By Aliza Chasan, Nichole Marks and Emily Cameron
April 5, 2026 / 7:00 PM EDT / CBS News
Big Chief Demond Melancon is so devoted to creating the elaborate, beaded suits he wears on Mardi Gras that the craft once cost him his home. Melancon is part of New Orleans’ Black Masking tradition, better known as the Mardi Gras Indians. Organized into “tribes,” members roam historically Black neighborhoods on Mardi Gras day, chanting and staging ritual confrontations — friendly but fierce — to determine whose suit is the prettiest.
The culture is passed down through generations. Tribe members spend thousands of hours and often thousands of dollars over a year sewing tiny beads, plumes and rhinestones onto canvas, all to preserve a practice historians trace to the 1800s. This year Melancon’s outfit reached 10 feet tall, weighed about 120 pounds and required a U-Haul to transport.
Putting on a suit is transformative. “I become somebody that’s ready to honor everything that I was taught by my elders,” Melancon said. “And I’m ready to kill you dead with a needle and thread.” The tribe battles are both competitions of artistry and expressions of deeper history and resistance.
Despite the name, Mardi Gras Indians are not Native American tribes, though many members say they have Indigenous ancestry. There’s no single origin story, but references to the practice go back to the mid-1800s. Oral histories say that when enslaved people escaped in Louisiana, Native Americans in the bayous sheltered them. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition is often described as a tribute to those Indigenous people while also celebrating African heritage.
Howard Miller, president of the Mardi Gras Indian Council and big chief of the Creole Wild West, says the culture grew out of resistance to oppression. “Here in America, especially here in the South, everything about Africa was forbidden. So we went behind our masks as Indians to practice our culture,” he said. For much of the 20th century, many of New Orleans’ famous Mardi Gras krewes were segregated; the tribes continued to march through their neighborhoods rather than on parade routes. Miller describes the tradition as grounded in community and a way to uplift people proudly.
Much of the work happens out of public view. The making of a suit is secretive — only tribe members are allowed into the spaces where designs are planned and stitched. Miller recalls wanting to join a tribe at 12 and waiting six weeks outside a big chief’s house, first at the gate and then on the porch, watching through windows until a storm and a chief’s invitation finally let him in. Today he is a big chief. Each tribe has roles: the big chief leads, the spy boy scouts and scouts ahead, the flag boy carries the tribe’s banner, the wild man clears space, and the big queen holds the group together.
The suits themselves are extravagant: plumed, bejeweled, beaded and sequined. They’re handcrafted in secret over a year and worn only a few times. Melancon and his wife, Alicia Winding, stitched beads the size of chia seeds onto canvas and used dental floss to set rhinestones. The work left Melancon’s fingers swollen from punctures. “I sew from 6 in the morning to 12 at night,” he said. “Without these beads, I couldn’t breathe.”
Melancon says he’s driven by community. The beaded panels on this year’s suit, he said, depicted the story of the Amistad — the 1839 slave ship whose captive Africans seized control and fought for their freedom, a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. He believes that when he wears the suit, the spirits of his ancestors come down “to walk in their shoes on the streets of New Orleans like they taught us.” For him, sewing preserves a legacy so future generations can follow the same path.
That preservation exacts a personal cost. Melancon once worked laying concrete and cooking lobsters while pouring spare time and money into his suits; he lost a home because of the expense. He now supports himself as an artist. His suits and beaded portraits have been shown in museums and galleries worldwide, and his work is slated for the Venice Biennale next month.
Melancon hopes his success will inspire young people to keep the tradition alive. Time and money are obstacles, and neighborhoods that historically supported the tribes were dispersed by Hurricane Katrina and have faced gentrification. Joseph Pierre Boudreaux, known as Big Chief Monk of the Golden Eagles Tribe, is determined to maintain the culture and community. In the 1970s he was one of the first to record the tribes’ chants combined with New Orleans funk, earning two Grammy nominations and, his son says, influencing every local suit-maker’s soundtrack.
Boudreaux, now 84, has sewn and beaded for his children and grandchildren for decades. His family helped him with his suit this year. Though he was too weak to march after a recent cancer diagnosis, crowds gathered outside his home on Mardi Gras morning as he sent the tribe off with a song. He urged the community not to let the tradition fade: “If you don’t keep it going, if you lose it, it’s gone forever, it’s finished,” he said. “And that thing just disappear? Not here in New Orleans.”
