Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said that Medals of Honor for soldiers who took part in an 1890 massacre of Native Americans would not be revoked.
More than 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children were killed by U.S. Army soldiers on Dec. 29, 1890 in one of the deadliest attacks on Native Americans by the United States military. The Lakota people had gathered to resist government control in an area of South Dakota that is now part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
In 2019, Democratic lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, introduced legislation to revoke the medals from the 20 soldiers involved in the massacre at Wounded Knee after a yearslong pressure campaign by members of the Lakota tribe.
Congress has rescinded more than 900 Medals of Honor since a law passed in 1916 created a board of retired military officers to review previous awards. In 1990, Congress apologized to the descendants of the Native Americans killed and injured at Wounded Knee.
The campaign to remove the medals gained momentum in 2020, when historical and systemic racism received intense attention. Many of the medals given out for the U.S. Army’s Indian Wars for land and resources in the West were for violent acts against Native Americans.
In July 2024, Lloyd J. Austin III, then the defense secretary, convened a panel to review the actions of each soldier at Wounded Knee.
In a video posted on social media on Thursday, Mr. Hegseth said the panel recommended to Mr. Austin in October that the soldiers should keep their medals. Mr. Austin did not make a final decision on the medals, which Mr. Hegseth described as “careless inaction.”
“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 deserved those medals,” Mr. Hegseth said in the video.
Deb Haaland, a candidate for governor in New Mexico and the first Native American to serve as interior secretary, under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said that Hegseth’s decision was “cruelty, not justice.”
“Reaffirming them today only deepens the injustice,” she wrote on social media on Friday.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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