As of the last couple of times that I saw Dances With Wolves, in the 2005-2010 date range, I still enjoyed it, but really have problems with the last act. Kevin Costern’s character’s decision making toward the end is clearly actually horrible, but we’re supposed to approve of it. It’s pretty gross when he says “the killing of the soldiers at the river was a good thing, I was glad to do it.” The movie unintentionally makes it look like the immediate hostilities between the Sioux and the army were mostly his fault. I also hate that they gave him a white love interest. But the first two acts are still good. It was a big deal at the time to have them speak Lakota for so much of the movie.

Maybe it now feels to me like less than the sum of its parts, but IMHO much of it is still very enjoyable.

One other criticism of the movie that I think makes a good point is that some people will argue that it’s “balanced” because there are good Indians and bad Indians and good white people and bad white people, but you could argue that the “bad Indians” angle is at least as ideologically flawed as it is in something like Stagecoach. The Pawnee are portrayed as attacking hapless white people in both Little Big Man and Dances With Wolves. Maybe that happened at some point, but they were mostly allies of the U.S. Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_Scouts

They certainly regarded the Sioux and Cheyenne (who were nomadic, unlike the Pawnee) as aggressors and thought that they were defending themselves when they sided with the U.S.
The real improvement over older westerns, in regards to the portrayal of the Indians, is more in stuff like casting, language, and authentic costuming. I don’t think the “moral” is really stronger than some of the 1950 pro-Indian movies.

Hugues did not agree with my criticisms of the film’s third act, which contributed to the meltdown that led to him leaving the board.