Hegseth's decision on Wounded Knee medals sparks outrage in Native American communities

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Native American communities that had long wanted the removal of military honors for the soldiers involved in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre had their hopes dashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his effort to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, ‘don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings’ leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said Tuesday to hundreds of military officials at a ceremony. The defense secretary announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness and painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies.

Hegseth had announced last week in a video on social media that Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor, part of a wider Trump administration move that Indigenous leaders and historians on Tuesday called part of a culture war against racial and ethnic minorities and women’s rights.

In 1890, an estimated 250 men, women and children were killed by U.S. soldiers on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, many as they fled the violence and well after orders to cease fire. Some estimates put the number of dead over 300, more than half women and children.

“The actions at Wounded Knee were not acts of bravery and valor deserving of the Medal of Honor," Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairwoman Janet Alkire said. "There is nothing Hegseth can do to rewrite the truth of that day.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren vowed to keeping pushing for the medals to be revoked through legislation.

“We cannot be a country that celebrates and rewards horrifying acts of violence,” Warren said. “Secretary Hegseth is valorizing people who committed a massacre.”

Oglala Lakota Chief American Horse survived the killing and testified to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1891 that pregnant women and women holding infants were fatally shot as they fled.

“After most all of them had been killed, a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe,” he testified. “Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there,” he said, according to a transcript of his testimony that has been published several times in recent decades.

Arriving a few days later, Army Gen. Nelson A. Miles was shocked by the carnage, noting the large number of women and children killed.

“I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee," he wrote the following year to a fellow officer.

Several soldiers involved in the massacre later wrote or testified about that day, including some who admitted to firing on women and children after the order to cease fire. One soldier said he “expected a court-martial” for his actions but found himself instead being praised.

As news of the killing spread across the country, there was both horror and a sense that the troops had dealt a final blow to Indigenous resistance, said David Treuer, an Ojibwe professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee,” a book that aims to tell American history from an Indigenous perspective.

For Native Americans nationwide, even those not directly connected to the Lakota people caught up in the Wounded Knee killings, the massacre is a deeply traumatic historical event.

“It was the final punctuation mark on the conquest of the West,” Treuer said. "What also died on the plains at that moment were not just women and children but any vestige of American goodness and moral power.”

In a social media post Thursday, Hegseth referred to the events at Wounded Knee as a “battle,” but most historians disagree.

“Hegseth’s proclamation on this reflects the way that this administration thinks of history — as something that one person can somehow determine through a magical proclamation,” said Philip Deloria, a Harvard history professor and member of the Dakota Nation. "We will always be around to unsettle this celebratory, sanitized version of a dishonorable, bloody massacre,” he said.

In 1990, Congress passed a resolution that called Wounded Knee a massacre and expressed “deep regret to the Sioux people and in particular to the descendants of the victims and survivors for this terrible tragedy.”

In 2024, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of the medals by a panel of two appointees from Interior and three from the Department of Defense. The report was completed last October and, according to Hegseth, it found that the medals should not be rescinded.

Hegseth accused Austin of not making a final decision because he was “more interested in being politically correct than historically correct.”

Austin has not responded to a request for comment.

“This is one of America’s darkest days and the medals must be revoked,” Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Ryman LeBeau said. “They tarnish America’s Medals of Honor. There is no honor in murder.”

OJ Semans, a Rosebud Sioux organizer, has been working for several years on a bill to preserve the site of the massacre to secure the legislation. He said disappointed but not surprised by Hegseth’s announcement.

“It’s heartbreaking knowing the actual truth out there is being buried again for political gain,” he said.