In 1935, Anna, a member of Sioux Nation, encourages her niece Dina to dance and play with her son Chaske. As Anna prepares dinner, a potato soup they have had to eat for weeks due to low food supply, she ruminates on how different Dina and Chaske look. Dina, on one hand, looks like a full-blooded Sioux Indian, while Chaske looks like neither Anna nor his German father. Dina tells Anna that she dreamed of the Red Dress woman, and Anna warns Dina that she must not speak to the dangerous woman, Anna’s grandmother, who people claimed could control others.  Dina’s father, husband of Anna’s cousin Joyce, soon comes to pick Dina up and gives Anna a gift, a mason jar of small red beads. Anna knows that he has feelings for her, but accepts his present. Once they're gone, Anna thinks of her husband Emery, who has been dead for two months. He first caught consumption, but ultimately died after being attacked by a wild horse. Anna remembers how her family had not approved of their marriage, and even her cousin Joyce had accused her of marrying Emery to gain property and belongings, and had told people that Anna enchanted him with magic.  A few days later, Chaske comes down with a cough that gradually grows worse. Anna tries to distract him from the pain, but soon has to reach out to Joyce for help. Chaske begins to cough blood and dies. Anna sticks her finger into the blood from his mouth and swallows it, as she wants to die with him.  Anna and Joyce begin to argue as Anna accuses her of dancing while her son was sick. Offended, Joyce asks Anna who she thinks she is, and Anna sends her away with some of her prized dresses, which Joyce had always been jealous of. Now, alone in her home, Anna uses the beads from Joyce’s husband and beads moccasins for Dina for three days straight. After finishing the moccasins, Anna wraps up the shoes and goes outside. She calls upon her grandmother for help and and calls on Dina. Dina appears, and Anna gives her the moccasins and instructs her to dance. She watches her niece dance into another world. The next day, people stumble across Dina’s body, frozen in the snow.