60 Minutes - 7/19/2020: Nadia, A Populist Movement, The Wright Way

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

On this week's "60 Minutes," Scott Pelley tells the story of a Yazidi woman who survived a genocide. Hungary's populist government is spending billions to encourage woman to have more children to solve its demographic problem. At the same time it has built fences to keep immigrants out. Critics of the right wing government are outraged.Jon Wertheim has the story. And Bill Whitaker profiles a family of Southern Utah, a clan sporting nine professional cowboys with five world rodeo titles among them, who live a lifestyle straight out of the old west. 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

Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side, or B-side, or Bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. When we first met her, she was a war crimes victim intent on concealing her identity while searching for her family who had been rounded up by ISIS. Five years later, Nadia Murad is a Nobel Peace Prize winner fighting to hold ISIS accountable. The morning that I won the Nobel Prize, I asked my husband, Abed, to see if there was a way I could decline because the prize would make my life difficult. But fate and God sometimes

bring you something so that you can stop crimes and help others. Right-wing populism is making a not-so-subtle comeback in Europe. We found an interesting example in Hungary, where a government program intends to stimulate birth rates by taking over fertility clinics, offering free treatments, giving cash loans, and even subsidizing minivans for young married couples who become new parents. Do cowboys still exist? We found generations of them ranching and riding in Utah.

The Wright family is the first family of American rodeo, world champions who can make the roughest ride look like a ballet. Are you kind of dancing with a horse? I like to think you are. I dance a lot better with a horse than I do with my wife. I ain't got no rhythm. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker.

I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. She wore a scarf in our first interview because she did not want you to know her. She was a humble 21-year-old from a poor farm family. Her dream was to own a hair salon in her village of nearly 2,000. But that was before the massacre.

She didn't want to be on 60 Minutes, but she needed the world to know what ISIS did, the murder, the rape, the genocide of her people. Nearly six years ago in Iraq, we discovered this hesitant, frightened woman. We did not imagine that her scarf concealed not only her identity, but also a fierce invincibility, which would lead her four years after our interview to the highest honor the world has to give.

We found her here among refugees who survived the invasion of the ISIS terrorist army. Her people are Yazidis, a minority in northern Iraq that is poor, persecuted, and bound by faith to its revered Mount Sinjar. In 2014, ISIS invaded. Two months later, we came to report on the atrocities of the self-described Islamic State. Of course, no country on earth recognizes that state. But if it had a border, this would be it. Beyond that border was the Yazidi homeland,

where the faithful practice a religion that predates Islam by 3,000 years. In ISIS's perversion of the Muslim faith, the Yazidis were non-believers, condemned to slavery and death. On Friday, August 15th, at 11.30 a.m., they entered our village and told us all to come to the school. There, the women and kids were put upstairs and the men downstairs. What happened to you at that point? As we were entering the school, I was with one of my brothers. There we saw a bulldozer, and I asked my brother,

why is there a bulldozer here? He replied, to throw dirt on the bodies when they're done killing. Her brother was right. The Yazidis, about half a million, were defenseless civilians. Thousands of men and elder women were executed. Boys age seven and older were forced into the ISIS army. What happened next? They started loading up 150 girls in four dump trucks. More than 3,000 women and girls as young as nine were trucked into slavery. She says she was sold and raped, sold and raped again, and then gang raped after a failed escape. What about the other members of your family? I have no idea where my brothers are.

I want them all to return. But most of all, I just want my mother. Tell them, I just want my mother. She seemed broken. But as our interview went on, her confidence grew. As though she came to realize she wasn't speaking for herself, she was speaking for her people. Months later, she settled in Germany, joined a human rights group, and campaigned for justice. In 2018, the world learned her name, because Nadia Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The 2018 Peace Prize was meant to expose atrocities women suffer in war. The honor was shared with Denis Mukwege, whose hospital treats the sexually assaulted in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I'm curious why you chose to speak with us five years ago. At the beginning, rape was a big shame for me and for others to speak about, because it would have remained a shame on you, on your family, and on your people. The biggest incentive that made me talk was those left behind, including my mother and sisters. I knew what was happening to those in the captivity of ISIS. Nadia Murad was captive nine days when the last man who bought her left a door unlocked.

Kind-hearted strangers smuggled her across the Islamic State line. She became a U.N. human rights ambassador, began learning English, wrote a memoir, and vowed to see ISIS in court. But for that, she needed a lawyer. I met Nadia after a colleague called me and said, I have a new case for you. And I said, no thanks, I'm busy. And he said, there's just an extraordinary young woman I want you to meet. Give me an hour.

It didn't take an hour for leading human rights attorney Amal Clooney to take the case. I saw it as a test of the international system. It was so egregious because it involved ISIS, it involved a clear case of genocide, it involved sexual slavery at a scale that we haven't seen in modern times. And I thought, if the UN can't act in this case, then what does the international rule of law even mean? By 2015, not one free Yazidi remained in their homeland. This wasn't just war. By international law, the executions, rape and kidnapping were war crimes. This was the same dilemma that the world had after the atrocities of Nazi Germany. And it's the U.S.

under President Truman and President Roosevelt that said, no, we have to have trials because there must be a judicial record of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Because today you do have people denying that there were gas chambers. And what do you have to point to? You can go back and say, well, there are 4,000 documents that were submitted as exhibits in the Nuremberg trials, and the Yazidis deserve nothing less than that. And there might be similar stacks of evidence of the crimes against the Yazidis, but Clooney feared securing it was a race against time. You had mass graves that weren't secured,

where the Yazidis knew their relatives were buried and nobody was exhuming them. And also I noticed that witnesses were becoming more and more reluctant to speak out as time went by. So, you know, there was only so much we could do as a small team of lawyers. And we said this is the responsibility of the U.N. And it's the responsibility of the most powerful body within the U.N., which is the Security Council. Had you ever heard of the U.N. Security Council? Never. In 2015, just a year after we met her, Nadia Murad asked the Security Council to

hold ISIS accountable. I've seen what they've done to boys and girls. All those who commit the crime of trafficking and genocide need to be brought to justice. The Security Council voted to approve a first step. In 2017, it created an investigative team to collect evidence of ISIS's crimes in Iraq. The team began exhuming some of the 202 mass graves that are known. Now the question is whether the evidence will ever be heard. Iraqi courts are convicting thousands of ISIS suspects of terrorism, but none has been tried for the crime of genocide against the Yazidis. Small pockets of ISIS fighters remain in Syria and Iraq,

but U.S. and Iraqi troops have shattered ISIS as a cohesive military force. Is that justice? Absolutely not. You know, if you speak to Yazidi witnesses, victims, survivors, they will say, it doesn't help me if somebody's killed in a drone strike. In terms of justice, that means something very different. That means being able to be in a courtroom and look their abuses in the eye and tell the world what happened, what ISIS did to them. And that hasn't happened yet.

It has happened before in other atrocities. Last year, a UN-backed court in Cambodia convicted two former officials of genocide 40 years after the Khmer Rouge murdered 1.7 million. Beginning in the 1990s, UN war crime trials were held for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But Iraq is not a member of the International Criminal Court and has not agreed to war crime trials of its own. What we would like to see is an openness by the Iraqis to actually have international judges be involved in these trials, potentially international prosecutors. There are different ways of designing it. You know, the Iraqi government could enter into a treaty with the UN, or there could be an international court, and the Iraqis could agree to transfer those responsible for international crimes to that court.

Today, peace, if not justice, has settled into the folds of Mount Sinjar. Four days after accepting the Nobel, Nadia Murad returned with the Yazidi man she would soon marry and two replicas of her peace prize. This is what the absence of justice looks like. The demands of the desperate focused on a woman abducted at 21 and now returning bearing the weight of a 7-ounce medal. The morning that I won the Nobel Prize, I asked my husband, Abed, to see if there was a way I could decline because the prize would make my life difficult. But fate and God sometimes bring you something so that you can stop crimes and help others.

Has the Nobel Prize changed your hopes for the future? Now, people look at me like I can rebuild Sinjar, that I can bring more help for the victims, and that I can take care of the orphans. But without support, this is not going to happen by just having a Nobel. In her village, she said, I have left a Nobel Prize at the Iraqi parliament. I hope Iraq, after 4,000 years, will recognize Yazidis.

We have always been second-class citizens. Later, she walked to a site that held the answer to the desperate question she asked in our first interview. The long, green depression in the earth was a mass grave. Her mother's grave. She said, dear mother, my poor mother. You left a replica of your Nobel Peace Prize at your mother's grave. Yeah. What do you think she would have thought of that? I wonder if she knows that I have talked to the world about her silent death,

the killing of her six sons and her two nieces. I often feel that what I have been doing is because of her. I wish that she would know about it. She may be happy because the world now knows what ISIS has done. This is the school where Nadia Murad was separated from her family. Five years later, the murdered and missing are present, but unaccounted for. Altogether, Nadia, how many members of your family were murdered? We were 48 brothers, mothers, sisters, nephews and nieces in our family.

Nine were killed and three are missing. The rest who were rescued now live in refugee camps. There isn't much for refugees to return to. Yazidi homes were wrecked oroted, of everything but memories. Today, Nadia Murad is navigating without a chart, steering by the constellation of her people's dreams. An accidental leader, facing questions she cannot answer. Will they have homes? Will there be justice? It's estimated as many as 5,000 Yazidis were murdered, 6,000 abducted. Nearly 4,000 are missing still. With no international trials scheduled for these crimes,

evidence from mass graves is being entombed in Baghdad where it will wait until the world that hears her voice shares her courage. and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. 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 State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. For a country of fewer than 10 million and dwindling, Hungary has been in the

news a lot recently. And as we head toward the 2020 U.S. presidential election, you can expect to hear more about Hungary. It has become a striking example for how a society can slink from democracy into autocracy. It doesn't happen overnight. We reported on this shift last March, focusing on a program which on its face seems perfectly reasonable, designed as it is to stimulate birth rate. The Hungarian government has taken over most private fertility clinics

and also gives away cash, loans, and even, get this, subsidies to buy minivans to young couples who become new parents. It's an effort, as the slogan goes, to keep hungry Hungarian. But peel back the layers and it reveals something else entirely. Social engineering designed to yield only a certain kind of Hungarian baby. Hungarian. But peel back the layers and it reveals something else entirely. Social engineering designed to yield only a certain kind of Hungarian baby. It's an almost relentlessly pleasant Saturday outside of Budapest. The Skansen Park has been transformed into a festival of good, clean, all-ages fun.

Balloons and comic books and piggybacks. It's the annual celebration sponsored by Hungary's Association of Large Families. And for the first time, there is a mass wedding. Five couples embarking on marriage in front of hundreds of their closest friends. Katalin Novak, Hungary's Minister of State for Family and Youth Affairs, is on hand as well, spreading the government's message of clan and country. It is good to share their joy, she says, which is why the government protects the marriage of man and woman, and why we protect the families and children in Hungary. She spearheads what is termed the Family Protection Action Plan.

This sweeping government program was unveiled last year at a cost of $2.5 billion. That's 5% of Hungary's GDP, four times what the country spends on military. The plan offers couples who have three kids a subsidy to get one of these minivans. I mean, the car sounds nice, but two, three kids, I mean, I think that's all we can handle right now. I mean, even in imaginary terms. It's not just minivans they're offering. Almost like a prize list at an arcade, the mere promise to have one child gets you a $30,000 loan. Rates are slashed after two kids and forgiven after three. Commit to having four kids or more? Mom doesn't have to pay income tax for life. Terms and conditions apply, and the plan isn't open to everyone. But it does address a huge problem that the country

faces, a low birth rate and the hemorrhaging of people. Hungary's population, now under 10 million, has declined for 37 straight years. It's a curious place, Hungary, a mix of Eastern and Western Europe. Its capital, Budapest, is a regal city divided by the Danube, Buda on one side and Pest on the other. It trades on its classic grandeur and nods to the past. Budapest has long been a city of sensual pleasures, and its thermal baths, taking the waters as it's called, has adjusted for the times. The place has a language and cuisine like no other. And for centuries, Hungary has been a sort of territorial football,

passed around among Turks and Germans, Habsburgs and Communists. After World War II, Hungary was part of the Soviet bloc. In 1989, Hungary set off a chain of events that brought down the Berlin Wall. In May, Hungary began cutting down the barbed wire, becoming the first East Bloc country with an open border. Hungary might have been the first country to puncture the Iron Curtain, but 30 years later, it is at the vanguard of the European Reich. So much so that Hungarians we asked struggled to characterize the country's current form of government. Do you not feel you're living in a democracy right now? Well, it's a tricky question because by law and regulation, it's a democratic country. Anna Donat is a Hungarian

member of the European Parliament and a leader of the Momentum Party, a political upstart which opposes the government that's now been in power for ten years. It would be too easy to say that it's a dictatorship. It's not. It's clearly not. We can say that it's an autocratic regime, but autocracy is a scale. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban certainly doesn't

see himself as an autocrat. He popularized a term to describe his regime, illiberal democracy. You heard that right, illiberal democracy. It's a system governed by a forceful ruler with a public that won't or can't

fall out of step. The European Union has deep concerns about Hungary's membership. It recently voted to sanction the country, accusing Orban of systematically rolling back democracy. And it has leveled charges that read like a sort of strongman's playbook. Redrawing voting districts, rewriting the Constitution, restricting freedom of speech, and stacking the courts. Orban's policies, though, have been delivered not as brutally forceful blows,

but as well-placed jabs, gradual, subtle, and arguably above the belt. Orban and his manipulative maneuvers provoke outrage among opponents, but also draw a measure of grudging respect. How do you describe Viktor Orban? He's a genius in one hand. Genius. He's a political strategist.

You take serious his power. Well, actually you can feel it in your skin in everyday life in Hungary. You feel his power. There is a higher power, a big brother watching you everywhere, listening to what you are saying. Orbán's creeping control is presented as reasonable public policy. On the face of it, the family protection plan does make it easier for families to have kids.

But it doesn't take much to shade into something darker. Just listen to the Speaker of Hungary's parliament at a conference last September. In Europe, those who propagate that having children is a private matter are serving the culture of death, he says. Countries with declining population are becoming houses of coffins and not cradles. That sounds very dystopian, very dramatic. Well, you're right, and it's absolutely horrifying. And me as a young woman who just got married and want to start a family,

I'm sorry, but I don't want to accept that my prime minister, my government, the state wants to tell me what kind of family and how I should start with, and they are actually blaming me that I'm 32 and I don't have a kid yet. Do you feel that? And they said that I'm supporting the culture of death, whatever it means.

Actually, this makes us really, really angry. And she highlights a glaring irony in all this. The same government that strenuously tries to boost population also goes to extraordinary lengths to keep non-Hungarians out. In 2015, hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants, most from the Middle East, passed through Hungary. They were told they were not welcome to stay. We must state that we do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed,

Orbán said in a speech last year. We do not want our color, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others. We do not want to be a diverse country. Peter Kreko, a social psychologist, is head of the Political Capital Institute, be mixed with those of others. We do not want to be a diverse country. Peter Kreko, a social psychologist, is head of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest think tank. He says that though Hungary is overwhelmingly white, Orban paints migrants as the enemy, a threat to Hungary's homogeneity. The story is being that refugees and migrants are all around. They are stabbing the people. They are raping the women. They are killing everyone. There is no rule of

law. How does this new family protection plan, how does that fit into Orbán's overall strategy? How does it fit in one sentence? We don't want migrants. We want Hungarian mothers to give birth to more children. This is how we want to solve the demographic crisis. For Prime Minister Orban, it reduces to a simple concept. Procreation, not immigration. He did what President Trump promised to do. In 2015, Orban slammed Hungary's gates shut, building essentially a border wall, a $500 million fence 180 miles long on the southern border with Serbia. Attention, attention. I'm warning you that you're at the Hungarian border.

Laszlo Torockai, the mayor of the small border border town of Schottholm, was one of the loudest voices urging the Hungarian government to erect the fence. When he got his wish, he became something of a populist cult hero. This is about preserving, we keep hearing, European values. What does that mean? The European culture, the European values are the classical music. Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, the European values. It goes beyond pleasures of the ear, though. He also objects to mixing tastes.

The foods, the European foods, for example, the doner kebab in Berlin, Budapest. I would like to eat the doner kebab in Istanbul. We're spending a half a billion dollars on a fence to keep out doner kebabs? You know, we need this border fence to preserve

our safe country. In the same town, we found Shandor Naj, who's part of the mayor's posse patrolling for migrants. You might think he would be precisely the kind of person to benefit from the family protection plan. After all, he and his wife moved from Budapest to raise their eight children in this pastoral paradise.

But he's excluded, not enough savings to qualify. This really helps families if they have enough capital and their own money, he says. But I think there are many families in the country who do not have their own basic capital, and the plan cannot help them. And they are not alone. Other Hungarians have found themselves ineligible because they are gay, unmarried, divorced. Read the fine print, and this becomes clear. The family protection plan only seeks to protect what the government sees as the right kinds of families. Prime Minister Orban seldom speaks to Western media,

but we did speak with Secretary of State Katalin Novak, who says the plan is entirely consistent with Hungarian values. We don't speak about not only preserving Western civilization, we also do say it openly that Christian culture we would like to preserve. That's the way of life in Europe, in Hungary, that we have a Christian way of life. When you hear your colleagues in government, including the prime minister, talk about ethnic homogeneity and the dangers of mixing blood and purity, can you see how people perhaps don't hear echoes of some of Europe's darker chapters in those remarks? It makes me upset because I think that means that people who have this interpretation

either don't really know what they're talking about or don't know Hungary. And you're saying there's no code in that. There's no code when we talk about keep Hungary Hungarian or pure Hungarians and we talk in terms of purity. There's no message. But again, you say pure Hungarian. We don't say that. We say keep Hungary Hungarian. That's true. We say that. While more than 100,000 couples have already taken advantage of the incentives,

it's too early to tell whether the family protection plan will actually be effective. Whether it will cause the desired population bounce or deepen a rift in Hungary, much like the Danube cleaves Budapest. Government statistics released last month indicate that from January to April of 2020, there was an increase of 5.5 percent in the number of babies born in Hungary. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. 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. Rodeo might just be America's original pastime. It started with an event called Saddle Bronc in the Old West. Today, there's one name that dominates Saddle Bronc, the Wrights. Like every

sport in America, rodeo has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. But when we first brought you this story in November, there were nine members of the Wright family riding the circuit, and they ranked among the best in the world. In a sport with plenty of wannabe cowboys, as you'll see and hear, the Wrights are the real deal, vestiges of the American frontier. Their lifestyle has prepared them for what's been called one of the last blue-collar sports in America. In Saddlebronk, there are no Tom Brady salaries, and there are regular injuries that would make running backs flinch. And yet none of that discourages the Wrights. Each generation seems to be better than the last.

Tonight, you'll meet America's first family of rodeo, competing for glory on horseback the Wright way. Anybody heard of the Wrights in the bronc riding? You may not have heard of the Wrights before. They are a Utah sensation. But at rodeos big and small across the country, like this one in Utah, that last name is as famous as Manning or Montana. And there are just about enough Wrights to field their own football team.

It is the Wright night at the rodeo. Nine professional cowboys with five world titles among them. There's Ryder Wright. Ryder. Come on, Ryder. The youngest world champion of all time and at 21 currently sitting in first place. Hey, we've been watching all of the Wrights. His uncle is this guy. All right. Spencer Wright, another world champion. That was incredible. Yeah, he did awesome.

And in a league of his own, Cody Wright, the one who started the family dynasty 20 years ago. And street fight! At 42, Cody's a two-time world champion and one of the best bronc riders ever. What's that feel like? Adrenaline, a little bit of fear, and you've got to learn how to control it,

you know, otherwise, you know, it would go to heck pretty quick. Here's Stetson, right! In saddle bronc... Flip! The goal is to hang on with style for eight seconds to a horse specially bred to buck you off. Can you explain to us what's going on in that eight seconds? Let's go to Cody Wright. You've got a rein you hang on to.

You need to lift on it because that's what holds you down in the saddle. When they jump and kick, you know, they're stretched out, their feet are off the ground. You want to be stretched out, you know, your free arms straight back and your feet set as high in the neck as you can get them. It's like one hell of a rocking horse. It can be the roughest ride in the world if you're out of time, or it can be the smoothest ride in the world. So are you kind of dancing with the horse?

I like to think you are. I dance a lot better with the horse than I do with my wife. I ain't got no rhythm. The Wrights and the Broncos they're randomly paired with are partners in the rodeo. Both have to perform well to get a good score from the judges. When it's go time, the Wrights, the sons and brothers, crowd around the chute like a NASCAR pit crew, helping each other saddle up. This is a team sport for you guys. I think so. I love it.

There's nobody I'd rather see do better, but don't think that I ain't trying to beat them. We all show up to the rodeo wanting to win first, but we're going to help each other do it, too. That's Jake Wright, Cody's younger brother and one of his toughest competitors. And, yes, there are more brothers. Jake's twin, Jesse, a brother-in-law, Coburn Bradshaw, plus Alex, Calvin, Stuart, and Spencer Wright. We're like a big support group. You know, there's ten of the best bronc riders in the world right here.

We all get together and practice. Everybody focused? And I know that's why we all have been so successful at what we do. All that practice has propelled them to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. It's the Cowboy Super Bowl. Spencer Wright, he's got a great ride going. And Team Wright has made it every year for the last decade and a half. Cody has won the champion's gold buckle twice.

He showed us that we could do it with a little hard work and a lot of try. If he would have never even pursued rodeo, I wonder what the rest of us would even be doing. What they're doing comes at a steep cost. While these horses are rarely injured, that can't be said for the rights. They all have the same orthopedic surgeon on speed dial. Can I see a show of hands of how many of you have been injured? So all of you have been injured. So all of you have been injured.

And two of you came into this interview on crutches. Three of us. Tell me some of the injuries. I think the worst was my back, when I broke my back in Omaha. Fractured my skull. I broke my nose about ten times. I broke all the sinuses on this right side of my face one time. I had a brain bleed. As far as injuries go, I think I'm one of the lucky ones sitting

here. Do you hear yourself? Brain bleed. Can you call that lucky? Hurts a lot less than heartache, Bill. But heartache won't land you in the hospital. The Wright boys are well aware every ride could be their last. Stewart came close. I said, let's go, and horse reared up and hit my head, kind of knocked me a little senseless, and I fell off into the arena. He just jumped straight up and fell completely on me. I thought it broke my back because I just felt my ribs pop as he landed on me. I was like, oh my gosh. As awful as that may sound, the Wrights say the hardest part of the job

is being away from home. What did they tell Alex last time he went to the doctor? They're on the road around 250 days a year, clocking 100,000 miles in these, what they call rodeo motels. This weekend you're going to Harrington and Fort Pierre or vice versa. Where they eat, sleep and drive from Canada to the Mexican border, chasing eight-second dreams. Do you sometimes feel like you're on the road more times than you're on a horse? You drive 22, 24 hours from home to there, and we're there an hour and turn around and drive them back. We drive for a living, ride bucking horses for fun.

Yeah. When they aren't on the road, home is southern Utah. They mostly grew up in Milford, a no-stop light town where the rights are the main attraction. They're a family of 13 kids, kept in

line by their parents, Bill and Evelyn. That's a huge family. It's a good-sized family. Kids are kind of moorish, you know. The more you get, the more you want. She trained the older ones to help the younger ones. I had to organize them. I'm like, I cannot do this on my own, or else it's going to be bad.

Because mom's going to grow bear hair, and you're not going to like it. All right, quit it. The Wright kids were cowboys playing cowboys and were natural ranch hands. It kept them out of Evelyn's hair and out of trouble. The seven boys and six girls knew how to ride a horse before they could pedal a bike. Some of the girls rodeoed too, but never went pro. They learned how to break horses early, how to ride and tame horses and train them.

I think you have to be a cowboy before you can be a rodeo cowboy. The ranch was their training ground. The family has been working this land at the edge of Zion National Park for more than a century and a half.

I'm five generations. Cody's six, and Rusty's seven, and his boy is eight generations. Bill, do you think the Wright family will be ranching this land in another 150 years? Well, I hope so. I really do. When you work as hard on something as I have at this, you don't want to see it just go away. What keeps their way of life going are rituals like this. Branding Day. day. Bill and his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gather every year to round up, vaccinate and brand their cattle. The hard work brings them together. It defines them on the ranch and in the arena. Dad's the first one to preach that you get out of it what you put into it,

and if he's seen you putting something into it, they were both behind you, and it didn't matter if they had to sell the farm, they was going to get you there. They sacrifice a lot for you to reach your dream. I think so. This cowboy gets emotional because he knows exactly how much his parents gave up when he was starting out in a family where money was tight. We went to Gillette, Wyoming to the national finals and I had like 10 kids. He comes back from the expo and he said, I bought Cody a saddle. I'm like, what? It was only $1,100.

I'm like, what? You did what? I started crying. He's like, we've got to help him. We've got to support him. He's going to lose his dream if we don't. What do you say to that? Well, thanks for coming.

These days, Cody may be living his dream, but it hasn't exactly made him rich, considering cowboys have to foot the bill for just about everything. I really like rodeos. If you're rodeoing full-time and going to 100 rodeos, you've got to make over $60,000 or $70,000 just to break even. So you could go through all this and go to a rodeo and walk away with nothing. Yeah, you could walk away in the red. Less than nothing.

Less than nothing. So surely there are easier ways to make a living. You'd think so. But better? I don't know. Still, the sport has taken a toll on Cody's body and his family. He's spending less time in the arena now and more time on the ranch. And in the practice pen, leading the next generation to carry on the right legacy. Son's rider, Rusty, Stetson, who are already rising stars,

and the youngest, Statler. We were there the day Cody coached his 16-year-old on his very first bronc ride. Statler, right there, lift hard and take a hold of him. Well, I was, like, super nervous until I got in there,

and then I just pretty much forgot about everything else but what my dad's taught me. Go on! Go on! Go on! Keep going, buddy. That ride, how'd that feel? I hurt my butt, actually, a lot.

But as soon as I hit the ground, I wanted to do it again. One Hall of Famer told us that you guys have the potential to be the best there ever was. I think we can do it, but really that's kind of... Humbling. Humbling, and he likes fire. A fire, they say, to win those gold buckles just like their dad, Cody. You know, I wanted a gold buckle, but to ride every horse the best I could was always what did it for me. You know, sure, I want money.

Who don't? You need it to go along, but I always just wanted to ride Bronx. It was striving to make that perfect ride, and, you know, the feeling that you feel when you're in time with a horse that's trying to get you off their back as hard as they can. Have you ever had a perfect ride? No, I've never had a perfect ride. When I make that perfect ride, I'm going to be done. After our story aired, the family added one more world championship to its collection. Stetson Wright

won his first gold buckle for all-around cowboy at the National Finals Rodeo in December. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.