Native American activist and actor Russell Means was critical of the film 's technical accuracy . In 2009 , he said " Remember '' Lawrence of Arabia '' ? That was Lawrence of the Plains . The odd thing about making that movie is that they had a woman teaching the actors the Lakota language , but Lakota has a male-gendered language and a female-gendered language . Some of the Natives and Kevin Costner were speaking in the feminine way . When I went to see it with a bunch of Lakota guys , we were laughing . " Other Native Americans like Michael Smith ( Sioux ) , Director of San Francisco 's long-running annual American Indian Film Festival , said , " There 's a lot of good feeling about the film in the Native community , especially among the tribes . I think it 's going to be very hard to top this one . " Some of the criticism was inspired by the fact that the pronunciation is not authentic since only one of the movie 's actors was a native speaker of the language . The movie 's dialogues in the native language have been lauded as a remarkable achievement . However , other writers have noted that earlier otherwise English-language films , such as '' Eskimo '' ( 1933 ) , '' Wagon Master '' ( 1950 ) and '' The White Dawn '' ( 1974 ) , had also incorporated Native dialogue
American Indian Film Festival
American Indian Film Festival
Dances with Wolves