Nathan Chasing Horse, the actor known for his role as Smiles a Lot in Kevin Costner’s 1990 Oscar-winning film “Dances with Wolves,” was sentenced to 37 years to life in prison on Monday, April 27, 2026, by District Judge Jessica Peterson in a Las Vegas courtroom.
He is 49 years old. He will not be eligible for parole until he has served 37 years, meaning the earliest he could walk free is at 86. He is required to register as a sex offender.
Before sentencing, he told the judge the proceedings were “a miscarriage of justice.” Then Peterson told him what she thought.
“You preyed on these women’s trusts and their spirituality, and you manipulated them for your own personal gratification,” she said before announcing his sentence. When the hearing ended, more than a dozen people in the courtroom began to clap.
The Conviction And What The Trial Showed
A Clark County jury convicted Chasing Horse on January 30, 2026, finding him guilty of 13 of the 21 counts filed against him, including 10 counts of sexual assault on a minor under the age of 16. He was acquitted on 8 charges. The trial lasted approximately one week.
The Las Vegas case centered on three victims. Two of them were children when Chasing Horse assaulted them.
During the trial, prosecutors played a video showing Chasing Horse recording himself while sexually abusing one of the child victims. The evidence was described as disturbing by those present in the courtroom.
Chief Deputy District Attorney William Rowles acknowledged during closing statements that the North Las Vegas Police Department had initially failed the second alleged victim when she first tried to report the assault, in 2014, a decade before the case ever reached trial.
Chasing Horse has been in custody since his arrest in January 2023. He has denied all the allegations throughout.
What The Victims Said
The sentencing hearing gave victims the floor, and what they said was not abstract.
It was specific and it was personal and it was delivered in a packed courtroom to a man who sat staring straight ahead throughout.
Corena Leone-LaCroix was 14 years old when Chasing Horse assaulted her. She addressed him and the judge directly.
“There is no way to get back the youth, the childhood loss, my first time, my first kiss, the graduation I never got to have,” she said.
Siera Begaye, another victim, delivered a statement about what it meant to survive what was done to her.
“Instead of being allowed to grow into my own person, he tried to shape me into something for his own desire and control,” she told the court. She did not stop there. “I am still here,” she said.
“For a long time, I stayed silent. Today, I’m speaking for myself and for those who deserve protection.
The trauma Nathan caused will stay with me for the rest of my life but will not define the rest of my life.” Begaye’s mother Lynnette Adams also delivered a victim impact statement.
Prosecutors asked the court to ensure each victim was represented separately and distinctly in the sentence, that each woman’s trauma be acknowledged as its own, rather than folded into a single accounting. Judge Peterson agreed with that approach.
How Did Chasing Horse Do It?
The mechanism of the abuse is central to understanding why the case reverberated the way it did.
Chasing Horse presented himself publicly as a Lakota medicine man, a spiritual leader with authority rooted in Indigenous tradition. His followers, known as “The Circle,” organized themselves around that authority.
Prosecutors argued at trial that he weaponized that role systematically, exploiting cultural traditions and spiritual beliefs as tools of predation.
He did not simply commit crimes. He built a structure of trust and then violated it at its most intimate level.
Judge Peterson named this directly in her remarks before sentencing. “You preyed on these women’s trusts and their spirituality,” she said.
Her framing was not about the specific acts alone but about the exploitation of something sacred, the relationship between a spiritual leader and the people who trusted him.
That exploitation, she made clear, was what she held most significant in the evidence before her.
The trial unfolded in a larger context that the verdict has deepened rather than closed. Violence against Native women and girls has been described by advocates, law enforcement and federal authorities as one of the most chronically underreported and under-prosecuted categories of crime in the United States.
The second alleged victim in this case tried to report Chasing Horse’s assault in 2014 and was turned away.
She had to wait more than a decade for the legal system to catch up to what she told it.
The sentencing represents the conclusion of one legal chapter, but the advocates who have followed this case closely describe it as more prologue than epilogue for the broader issue.
The Arrest That Changed Things
Chasing Horse was first arrested and indicted in North Las Vegas in January 2023. The arrest did not go quietly. It reverberated, in the description of those covering Indian Country, through Native communities across the United States and Canada. Law enforcement in Montana and Canada reopened cases and issued warrants.
Chasing Horse currently faces outstanding warrants in both jurisdictions. Cases that had been filed, delayed or dismissed were reconsidered in the wake of the Las Vegas arrest.
The Las Vegas conviction and sentence do not resolve those outstanding matters.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson addressed the sentencing outcome in direct terms.
“This outcome reflects the strength of the victims who came forward, the tireless work of law enforcement, and all others involved,” he said. “My office remains committed to protecting the most vulnerable members of our community.”
Who Was Nathan Chasing Horse?
Chasing Horse grew up on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota Nation.
He became widely known at a young age for his role as Smiles a Lot — a young Lakota boy, in “Dances with Wolves,” Kevin Costner’s 1990 film that won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.
The film was notable at the time for its prominent use of Native American actors and its attempt to depict Lakota culture with more nuance than Hollywood had historically attempted. It remains one of the most seen depictions of Indigenous life in American cinema.
That visibility, earned in a film celebrated for representing Indigenous people, became part of how Chasing Horse built his reputation as a medicine man and community figure.
The distance between Smiles a Lot and the person described in the Las Vegas courtroom is the distance the victims and their families have had to carry.
He is 49. The sentence is life. The minimum before any parole consideration is 37 years.
When the hearing ended, the courtroom applauded.
