Plastic flowers and American flags are placed atop graves at the Wounded Knee Memorial and cemetery on June 30, 2024. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Thursday that Medals of Honor awarded to U.S. soldiers for their role in the Wounded Knee Massacre will not be rescinded.
The massacre occurred on Dec. 29, 1890. Lakota people were camped near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, where they were surrounded by hundreds of Army soldiers. A shot rang out while the soldiers tried to disarm the camp, and chaotic shooting ensued.
Fewer than 40 soldiers were killed (some by friendly fire, according to historians), while estimates of Lakota deaths ran from 200 to 300 or more, depending on the source. After some of the bodies froze on the ground for several days, a military-led burial party placed them in a mass grave.
Hegseth used the word “battle” to describe the massacre.
“Under my direction, we’re making it clear, without hesitation, that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals,” Hegseth said in a video posted to social media. “And we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals. This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate.”
Hegseth’s predecessor during the Biden administration, Lloyd Austin, created a panel last year to review the medals. At the time, the Defense Department said “approximately 20” soldiers had received a Medal of Honor for participating in the massacre. Historians have noted that the records associated with some of the medals are incomplete or unclear.
There was no public report from the panel and no public action on the matter by the Biden administration before Biden left office. Hegseth held up a report in his social media video that he said was generated by that panel in October, but the Defense Department has not published it. A request from South Dakota Searchlight for the report is pending with the department.
“Upon deliberation, that panel concluded that these brave soldiers should, in fact, rightfully keep their medals from actions in 1890,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth alleged the prior administration was too concerned with being “politically correct” to share a final decision.
Oliver “OJ” Semans, a Rosebud Sioux tribal member who advocates for the revocation of the medals, said he wasn’t surprised by Hegseth’s statements. Semans said he felt the review panel’s makeup was skewed toward protecting the military’s image.
“I think it’s a shame that Secretary Hegseth was misled by his predecessor’s report,” Semans said.
Past efforts to rescind the medals through congressional action have failed. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, introduced another bill to do so this year.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, was at a public event Friday in Rapid City, about 90 miles from Wounded Knee. Thune said the decision was Hegseth’s to make and that the decision was supported by an “independent review.”
South Dakota Searchlight asked Thune if he agreed with Hegseth’s use of the word “battle” and Hegseth’s statement that the soldiers “deserve those medals.”
“Whenever you’re talking about those types of events in our nation’s history, you need to do it in a respectful way,” Thune said. “I didn’t watch what he said, but like I said, I think the decision that he issued is the one that everybody will end up having to adhere to.”
South Dakota Searchlight’s Seth Tupper contributed to this report.
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