Hegseth: Wounded Knee Soldiers Will Keep Medals

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that he has decided that the 20 soldiers who received the Medal of Honor for their actions in 1890 at Wounded Knee will keep their awards. "This decision is now final, and their place in our nation's history is no longer up for debate," Hegseth said in a video posted on X Thursday evening. Hegseth said the long-dead soldiers deserve their medals. "We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did," he said.

• Hegseth's predecessor, Lloyd Austin, ordered the review of the awards in 2024 after a congressional recommendation in the 2022 defense bill— itself a reflection of efforts by some lawmakers to rescind the awards for those who participated in the bloody massacre on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek. In 1990, Congress apologized to the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee but did not revoke the medals.

• While the events of that day are sometimes described as a battle, historical records show that the US Army, which was in the midst of a campaign to repress the tribes in the area, killed at least 250 Native Americans, including women and children, of the Lakota Sioux tribe while attempting to disarm Native American fighters who had already surrendered at their camp, the AP reports.
• Historians say most fighters had handed over their weapons, but the Army opened fire after a man described by a Sioux witness as a "young man of very bad influence" discharged his weapon, USA Today reports. Other accounts say that the man was deaf and that his weapon went off when he scuffled with soldiers. Historians believe most of the two dozen soldiers who died at Wounded Knee were killed by friendly fire.
• After the fighting, Medals of Honor were given to 20 soldiers from the 7th Cavalry Regiment, and their awards cite a range of actions including bravery, efforts to rescue fellow troops, and actions to "dislodge Sioux Indians" who were concealed in a ravine The event became a celebrated part of the regiment's history, with its coat of arms still featuring the head of a Native American chief to "commemorate Indian campaigns," according to the military's Institute of Heraldry.

• According to Hegseth, the review panel ordered by Austin "concluded that these brave soldiers should, in fact, rightfully keep their medals from actions," but an official from the defense secretary's office couldn't say if the report he was referencing in the video would be made public.
• "Despite this clear recommendation, former Secretary Lloyd Austin for whatever reason, I think we know he was more interested in being politically correct than historically correct, chose not to make a final decision," Hegseth said in the video.
• The Rapid City Journal notes that many condemned the massacre at the time, including Maj. Gen. Nelson Miles, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri. He arrived at the scene a few days after the massacre and, in a letter to his wife, described it as "the most abominable criminal military blunder and a horrible massacre of women and children."
• On social media, some historians criticized the decision and Hegseth's remarks, Axios reports. "Fortunately, history does not work as Hegseth seems to believe," wrote Columbia University history professor Karl Jacoby. "It is never 'settled' and the government cannot (at least for now!) impose its interpretation of events on the rest of us."