Sheridan's attention to the injustices Native Americans have suffered is an important strand running through his career. Wind River is a taut, first-rate drama about an investigation into the suspicious death of an Indigenous woman. And in Yellowstone, Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), the Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Broken Rock, is a mostly sympathetic character who wants the Duttons' land back for his people and says he will use the white man's conniving business tactics to get it. That one thread tilts the Sheridan universe a bit so that it can't be seen as purely conservative.