Bad medicine: Betrayal and assault on the trail of Nathan Chasing Horse

The Press Democrat left email, phone or online messages for eight of those people. Two of them responded — Amy Chasing Horse, his younger sister, and Shya Chasing Horse, who changed her name after becoming close to Nathan. Both said they could not comment at this time.

“Many blessings to you,” Amy Chasing Horse added in a Facebook message to a reporter, along with praying-hands and heart emojis.

While Nathan Chasing Horse’s arrest and prosecution have gained wide attention, this is the first time many details of his purported methods — and his strong ties to Santa Rosa — have been reported. He visited this area as recently as 2019, sources said.

Over the past two months, The Press Democrat examined police documents, listened to podcasts and TV interviews, combed the internet for clues on online message boards and spoke to nearly a dozen people who know Chasing Horse.

Some of them are still asking questions whose answers have been elusive.

Like, why did it take so long to see through him? Why did tribal communities prove to be such fertile ground? And how was this man, this former star child actor, able to move about freely for years, even as word of his abuses echoed across Indian Country?

A movie star at 13

Until recently, the first Google hit on Nathan Chasing Horse was always about his role in “Dances With Wolves.”

He is a member of the Sicangu, one of seven bands of Teton Lakota. Chasing Horse grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, in lower South Dakota. In 1989, the per capita annual income at Rosebud was $4,005; adjusted for inflation, that’s $9,870 a year.

It was a dazzling opportunity for Chasing Horse when he was cast that year as the fierce, headstrong Indian boy who befriends Kevin Costner’s Lt. John Dunbar character in “Dances With Wolves.”

He is credited as Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse in the film.

The Smiles a Lot role led to a few others, but an acting career never really panned out. At some point, Chasing Horse threw his charisma into leading traditional ceremonies, sweat lodges and dayslong Sun Dances.

He and his crew drove a winding circuit, from Bear Butte State Park in South Dakota, up to the Tsuut’ina Nation in Alberta, Canada, and to British Columbia, down to Los Angeles and Navajo territory in Arizona.

And many stops in between, including Sonoma County.

“We traveled 80,000 miles a year,” said Fernando Trujillo, a singer at Chasing Horse’s ceremonies from 2006-2014. Singers, also known as helpers, carry hot stones into sweats, sing traditional songs and perform other types of ceremonial support.

Trujillo considered himself Mexican American growing up in Southern California. But he gravitated to the image he had of American Indian culture, and especially to the ways of the Lakota tribe.

Trujillo jumped at the chance when Chasing Horse offered to take him on the road in 2006.

“When I saw singers, I knew then that’s what I wanted to do,” said Trujillo, 48, who lives on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana.

“You’ve got to understand, from the age of 18 to 28, before I met Nathan, I was spiritually hungry to learn. And that’s how everybody is in that circle. They’re seeking something.”

Chasing Horse proved particularly magnetic, sources said, to people who were lacking strong social attachments. Some had difficult home lives, or drug or alcohol problems. Others were simply mesmerized by this respected, well-known leader.

To the young and eager, Chasing Horse offered “an archive and a repertoire of Native ceremony and connection,” said the Sonoma County rape survivor — a method of learning the old ways they hadn’t been exposed to as children.

But, as public records, investigations and accounts from former associates revealed, he was never everything he appeared to be.

One time, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2013, according to Trujillo, Chasing Horse asked him to shake a rattle in the darkness of an upcoming ceremony — a small piece of deception to create the appearance of a visitation by a long-dead grandfather.

Trujillo refused, but Chasing Horse found others to shake the rattles.

Ancestors do sometimes speak or move objects during ceremonies, several tribal sources told The Press Democrat, including Trujillo. What gnaws at some of Chasing Horse’s former acolytes now is how he cheapened the power of those moments.

“The one thing I maintain to this day, my way of life didn’t do this to me,” the Sonoma County woman said. “It was a man who took this way of life and twisted it.”

Seven wives

At one point in their travels, Chasing Horse announced to his ceremonial helpers that he was bringing back a Lakota tradition: polygamy.

“He said, ‘Because Sitting Bull had five wives. Crazy Horse had multiple wives,’ all of that,” Trujillo recalled. “We couldn’t say nothing to those things. Because Sitting Bull did have that. But that was a time of survival. It wasn’t for his ego.”

Chasing Horse’s first wife had been traveling with him and five helpers. Now, the men were told, they’d have to add a second vehicle because Chasing Horse would be accompanied by two wives.

The roster of women would grow. The January arrest report mentions six wives. Other sources familiar with Chasing Horse’s household told The Press Democrat it’s seven.

They could make quite an entrance, whether it was a religious ceremony or a roadside convenience store they was striding into. Chasing Horse would lead, trailed by his women — all of them walking in single file.

He and his entourage radiated Indigenous pride. They knew the ancient songs and prayers, and how to embroider with beads and porcupine quills.

There were admiring men around Chasing Horse, too. But they quickly learned strict rules regarding the women.

“No man in his circle could ever look at his wives,” Trujillo said. “If they were coming, you had to look straight to the ground. Or else, he said, you’d go blind.”

Other sources described the prohibition similarly.

Chasing Horse’s arrest declaration, filed by the Las Vegas Metro Police, says some of these women became involved with Chasing Horse, then introduced their young daughters to the fold — girls who would later “marry” him in extralegal covenants when they turned 16.

“They used to call him Uncle Nate,” said a Santa Rosa man who attended many ceremonies guided by Chasing Horse, and who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by his followers. “And then it became, ‘Oh, husband Nate.’”

Some insist he has victims not mentioned in the Las Vegas arrest report.

Marina Crane, a member of the Tsuut’ina Nation just west of Calgary, claims Chasing Horse sexually assaulted at least five girls there in 2007 after he was done filming the TV movie “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” an adaptation of Dee Brown’s iconic book.

That includes Crane’s step niece, Roberta, who began having sex with Chasing Horse when she was 15, Crane said. After finally giving up on the notion that Chasing Horse was in love with her, Roberta reported the sexual abuse to Calgary police in 2010, according to Crane.

But nothing came of it.

So Crane used the blog she maintained at the time to sound the alarm. And she began getting emails and texts from women all over North America who reported they, too, had been raped by the self-proclaimed medicine man.

Crane said she heard from survivors in Arizona, Saskatchewan, Fort Peck and Rapid City, South Dakota.

Roberta, who suffered from mental health issues and spent time in the foster care system, died a year ago from a drug overdose. Another of Crane’s nieces, now in her early 50s, spent 17 years with Chasing Horse and didn’t leave until a couple months ago, the Tsuut’ina woman said.

Crane is 71. She is deeply immersed in advocating for Indigenous women and girls — 5,712 of whom were reported missing just in the United States in 2016, according to the National Crime Information Center. Crane is tired of seeing them in peril.

“We’re the most hunted of all the females in America,” she said.

A bill for ceremonies

The “Bury My Heart” project was probably Chasing Horse’s biggest acting opportunity after “Dances With Wolves.” Much of it was shot around Calgary in late 2006.

Chasing Horse conducted five tribal ceremonies during the shoot, said Crane, who served as a language consultant on the film.

What first struck her as odd, she said 16 years later, was that the actor was charging $5,000 per ceremony. It is traditional among many North American tribes to support medicine men. But that usually means providing shelter and meals, and often gas money to and from the site of the ritual.

A price tag is an oddity, Crane said.

Money was never far from Chasing Horse’s mind, several sources said.

“He would call people from his circle and tell them he was stranded,” Trujillo said. “That he and his crew had to fast because they had no money. People would come together and raise money and send it to him. Only for him to go to the casino.”

Several other people interviewed for this story brought up that ruse, as well as Chasing Horse’s gambling habit. “I’ve seen him blow $10,000 at the craps table,” Trujillo said. “I also saw him make money.”

Sources said Chasing Horse wore $5,000 rings, drove expensive SUVs and received so many gifts he would toss some in the trash, still in their packaging. According to his Jan. 31 arrest report, he gave one of his underage victims “lavish gifts” that included clothes, an iPad and a cellphone.

And then there is the Steven Seagal story, a popular one on Indian Country forums.

Trujillo confirmed details: Chasing Horse once sold a ceremonial pipe to the Hollywood action star, telling him it had belonged to Rain-in-the-Face — a famed Lakota warrior who fought against U.S. Lt. Col. George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.

“When Nathan unveiled this pipe, Steven Seagal held it like he was holding a baby — very respectful,” Trujillo recalled. “Nathan said to us, ‘You boys wait outside.’ That’s when I knew a cash transaction would take place. And you don’t sell things like that.”

Not long after, though, Seagal started blowing up Chasing Horse’s phone. He had discovered the pipe was a modern fake.

Seagal is currently living in Russia, where he recently received an Order of Friendship medal from Vladimir Putin.

Chasing Horse perverted sacred traditions in many ways, Trujillo said. It took the singer years to catch on, because he was not Lakota.

“And nobody else was Lakota, either, but his mom, his dad, his brothers and sisters and maybe a small handful of people around him,” Trujillo said. “That was his tactic. Because then no one would question what he was doing.”

Worse-kept secret in Indian Country

When Chasing Horse was arrested by Vegas police, his ties to “Dances With Wolves” made it national news. Based on reader comments on digital sites and in social media channels, people were shocked at the lurid revelations and cult allegations.

Except in Indian Country.

That’s where the abuses of Nathan Chasing Horse had been whispered, or at times openly shouted, for years.

The public rumblings go back at least to 2011, on a pair of blogs that hosted Q&A’s about Chasing Horse. The author of one of those blogs was Crane, the Tsuut’ina woman.

“Nathan does great ceremony,” one commenter wrote to her. “I was impressed at first. Then I watched as he took my friend’s daughter as one of his wives. He did this in a very bad way. A lot of pain was left behind in her family.”

On the other blog, called theworldissmallernowbuyerbeaware, readers who had seen Chasing Horse in action took the ceremonial leader to task for wearing a wapaha, an eagle-feather headdress they insisted he had not earned.

One wrote that if he were truly a sacred figure, he “would be back here helping the Lakota people. But he don’t -- he just around chasing young girls.”

Things began to blow up in July 2015, when the Fort Peck Journal published a story about tribal leaders on the vast Montana reservation voting to banish Chasing Horse based on “safety-related” worries.

The Journal said the tribal council reported “incidents of alleged sexual abuse, human trafficking, threats to tribal members, intimidation, guns being used to keep tribal members out of ceremonies, and disrespecting the land on and around where the Sundance was previously held.”

When the paper posted its account on Facebook, a trickle of responses turned into a deluge as dozens of commenters accused Chasing Horse of financial fraud, spiritual trickery and sex crimes.

There were other excoriating comment boards, attached to other blogs and chats.

The one that seemed like a potentially devastating blow to Chasing Horse landed in September 2016. It was delivered by Chaske Spencer, a more successful actor best known for playing Sam Uley (the shape-shifting werewolf) in the “Twilight” franchise.

In a long, angry denouncement, Spencer said he had danced at Sun Dance with Chasing Horse, but was eventually disgusted by the deceit and womanizing. When Spencer left the circle, he said, Chasing Horse threatened his family.

“A couple of days ago, a young woman reached out to me asking for my help,” Spencer continued. “ … She told what she had gone through with him. The spiritual abuse. The sex abuse. The fear tactics he uses to keep his followers in line. And, I got pissed. I regret not doing this earlier.”

Despite the Mounting alarm, Chasing Horse continued to guide ceremonies.

‘Native people do not trust the police’

There were a few attempts to alert authorities along the way.

According to Crane, she went to Tsuut’ina tribal police when her young step-niece, Roberta, became involved with Chasing Horse. They advised Crane to contact Chasing Horse directly, a response she considers outrageous.

And after she connected with a Sioux attorney who said her niece had been assaulted by Chasing Horse, Crane recalled, she got a call from Rapid City police. But as far as Crane knows, he was never charged or arrested for that incident.

A representative of the Rapid City Police Department told The Press Democrat they are prohibited from confirming Chasing Horse’s name in official records.

In truth, it appears few of his victims ever initiated legal complaints. Most were teenagers. It would have been daunting to confront this powerful man and his zealous following.

Crane and others argued that you can’t understand the reluctance without discussing the trauma inflicted on Native communities in North America — centuries of forced relocation, slavery and indentured servitude, neglect, murder, systemic racism and cultural genocide.

“You have the Indian residential schools in Canada. At least 10,000 unmarked graves of children,” Crane said. “So Native people in Canada do not trust the police. The people on circuit with Nathan Chasing Horse are afraid of the police.”

Matching spider tattoos

As criticism mounted, Chasing Horse’s circle hardened. The women got matching spider tattoos at his urging, the arrest declaration alleged. Chasing Horse taught them how to use guns and suggested they shoot it out with authorities, or kill themselves, if the house were ever raided.

It was deceptively easy for people to fall into that life, the Sonoma County rape survivor argued.

“Everything being divulged now happened extremely slowly, over decades,” she said.

“No one chooses that. So you find a lot of people who are disconnected, or who are extremely vulnerable and looking for wholeness. When they feel like they find that, they don’t want to leave.”

Chasing Horse warned his followers that if they turned against him, terrible things would happen to family members, Trujillo said — presumably conjured by his spiritual powers. That idea worries people as much as any physical threats, several sources concurred.

A man who lives in Santa Rosa and attended many ceremonies guided by Chasing Horse (and who requested anonymity because he is reluctant to be called into court cases) can’t understand how anyone remains tethered to him after all that has come to light.

“It’s like you see a fire, and you know it’s hot. Are you gonna stick your hand in it?” he said.

“How do you in your right state of mind — they’re not on drugs. And they’re not dumb people. I just don’t get it. Maybe they’re so far deep into it, they don’t want feel like what they see is not right.”

The walls close in

Chasing Horse was banished from both Tsuut’ina and Fort Peck in 2015. He also had two judgments against him for failure to pay child support, in Rapid City in 2005 and Los Angeles County in 2011.

Generally, though, Chasing Horse skated by without major repercussion for years.

The walls finally closed in over the past few months. The Las Vegas police began an investigation in October 2022, and multiple other jurisdictions soon followed.

According to the arrest report, when police raided Chasing Horse’s home in North Las Vegas, they found child pornography filmed by the accused, unsecured firearms, loaded ammunition magazines, drugs and an assortment of bald eagle parts, which are illegal to possess.

Chasing Horse’s jury trial has been postponed indefinitely, pending his appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court to dismiss all charges against him.

Holston, his attorney, argued that the charges are “legally insufficient,” in part because prosecutors failed to present evidence that the women, or girls, central to the investigation did not consent to sex.

In addition, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police issued a warrant against him Feb. 2 for sexual assault related to a September 2018 incident in Keremeos, British Columbia, a small village associated with the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. Around the same time, prosecutors with the Fort Peck Tribes charged him with one count of aggravated assault in connection with a 2005 rape.

On June 8, the Tsuut’ina Police Service issued an arrest warrant for Chasing Horse, supported by Alberta Prosecution Services, on three counts of sexual exploitation, four counts of sexual assault, one count of sexual interference with a person under the age of 16 and one count of removal of a child under 16 from Canada.

Chasing Horse is also banned from each of the 74 First Nations in the province of Saskatchewan.

The Sonoma County rape survivor, for one, hopes she never sees Chasing Horse free.

She said she never went to police, allowing herself to believe Chasing Horse may have made a terrible, one-time mistake, and that he was contrite. And initiating a legal case would have alienated people she was close to, she said, because at that time they were still in allegiance to him.

The woman still feels pangs of guilt, knowing she might have prevented harm to other young women if she had come forward earlier.

She questions whether the women who lived with him and introduced him to victims should suffer consequences of their own. At the same time, she believes these women are victims, as well as perpetrators, and that they’re likely bound not by love or spiritual attachment, but by fear.

“At this point, if there are mothers that are still supporting this man, then they should be held accountable,” the Sonoma County woman said.

“But I also wonder how many people there are secretly hoping some opportunistic moment will arrive, and they can be free.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.