Their whole shtick should be that they are based around cav and that infantry-based units are there in a much more limited form, on the peripheral.
Ideally they’d be reworked so they operate somewhat differently (like how Mongols are different to HRE in AOEIV for example) to other Native civs (considering the real-world distance and culture that’s being lumped into ‘just the natives’), but to be honest, any small changes would be appreciated if resouces are limited.
It’s also not just the (arguably more important) gameplay side of things that needs to be looked. The broad sweeping brush of ‘Native Cultural Consultant’ places a lot of very different cultural aspects into the same ‘inoffensive’ pigeon hole - for example the Tribal Marketplace is the tip of the iceberg there.
Devs can fix them in a number of ways, but I’d certainly take some advice for some of our forum users, especially AnaWinters who is very au fait with Lakota culture (being Lakota).
Here’s a general list of threads which touch upon different aspects of them.
What’s wrong with Lakota:
Economy:
Lakota (or lack of ) players:
Lakota HC cards:
Lakota Big Button techs:
TLDR - Lakota would really benefit from a big refresh.