You can run on for a long time…
Nathan Chasing Horse got run off the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana back in 2015 after the tribal council alleged that the purported Lakota spiritual leader engaged in human trafficking, drug dealing, spiritual abuse and intimidation of tribal members.
Chasing Horse, best known for his role as Smiles A Lot in Dances With Wolves, ran on for another seven years or so — but it looks like his trail has run out. Per Associated Press:
NORTH LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas police on Tuesday arrested and raided the home of a former “Dances With Wolves” actor turned alleged cult leader accused of sexually assaulting young Indigenous girls during a period spanning two decades, according to police records obtained by The Associated Press.
Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, who goes by Nathan Chasing Horse, was taken into custody in the afternoon near the North Las Vegas home he is said to share with his five wives. SWAT officers were seen outside the two-story home in the evening as detectives searched the property.
Known for his role as the young Sioux tribe member Smiles a Lot in the Oscar-winning Kevin Costner film, Chasing Horse gained a reputation among tribes across the United States and in Canada as a so-called medicine man who performed healing ceremonies and spiritual gatherings and, police allege, used his position to abuse young Native American girls.
The allegations are really sordid — with victims as young as 13. The arrest warrant indicates that Chasing Horse may have recorded sex acts with young girls, and pimped them out to other men, all with the spiritual imprint of what he called “The Circle.”
A local radio station reports that Chasing Horse supplied suicide pills to his wives and was prepared to resist any police raid — but yesterday’s action went off without incident.
Matthew says
Horrible.
There are sociopaths who use status, like celebrity and as spiritual leaders, to prey on people. It seems to be a problem with a lot involved in hollywood. There was NXIVM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXIVM
And actor Ezra Miller, who’s abuse victims include a Native American activist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Miller
It’s really disturbing how common these things are. I wish I could think of a possible solution, but the only thing that I can is that people have to be more wary.
Quixotic Mainer says
Whoa. That got dark quickly. Unfortunately, I feel like cults are going to be doing more business due to the existential bankruptcy that our age commonly has.
Glad the raid was solid though, and none of those he had in thrall got hurt.
JimC says
The SWAT unit did their job well. We don’t hear enough about that end of the LE business — how often things go well when they could have gone to hell in a second. We had a burg here in Sisters two weeks ago where a guy broke into a business with a hatchet. Still had the hatchet when sheriff’s deputies arrived and confronted him. Could have gone badly — arrest was made without incident. I feel badly for the men and women out there every day doing a hard job well who get tarred by horrible shit like what went down in Memphis.
Quixotic Mainer says
A mentor once said of the profession; “You win in obscurity, but you fail on the front page.” Outfits that employ incompetent brutes certainly don’t help skew the crystal ball of things either.
A hatchet burglary is pretty spicy though, by anyone’s standards!
David Wrolson says
One thing that bothers me about the trope in shows like Longmire, Wind River and Yellowstone-among others is the idea that the perps against young native girls are usually white oil field workers.
OTOH, I have long suspected that the main perps in the epidemic of violence facing young native girls and women are those with the closest and easiest access to those girls. IE fellow tribe members.
Just an opinion, anyway.
JimC says
I have thought the same thing. I find it disconcerting that the tribal government took action on this guy seven years ago, and yet he was able to continue unchecked. I will be following this and I hope some really in-depth reporting gets done.
Matthew says
I may be wrong, but believe that tribal governments have very little power to punish which hampers their ability to punish offenders.
lane batot says
I just got in a lengthy discussion recently with another Facebook friend regarding a meme villifying Buffalo Bill and his exploitation of the Indians. Although certainly not appropo to today’s standards, I tried to point out the Indians that joined B. Bill’s Wild West Show did so of their own choice–they were NOT “forced” to–had to audition for it, in many cases, in fact, and competition could be stiff! Some Indians hated the experience and only did one tour–others loved it and re-enlisted repeatedly! One of the negative points brought up was how some Indians died on the tours(so dds some whites), and some got left behind. I was going to add some info from Luther Standing Bear, the Lakota interpreter who was put “in charge” of many of the Indians, and the difficulty he had trying to wrangle Natives that were constantly sneaking off to get drunk while abroad–blatantly against the production’s rules–so no wonder some got left behind! But I never got this point in there, because the whole conversation got deleted(sigh…..) Seems it is just too popular to vilify characters in history, based on today’s standards, and with the story skewed to boot. By Luther Standing Bear’s own account(in “My People The Sioux”) Buffalo Bill did everything he could to favor and accommodate his Indian performers, but how easily that is forgotten when people want to judge something from the past by today’s standards, and using a biased perspective that doesn’t even tell the whole story(Paul Harvey would have had NONE of that!)