Chasing Horse, 47, remains in jail in Las Vegas as he awaits trial in a sexual abuse case.

He is best known for his role as the young Sioux tribe member Smiles A Lot in Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning 1990 film, Dances With Wolves.

Tsuut'ina Nation Police Service Sergeant Nancy Farmer said Chasing Horse faces nine charges in Alberta, including three counts of sexual exploitation and four counts of sexual assault.

The crimes in their jurisdiction date back to 2005, she added.

At a virtual news conference on Wednesday, she acknowledged that the Alberta case is largely symbolic, as Chasing Horse may never return to Canada to face the charges.

But Sgt Farmer said: "At the end of the day, it is important for us to have these warrants in the system so our victims know they've been heard.

"It's extremely important that we continue to support them that way."

Chasing Horse's public defender in Las Vegas, Kristy Holston, said she has no comment on the new charges.

It was not immediately clear whether Chasing Horse has a lawyer in Canada who could comment on his behalf.

Chasing Horse faces not only decades in a Nevada prison if convicted in the Las Vegas case but criminal prosecution in a total of five jurisdictions.

He was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota nation.

After starring in Dances With Wolves in 1990, Chasing Horse made a name for himself among tribes in the US and Canada as a self-proclaimed medicine man who claimed he could communicate with higher beings.

Police and prosecutors in Las Vegas have accused him of using that position to lead a cult, gain access to vulnerable Indigenous women and girls, and take underage wives from the early 2000s onwards.

In the Las Vegas case, he is charged with 18 felonies that include sexual assault of a minor, child abuse and kidnapping.

He also faces criminal prosecution in the British Columbia village of Keremeos, the US District Court in Nevada, and on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana.

Court proceedings in the Las Vegas case have been put on hold indefinitely as Chasing Horse awaits a decision on his appeal filed last month to the Nevada Supreme Court asking for his indictment to be thrown out.

Chasing Horse and his public defenders have said in legal filings that his accusers wanted to have sex with him.

One of the women was younger than 16 - the age of consent in Nevada - when she says Chasing Horse began abusing her.