Pentagon to review Medals of Honor awarded for Wounded Knee massacre

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has directed the Pentagon to review 20 Medals of Honor awarded for actions during the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, in which the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry opened fire on hundreds of Native Americans, including women and children.

The effort is meant to ensure no troops were recognized for “conduct inconsistent with the nation’s highest military honor,” the Defense Department said in a Wednesday news release. Disqualifying actions include attacking civilians or combatants who already surrendered, murder, rape, and “engaging in any other act demonstrating immorality,” Austin wrote in a July 19 memo directing the review.

The news, first reported by Military.com, follows requests from South Dakota state lawmakers and members of Congress, and over two decades of pressure from Native American groups.

“The fact that the title of the event is ‘massacre’ would not seem to be the kind of thing you award medals for,” said South Dakota state Sen. Lee Schoenbeck (R), who helped oversee a state resolution earlier this year calling for an official inquiry into the awards. “It’s time to get it right.”

On Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. Army soldiers killed an estimated 350 Lakota people in the southwest corner of South Dakota in what is now part of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Historians believe the event was preceded by a single shot stemming from a disagreement between the soldiers and Native American warriors they were attempting to disarm.

“I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee,” Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, who was an Army commander during the American Indian Wars, wrote in a November 1891 letter. Miles wrote that women, small children and babies were among the dead.

The citations for some troops who were awarded the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest honor, after the massacre are simply for “bravery” or for continuing to fight while wounded, according to the Defense Department memo.

Criteria for awarding Medals of Honor during the Indian Wars was subject to much less scrutiny compared to today, when the process can take years. More than 425 Medals of Honor were awarded for action during that campaign, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

During the Civil War, the lack of stringent award oversight contributed to veterans receiving the highest number of Medals of Honor ever - over 1,500 - compared to veterans of later conflicts, according to VA. In some cases, recipients were awarded a medal for recapturing unit flags.

Today, the Medal of Honor is awarded based on criteria drafted in 1963, and is reserved only for troops who are distinguished by the highest level of bravery and who risk their lives while fighting against an enemy of the United States.

A report on the review of awards from the Wounded Knee massacre, as well as decisions on whether they should be rescinded, is expected within three months, according to Austin’s memo.

Members of Congress in 2019 introduced legislation to rescind the awards, known as the “Remove the Stain Act.”

“The horrific massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee should be condemned, not celebrated with Medals of Honor,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who in 2021 was among the senators to reintroduce the act, said in an email to The Post Thursday.

She called the review “an important step toward righting this profound wrong and removing this stain on our nation’s history.”

Oliver Semans, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe who has previously advocated to strip the awards, said he is pleased about the Pentagon’s review. But he said he was skeptical about whether the review could be undertaken thoroughly on the timeline laid out in the memo.

“I don’t want it just to happen to get it off the table and move on,” Semans said. “We’re talking about the descendants who lost their relatives there and they should really be given true justice.”

Alex Horton and Kayla Epstein contributed to this report.