NORTH LAS VEGAS (AP) — Former ‘Dances With Wolves’ actor faces at least five felony charges for allegedly sexually abusing Indigenous girl He is scheduled to face a judge for the first time in the case on Thursday.
Charges against 46-year-old Nathan Chasing Horse may include sex trafficking and sexual assault, according to court records. Clark County prosecutors have not said when they will formally indict him or if they will pursue further charges.
Las Vegas police arrested Chasing Horse this week It follows a months-long investigation into an alleged abuse that authorities said spanned 20 years.
He remained in custody at Clark County Jail without bail Wednesday night on charges of sexual assault. There is a possibility
Best known for his role as Smiles-a-Lot, a young Sioux member in the Oscar-winning Kevin Costner film, Chasing Horse is a so-called medicine man who performs healing ceremonies among tribes across the United States and Canada. gained popularity among
According to the arrest warrant, he is believed to be the leader of a cult known as The Circle, and has strong support from those who believe he can communicate with higher powers.
Police said he abused his position, physically and sexually assaulted indigenous girls and women, took an underage wife, and led a cult. He was arrested outside the home he shares with his five wives near Las Vegas.
Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Sikung Sioux, one of the seven Lakota tribes.
According to a 50-page search warrant obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday, Chasing Horse trained his wife in the use of firearms and instructed her to “shoot with police officers if they try to tear the family apart.” If that failed, the wife was to take “suicide pills.”
He was taken into custody when he left his home in North Las Vegas. SWAT officers were seen outside the two-story house in the evening while detectives searched the property.
Police found a firearm, 41 pounds (18.5 kilograms) of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms, and a memory card containing multiple videos of the sexual assault, according to an arrest report released Wednesday.
Additional charges could be filed in connection with the video of the underage girl, according to the report.
Court records did not list an attorney available to comment on his behalf, and the Las Vegas Police Department said Chasing Horse “couldn’t” conduct a jail interview on Wednesday.
Las Vegas police said in a search warrant that investigators had identified at least six sexual assault victims, one of whom was 13 when he claimed he was abused. Sexual allegations were traced to the early 2000s in Canada and in multiple provinces, including South Dakota, Montana, and Nevada, where he lived for about a decade.
Police say one of Chasing Horse’s wives was given to him as a “gift” when he was 15 and the other became his wife when he was 16. he.
His arrest comes nearly a decade after he was expelled from the Fort Peck Reservation in Poplar, Montana amid allegations of human trafficking.
Fort Peck tribal leaders voted 7 to 0 in 2015 to ban the Chasing Horse from ever setting foot on the reservation again.
Angeline Cheek, an activist and community organizer who has lived on the Fort Peck Reservation for most of her life, vividly remembers the tension that arose inside the council chamber when Chasing Horse was expelled. .
“Some of Nathan’s supporters told members that something bad was going to happen,” Cheek told The Associated Press. “They threatened our elders sitting in the council room. Did.”
Cheek said he remembers Chasing Horse frequenting the reservation as a child, especially when he was in high school in the early 2000s.
Cheek, now 34, believes Chasing Horse’s arrest will encourage more Indigenous girls and women to report crimes and urge lawmakers and elected officials across the country to make addressing violence against Indigenous peoples a priority. I would like to encourage
However, she also hopes that the news of the crime does not detract from the pharmacist’s cultural importance.
“There are good medicine men and medicine women among our people who don’t want to commercialize the sacred ways of their ancestors,” she said. am.”
