A Nevada judge sentenced Nathan Chasing Horse to life in prison on Monday for sexually assaulting Indigenous women and girls, bringing a long-running case against the former actor and self-styled medicine man to a grim close in one courtroom. He will be eligible for parole after serving 37 years.
Chasing Horse, 49, continued to deny the charges against him as Judge Jessica Peterson imposed the sentence after a jury convicted him of 13 charges, mostly tied to the sexual assault of three women. Peterson said he preyed on the women’s trust and spirituality and manipulated them for his own personal gratification.
For Corena Leone-LaCroix, the sentence could not restore what she said was taken from her when she was 14 and assaulted by Chasing Horse. She told the court that no punishment could give back the years that followed, saying there was no way to recover her childhood, her first kiss or the graduation she never got to have, and adding that the life that little girl could have lived had been taken forever.
The punishment in Nevada capped a yearslong effort to prosecute Chasing Horse after he was first arrested and indicted in 2023, but it did not end the wider legal fight around him. British Columbia prosecutors charged him with sexual assault in February 2023 over an alleged offense in September 2018 near Keremeos, and that case paused in November 2023 because of the U.S. charges before resuming the following year.
A warrant against Chasing Horse also remains outstanding in Alberta, and the Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service said it is in contact with the Alberta Crown Prosecutors Office about it. British Columbia prosecutors have said they will assess next steps after his appeals are exhausted, leaving more proceedings ahead even after the Nevada sentence.
Chasing Horse, born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, was once known to movie audiences as the young Sioux tribe member Smiles a Lot in Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves. Nevada prosecutors said he used that reputation, along with his role as a Lakota medicine man, to prey on Indigenous women and girls.
The case now turns to the unresolved matters in Canada and elsewhere, where other criminal charges are still pending. In that sense, Monday’s sentence answered one part of the case and left the broader reckoning for later.
