Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Soldiers Will Keep Them Says Defense Secretary Hesgeth

The Wounded Knee Memorial is the memorial site of the Wounded Knee Massacre on the Pine Ridge Reservation where more than 250 Lakota people, mainly women and children, were killed on December 29, 1890. 20 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their participation in what the U.S. calls “The Battle of Wounded Knee”. Photo taken by Darren Thompson on Sept. 12, 2022.

Efforts to rescind the medals given to soldiers from the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre were halted this evening when Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth announced that they would keep them. The Wounded Knee Massacre is arguably one of the most brutal and traumatic acts of violence documented against American Indian people, where more than 250 Lakota—majority of them women and children—were gunned down and killed after rumors a shot was fired from a Lakota person after they volunteered to surrender their weapons on December 30, 1890.

“Stolen valor, that’s what awarding medals for slaughtering unarmed women, children and non-combatants is,” said Chase Iron Eyes, Executive Director of the Lakota People's Law Project in a statement. “We are at war with liars, racists, spineless rats unfit for righteous leadership, unfit to decide when our beloved soldiers should live or die. We the American people are rebuilding our honor one day, one working family at a time, and we are defending our country from corporate shills and fascists.”

More medals of honor were given to soldiers involved in the Wounded Knee Massacre then the total amount of South Dakotans who participated in World War II for four years. There have been several efforts to rescind the medals given to soldiers at Wounded Knee, including resolutions passed by the South Dakota Senate and congressional efforts, but Congress does not have the authority to award Medals of Honor, only the President does.

“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 and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals,” said Defense Secretary Hegseth on X Thursday evening.

After the killings at Wounded Knee, the U.S. military and its acting agents all gathered their bodies and buried them in a mass grave at the site of the incident. Today, the 40-acre site is owned by the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and South Dakota’s lone Congressman Dusty Johnson, who is campaigning to be the South Dakota’s next governor, introduced a bill—Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act—to add additional protections to the site. If passed, the land would be placed in restricted-fee status, meaning it cannot be sold, taxed, gifted or leased without approval by Congress and both tribes.

South Dakota Searchlight reported that South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds plans to reintroduce his own version in the U.S. Senate. Johnson’s last attempt passed the House in 2023, but was blocked by North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis in an effort to get other senators to support his bill advocating forLumbee Tribe of North Carolina’s federal recognition.

"Their place in our Nation's history is no longer up for debate,” Hegseth concluded.

This story will be updated when the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe issue statements.

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Darren Thompson is the Managing Editor of Last Real Indians Native News Desk and the Director of Media Relations for the Sacred Defense Fund, an Indigenous-led nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He’s an award winning multimedia journalist enrolled at Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, where he grew up. He can be reached at darren@sacreddefense.org.