As Dances With Wolves' actor Nathan Chasing Horse faced justice, these two Bay Area women built a network of survivors

"When a Las Vegas jury on Jan. 30 found Nathan Chasing Horse guilty of 13 felony counts, most of them related to child sexual abuse, it sent reverberations through tribal communities across North America. One of the most powerful tremors passed through Sonoma County. I don't have the words to describe what it feels like to have this conviction come through, and to know this process started on a bench in (Santa Rosa's) Howarth Park, said Kathryn Lombera, who lives in Windsor."

"Chasing Horse found fame at 13, when he played the character Smiles a Lot in the Oscar-winning 1990 film Dances With Wolves. Infamy found him in January 2023, when he was arrested at his home in Vegas following a multi-jurisdictional investigation into what prosecutors and victims described as years of exploitation and sexual abuse of Indigenous women by a man who had created the persona of a respected spiritual healer."

"By the time of his arrest, a group of women most of them survivors of Chasing Horse's predation, some them friends or relatives were already meeting over Zoom to support one another through grief and recovery. It was Lombera, the Windsor resident, who formed the group alongside Lisa Diaz-McQuaid, co-founder of Redemption House of the Bay Area, a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit that assists survivors of human trafficking."

A Las Vegas jury found Nathan Chasing Horse guilty of 13 felony counts, most related to child sexual abuse, on Jan. 30. The conviction reverberated through Indigenous communities across North America, with a strong impact in Sonoma County. Chasing Horse gained fame at 13 as "Smiles a Lot" in Dances With Wolves and was arrested in January 2023 after a multi-jurisdictional probe into years of exploitation and sexual abuse of Indigenous women by a man posing as a respected spiritual healer. Survivors had already organized Zoom support meetings. Organizers Kathryn Lombera and Lisa Diaz-McQuaid, now publicly named, helped form survivor support and aid.

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