This is an image of Spy Boy Walter, a Mardi Gras Indian and a proud member of the Beautiful Creole Apache tribe in New Orleans. I captured this photograph of him at night, and during our conversation, he asked me if I knew what spy boys do. When I replied no, he simply said, 'They lead.' Black Masking Indians hold a vital place in New Orleans culture, emerging from the displacement of Afro-Indigenous peoples as an expression of resilience and a deep effort to reconnect with ancestral memory.