removing our dead Ukrainian soldiers, whose bodies had been mined. In 2022, Ihor Ocharuk's kneecap was shattered when a fellow deminer stepped on a mine and lost his foot.

Shepalev told us, we know every explosive we remove means that someone's life is saved. A few weeks after our visit, a Russian missile wrecked the fire station where they're based. Some were injured, but not Shapolev or Ovcharuk. What is the scope of the mine threat in Ukraine? I think the scope is unrecognizable in modern times. Pete Smith heads demining here for the Halo Trust, a charity founded in 1988 to demine war zones. Smith was 33 years in the British Army and awarded by Queen Elizabeth for disarming an IRA time bomb in a train station.

Today, he says, Ukraine is the most heavily mined country. In some areas, the minefields are three or four mines deep. In areas, maybe a dozen mines deep. But that's just the first line of defense. Then several kilometers behind that, there are other layers of minefields as well. Smith took us to a farm sown with Russian anti-tank mines. You have to step carefully. Right there in the center is a mine packed with 17 pounds of high explosive. With three weeks of training behind her, Yulia Yoshuk was probing for any tripwire that would detonate a mine near her.

She threaded the grass, feeling for the slightest resistance. Only the day before, a Halo D-miner was killed and two were wounded in another part of Ukraine. Doing this by hand, with that wand, it seems to me that you have an awfully big field to cover. She said, well, of course, it'll be a very long process. As far as I know, it'll take many, many years. Each day of war

means years of demining. Why do you do this work? I didn't have to do it. I wanted to do it. This is my contribution to victory. Will Ukraine ever be without mines?

I think what I have seen in my time in Ukraine is the innovation, the patriotism, and just the sheer will of the people that I'm confident that they will be able to remove the last mine from Ukraine. Does this war make any sense to you? Not to a single person here or anywhere, Sergei Nikolaev said. What kind of mind, what kind of moron or idiot do you have to be to even wish something like this on your enemies?

You can't. Even now, someone could drop a fork or a spoon and it makes a loud noise, and in your soul you feel pain and bitterness and fear. It's a real horror. My sister-in-law was ripped apart by a mine in front of her children. In front of their eyes. Of all of Vladimir Putin's war crimes in Ukraine, one was the bombing of Izium's central hospital. Kuznetsov told us, after this part of the hospital was damaged,

a lot of medical services simply became unavailable. Here we had both intensive care and three operating rooms. When Yuri Kuznetsov was 14 years old, his grandmother died in his arms. He told us that's why he became a doctor, and we suspect that's why he stayed through the bombardment and occupation and the Battle of the Mines. When a town loses its hospital, it doesn't just lose the medical care, it loses hope. The best praise for me was when a woman told me in April 2022 that when we heard the hospital was still open, we realized that our town had hope. It could withstand, survive, and have a future. The future of Ukraine will demand devotion and heroic patience.

On this day, Yulia Yuroshchuk slowly teased out one Russian mine, with millions more receding from its edge. The horse has played a central role in the history and mythology of many Native American tribes. The Shoshone, Crow, Blackfeet, Sioux, and other tribes first saw horses when Spaniards brought them to this continent 500 years ago and have used them in hunting and in battle ever since. Collectively these tribes call themselves the Horse Nations. As we first reported this spring, men and women from those tribes also use horses in a sport that fans have dubbed America's original extreme sport. The tribes call it Indian Relay. Its roots date back centuries,

and it's one of the most exciting, dangerous, and inspiring things you're ever likely to see. Welcome to the 2023 Championship of Champions. We start at the start. In Indian Relay, as many as six thoroughbred racehorses are brought to a start line drawn in the dirt. The horses are bareback, no saddles or stirrups. Their riders wear no protective gear. At the sound of a horn, they leap aboard, and tear down the track. To actually get on a horse bareback and run as fast as you can around is easy.

That's easy. Yeah. Ken Real Bird is a sort of senior statesman of Indian relay. It's time to feed the team. And announces races all over the American West. These horses are able to run like you wouldn't believe. But the hard part comes from jumping off. Wait, what? After the riders race one lap around the half-mile track, they all speed into a sort of equine pit row, where teammates are waiting with fresh horses for what's known as the exchange. So he has to come in, gear down enough, and then angle that horse in. He gets off and takes one, two, three steps, and he's on to the back of that horse. Boom, there he goes.

Ken Real Bird makes that flying leap from one horse to another sound simple. It is not. It's more like a dangerous, chaotic dance, with riders and horses from six teams all trying to do the same thing at the same time in the same space. You have what they call the setup man. Their job primarily is to have that horse in the proper position as the rider comes in. Simultaneously, you have a guy who's usually a nimble guy on his feet, and he's got to catch that horse coming in at 15 miles an hour. That horse, he really doesn't care about your feelings.

A third member of the pit crew is holding a third horse because the riders must do another leap for another lap. It's exciting, but it's dangerous too, isn't it? Yeah. A lot of injuries. Almost every heat will have some of the guys getting run over. Can you imagine the front line of Kansas City Chiefs all combined in one and just run over you? That's what it's going to feel like because that horse is a thousand pounds. Injuries to both horses and humans are part of the sport. The team that best avoids collisions and wins that third lap on a third horse can be forgiven for showing off at the finish.

Well, that was a great race. Ken Real Bird says the roots of modern Indian relay are in the horse-stealing raids that tribes once staged against white settlers and each other. These young men of the different nations would travel when it was middle of the night. They would come and take the prized horse and hightail it back to their home country. They exchanged horses as they were running because they were being pursued. And so that's pretty much the origin of the Indian really sport that we know today. Races in the organized sport were first conducted in the early 1900s.

When they first started out, the majority of these races were happening more within their own communities, Native communities on the reservations. I've seen some races. Calvin Ghost Bear is a member of the Sioux tribe. Seven heats, eight heats. And president of an organization called the Horse Nations Indian Relay Council. What we do with Horse Nations is we basically took a lot of the races that were within the tribal nations, brought them out into the mainstream. Now we're bringing it on to a bigger stage.

Last summer's Indian relay circuit crisscrossed the West and climaxed in Casper, Wyoming, with a three-day championship event that celebrated tribal culture in song and drum and dance and offered more than $100,000 in prize money thanks to sponsorship from a casino owned by the northern Arapaho tribe. This is the ladies. It included a women's division. It's two laps and two horses rather than the three and three in men's races. But the athleticism and danger are every bit as evident.

Now there's no quitting these kids. There's also a kids' Indian relay. Takes a great tumble. With riders as young as six racing on ponies, climbing on and falling off. He's going to be all right. Those are the guys that grow up

to be the great riders, the great set-up men, because they're all horsemen. And it's like that in every reservation. On the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, we met Irvin Carlson and his son Chaz, who have been competing in Indian relay for years. Chaz is one of the most seasoned riders on the summer circuit.

For relay making you good in the sport, it's just practice, practice, practice, and years of experience. We think Chaz is off. Chaz is on early. Chaz is off quick. Yay! Another team we followed through the summer circuit is led by 23-year-old Tuesday Washakie from the Shoshone tribe in Wyoming. Her younger sister Zia is the rider for their women's team. Both feel a close connection to their horses. Her younger sister Zia is the rider for their women's team.

Both feel a close connection to their horses. ZIA, If you're having a bad day and it's just not going your way, you can go out and you can catch your horse and ride him and things will just seem to be better. I think that's just how it is. Mason Red Wing feels the same bond and obligation to care for his horses. It's really something special because we're all here for one purpose and it's the horse. Mason hails from the Crow Creek Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. When I was younger, I didn't know why I used to feel such anger and animosity towards my own people.

I didn't want to be Native American. And the horse helped me, you know, reconnect with my culture and be proud of who I am and proud of where I'm from. Why were you feeling you didn't like being a Native American? Growing up where I'm from on the reservation, you see a lot of things that make you not proud. Like what? To be where I'm from on the reservation, you see a lot of things that make you not proud. Like what? To be where I'm from. Alcoholism, drug addiction, drug abuse, suicide. Suicide rates

on the reservation are four or five times the national average. My own father was succumbed to alcoholism, so it really hit home. You said the horse saved your life? Yup. Yes, sir. Essentially. You think it does saved your life. Yep, yes, sir, essentially. You think it does that for a lot of young Native American kids? I think so. There's a lot of kids out there that are just looking for that doorway. There's little glamour in Indian relay and lots of hard work.

Every team is self-funded, and nearly everyone has a day job to help pay the bills. But the sport is on the rise. Prize money is increasing and 67 teams competed in last summer's championships. The quality of horses is rising, too. Teams go to major racetracks like Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, to buy sprinters well-suited to Indian relay. Kentucky, that would be the ultimate demonstration race before the Derby. That would be my goal.

Lots of thrills and hopefully no spills today. Each team competed in one heat each day of the championships. Their cumulative time from the first two days determined whether they made the final championship heat on Sunday. Is the race usually won or lost in the exchange? Yeah. It's like a relay team in track and field. But in Indian relay, exchanges involve six riders, 18 horses, 18 other humans, and a cloud of dust. From what I've seen, it's like...

Chaos. Chaos. End of block. It's going to be Obidon. Tuesday, Washakie's women's team made the championship heat in Casper. Obidon is right there. And her sister Zia had a clean exchange in that race. They finished a close second. I don't know, you get demoralized or does it make you more determined?

It makes me more determined, man. I'd be out here mad as hell, but I shouldn't know, you get demoralized or does it make you more determined? It makes me more determined, man. I'd be out here mad as hell, but I shouldn't be. Winning it all is going to be the Timon Twa. The first place women's relay team came from the Colville Reservation in Washington State with rider Talia Timon Twa. Is this your first championship? No, I actually won the first one in Walla Walla. All right.

Yeah, when I was 13. And how old are you now? 17. 17? Yeah. Wow. Are you going to do it again next year? Yeah, I'm going to do it as long as I can.

I love this game. The day before, we had watched Talia win a heat with her arms raised in a pose of triumph and strength. It is how we connect to the warriors of the past, the warriors of 200 years ago. It's that same bloodline of that warrior that is cursing through their blood. Mason Red Wing.

Over three days of heat, we watched Mason Red Wing and his team go from dirt-pounding frustration when an exchange went wrong to exultation as another went right. Because we're always searching for that perfect run. They didn't quite find it in the finals. It's for the championship of the world. The team that did was the one

we'd first met months earlier on the Blackfeet Reservation. Irvin Carlson and his son Chaz. So we've been following you like all summer. Like this is the culmination of everything you've done all year. So does this give you bragging rights for a year or what?

Oh yeah. As a tribal elder sang a traditional praise song in honor of their victory, and organizers presented them with a check for $20,000, we noticed a group of kids at the rail on their ponies watching intently. What the horse done for me, I know the horse can do that for everyone a thousand times over. And I'm a firm believer in it. I know for a fact it can bring our young men and our young women back. I'm Scott Pelley.

We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.