XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: NoBody@nowhere.com   
      
   Hegseth Declares Wounded Knee Massacre Troops Will Keep Medals of Honor   
      
   Fri, September 26, 2025 at 10:56 AM EDT   
   5 min read   
      
   U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivers remarks during the Department   
   of War 2025 National Prisoner of POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony at the   
   Pentagon on September 19, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.   
   Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images   
      
   Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has decided that soldiers who received the   
   Medal of Honor for helping gun down hundreds of Lakota Indians at the 1890   
   Wounded Knee Massacre will be allowed to keep the military's highest   
   decoration.   
      
   His predecessor Lloyd Austin had ordered a review last year in response to   
   a 2022 congressional recommendation that the medals—which were awarded to   
   20 soldiers from the 7th Cavalry Regiment—be revisited.   
      
   "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 they deserve those medals," Hegseth said in a video posted to the   
   social media platform X.   
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   Although originally described as a "battle," historical records show the   
   U.S. Army killed between 150 and 300 members of a Lakota group called the   
   Miniconjou—including women and children—even after the armed members of   
   their group had already surrendered their weapons, according to Smithsonian   
   Magazine.   
      
      
   The massacre was one of the final chapters of the Indian Wars between the   
   U.S. government and the Plains Indians.   
      
   By 1890, the Lakota had lost 58 million acres of their land and been forced   
   to live on a handful of neighboring reservations in North and South Dakota,   
   National Geographic reported.   
      
   In 1889, Congress slashed the annual Lakota rations budget; a year later, a   
   harsh winter and drought pushed the tribe to the brink of starvation,   
   according to Encyclopedia Britannica.   
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   In response, many embraced a spiritual movement called the Ghost Dance,   
   believing they could bring back their dead and reclaim their traditional   
   hunting lands if they participated in ceremonial songs and dances.   
      
   The rituals were supposed to encourage the gods to return the earth to its   
   natural state before the arrival of European colonists, and bury the non-   
   believing white settlers underground.   
      
      
   It was the U.S. Army's crackdown on the Ghost Dance movement—which white   
   settlers worried would incite violence against them—that led to the Wounded   
   Knee Massacre.   
      
   In December 1890, the U.S. Army banned Ghost Dance ceremonies and sent   
   dozens of Native American policemen to arrest the Lakota Chief Sitting   
   Bull, who had indicated that he would allow Ghost Dancers to gather at his   
   camp in South Dakota.   
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   Years earlier, in 1876, Sitting Bull had defeated the U.S. Army's 7th   
   Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn.   
      
      
   He resisted arrest and was murdered by one of the police officers. A group   
   of his followers fled to join Sitting Bull's half-brother Spotted Elk and   
   his Miniconjou band at another reservation, according to National   
   Geographic.   
      
   Worried the Army would kill more chiefs, the entire group decided to travel   
   to yet another reservation. On the way, they were intercepted by 7th   
   Cavalry troops, who escorted them to Wounded Knee Creek.   
      
      
   The bodies of the Lakota killed during the Wounded Knee Massacre were   
   dumped into a mass grave hacked into the frozen soil. / Hulton Archive via   
      
   There, they were surrounded by about 500 more 7th Cavalry soldiers, who   
   told the Lakota to lay down their weapons and said they would take them to   
   a new camp.   
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   It's not entirely clear what happened next.   
      
   According to National Geographic, the Lakota thought they would be removed   
   from their territory entirely and began to sing Ghost Dance songs. A dancer   
   picked up dirt from the ground and flung it in the air, which the soldiers   
   interpreted as a signal.   
      
   They began firing, discharging early machine guns and shooting women and   
   babies at close range. The Lakota fought back but had mostly given up their   
   guns, and even some who tried to flee were hunted down and shot, National   
   Geographic reported.   
      
   Other accounts say the troops opened fire after a shot rang out, possibly   
   because a soldier grabbed the rifle of a deaf Miniconjou named Black   
   Coyote, who either didn't understand or didn't want to follow the order to   
   turn over his weapon, according to Smithsonian.   
      
      
   The shooting continued for several hours, killing hundreds of Lakota and   
   leaving 25 soldiers dead, many of them killed by friendly fire.   
      
   In 1973, about 200 members of the American Indian Movement seized the   
   reservation hamlet of Wounded Knee and occupied it for two months. /   
   Bettmann Archive via Getty Images   
      
      
   The Bureau of Indian Affairs nevertheless said the encounter had been a   
   battle, and 20 soldiers were given Medals of Honor for various reasons,   
   including bravery, efforts to rescue fellow troops, and "dislodging   
   Indians" who were concealed in a ravine, according to the AP.   
      
   Starting in the 1970s, though, the incident became widely seen as a   
   slaughter and not a legitimate military engagement. In 1990, Congress   
   formally apologized to the descendants of the victims of Wounded Knee.   
      
   The massacre could have been revenge for the Army's humiliating losses at   
   the Battle of Little Bighorn, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.   
      
   Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made a point of honoring other dark   
   periods in U.S. history, including restoring 20-foot portrait of Gen.   
   Robert E. Lee in his Confederate uniform, accompanied by an enslaved   
   person, at the West Point Military Academy.   
      
   Hegseth, however, insisted during his social media video that the Wounded   
   Knee soldiers' "place in our nation's history is no longer up for debate."   
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   During his video, he claimed that the review panel Austin convened had   
   issued a report reaching the same conclusion about the soldiers keeping   
   their medals, but that the previous administration had kept the soldiers'   
   fate in limbo by refusing to act on the report.   
      
   "We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget   
   what they did," Hegseth said.   
      
   Reached for comment by the AP, a Defense Department official couldn't say   
   if the report would be made public. The Daily Beast has also requested   
   comment.   
      
   It's not the first time Hegseth has insisted on honoring ugly chapters of   
   U.S. history.   
      
      
   Since taking the helm at the Department of Defense—which the Trump   
   administration has given the secondary name of the Department of War—he has   
   restored a Confederate monument that celebrates the slaveholding South and   
   returned a statue of a Confederate general to a prominent place outside the   
   Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters in Washington, D.C.   
      
      
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