Nathan Chasing Horse was banished from reservation in 2015 for alleged abuse

Eight years before “Dances With Wolves” actor Nathan Chasing Horse was arrested for alleged sexual abuse — accused of sexually assaulting Indigenous girls as young as 13, according to police records— he was banished from a Montana reservation over similar accusations. 

“The federal government was asleep at the wheel,” Roxanne Gourneau, told The Post Thursday.

Gourneau was one of the elected leaders on the Fort Peck reservation in Montana who officially banished the actor from the tribal lands in 2015. She said said she can’t believe it took so long for him to be arrested by Las Vegas police.

“We’d heard reports and rumors of him being investigated on the outside and even though we couldn’t verify [any outside investigation] … we took matters into our own hands to protect our own people,” Gourneau, 63, said. “Now eight years after he was banished from us — eight years when he was allowed to go forth and destroy families and young women — he’s finally been arrested.”

In July 2015, the Fort Peck Journal reported that “tribal members told of previous experiences with Chasing Horse, including 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,” at a hearing of the Tribal Council Chambers.

At the time, an attorney representing Chasing Horse threatened the tribal council with a possible lawsuit, according to the Journal. 

SWAT officers raided Chasing Horse’s north Las Vegas home Tuesday following an investigation dating back to October 2022. Police recovered memory cards containing videos of the alleged sex assaults, multiple firearms, 41 pounds of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms from the home, according to an arrest report. 

The report also stated that sexual abuse accusations against the accused cult leader date back to the early 2000s and span multiple states, including Montana, his home state of South Dakota and Nevada, where he has lived for the past 10 years.

None of the news surrounding Chasing Horse’s arrest was a surprise to Gourneau, 63, who spoke to The Post from her home on the 2.7-million-square-acre reservation in northeast Montana.

Gourneau said tribal elders told her and other leaders at the Tribal Council Chambers hearing of “atrocities” Chasing Horse was allegedly perpetuating against tribal members, especially young women.

Chasing Horse — a member of the Sicangu Sioux tribe of the Lakota nation — attracted followers across tribes in the US and Canada who believed he was a “Medicine Man” and “Holy Person” who could communicate with higher beings and perform healing ceremonies, according to the warrant.

“Nathan Chasing Horse used spiritual traditions and their belief system as a tool to sexually assault young girls on numerous occasions,” the document states.

Followers of his The Circle cult allegedly offered their young daughters to Chasing Horse to take as wives, according to the arrest report, which said that one girl was allegedly offered as a “gift” to him when she was 15 years old and another married him when she turned 16.

Tribal leaders reportedly invoked a never-before used tribal constitutional law called “banishment” to force Chasing Horse off the Fort Peck reservation in 2015, even though some of the elected leaders supported him.

“You have to understand the spiritual ceremonies,” Gourneau told The Post. “We are here to protect our people and our lands.”

Gourneau said that, at the time, attorneys for Chasing Horse wrote the tribal leaders threatening letters about his banishment but Gourneau said she didn’t care.

“We didn’t give it a second thought,” she said.

Chasing Horse — who allegedly trained his five wives to use guns and ordered them to “shoot it out” with police if authorities ever tried to “break their family apart” — is expected to be charged with at least two counts of sex trafficking and one count each of sexual assault of a child younger than 16, child abuse or neglect and sexual assault, according to court records.