Dr. Jesse Rainfeather Goldman (Lou Diamond Phillips) is a young doctor of Lakota Sioux heritage and was adopted by a wealthy Jewish couple as a child in Beverly Hills, California.

While doing an internship, he receives an amulet from the Lakota reservation in South Sioux City, Nebraska from his biological mother.

Dr. Jesse Rainfeather Goldman (Lou Diamond Phillips) is an emergency room doctor living with his adoptive Jewish parents Douglas (Adam Roarke) and Leah Goldman (Melinda Dillon) in Beverly Hills, California.

Going maverick with another physician's patient by removing her from all prescribed medications, he is put on forced leave instead of a suspension, effective after his shift is over.

When a strange amulet of feathers and bones arrives in a box, Leah tells Jesse it's a birthday gift from his biological mother Dawn Rainfeather (Tantoo Cardinal).

Jesse follows the postmark to the Brown Rock reservation in South Sioux City, Nebraska, where he discovers that Dawn was killed in a recent fire.

At the South Sioux City police station, he presents the ruse of being a trustee handling Dawns estate.

Deputy Larkin is overtly hostile towards Jesse and stonewalls him when Jesse asks him questions about his mother's death, insisting that Dawn died in a house fire and dismisses Dawn as being drunk and probably setting the fire.

Livid, he goes to the station to confront Drew, who in turn shows him the missing autopsy photo.

It quickly escalates into Jesse accusing Drew of covering up the truth about Dawn's murder.

Out on the town, Jesse encounters the kind of overt racism that he never experienced in privileged Beverly Hills.

Larkin and Dawes, hot on his trail, shoots out his tires, disabling the car, and forcing him to attempt to flee on foot.

Jesse reveals his bitterness over his mother giving him up and an angry Jolene defends her, stating that he had no idea what it was like to be a Native American woman.

He decides to engage in an old Native American rite of passage called “standing out.” Through visions and objects belonging to his mother, he would learn the truth.

Clifford was concerned over the isolated location that wasn't Native American land anymore.

Angry at Larkins sloppiness over covering his own tracks, this time Drew insisted on being present to finish Jesse off.

Jesse confronts him with the truth, enraged of Drew's dismissal of the Native American ceremony of marriage to Dawn.

Drew stated that Jesse was alive because of her choice that he'd never acknowledge an illegitimate Native American child as his son.

However months later, Jesse now working in a clinic that he founded to provide healthcare for Native Americans in Los Angeles, she shows up and they begin to resume their relationship.

Lou Diamond Phillips cowrote and performed two songs for the movie's soundtrack, Cry of the Wounded Eagle with Charlie Daniels and Find Your Way Home with Chris Lindsey.