{"id":40282,"date":"2026-07-02T23:18:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wounded-knee-descendants-vow-to-keep-pressing-for-medal-revocations-as-senate-committee-seeks-info\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T23:18:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:18:52","slug":"wounded-knee-descendants-vow-to-keep-pressing-for-medal-revocations-as-senate-committee-seeks-info","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wounded-knee-descendants-vow-to-keep-pressing-for-medal-revocations-as-senate-committee-seeks-info\/","title":{"rendered":"Wounded Knee descendants vow to keep pressing for medal revocations as Senate committee seeks info"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span><\/div>
\"Wounded<\/a><\/p>\n

Wounded Knee Sign located on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. (Photo Courtesy)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For Violet Catches, the Defense Department\u2019s decision not to rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who were at the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre was a gut punch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cried,\u201d said Catches, a descendant of survivors and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.<\/p>\n

Catches said one of her great-grandfathers was killed at the massacre and buried in the mass grave. Other relatives survived and shared stories of the carnage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an easy story to tell,\u201d Catches said through tears.<\/p>\n

But Catches and other descendants of survivors and their advocates plan to continue pushing to revoke the medals, even though the recent decision by the Department of Defense was another setback after multiple past attempts at congressional action failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not going to quit,\u201d Catches said. \u201cWe want healing for our youth, for our grandkids.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee boosted the effort this week in a report about the committee\u2019s version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027. U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, said in a news release that the report\u2019s language directs the secretary of defense to \u201cprovide the full report and unredacted materials\u201d from the department\u2019s recent review of the medals.<\/p>\n

The committee report says the department \u201chas announced the results of the review but not explained what it did and did not consider as part of the review process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNumerous stakeholders, including descendants of the Wounded Knee victims, have expressed concern about precisely which historical sources, experts, and bodies of law were considered in this review,\u201d the committee report says. Further language in the report directs the secretary of defense to provide a briefing about the medals review to both congressional Armed Services committees by Feb. 1.<\/p>\n

OJ Semans, a Rosebud Sioux Tribe member, has supported past congressional efforts to rescind the medals and has worked to educate individual members of Congress about the massacre. He plans to continue doing that.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil they\u2019re able to read about that injustice, or read about those atrocities, there will be no justice,\u201d Semans said.<\/p>\n

A step forward and back<\/strong><\/p>\n

The latest setback came after what appeared to be a step forward.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the Department of Defense under President Joe Biden created a panel to review the medals. At the time, the department said about 20 soldiers who were at the massacre had received a Medal of Honor for their actions. The number is debatable because records associated with some of the medals are incomplete or unclear.<\/p>\n

The department did not announce or publish the panel\u2019s findings or recommendations before Biden left office.<\/p>\n

In September, President Donald Trump\u2019s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced in a social media video that the medals will not be rescinded. He called the massacre a \u201cbattle\u201d and said the soldiers \u201cdeserve those medals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The five-member panel included three people appointed by the Department of Defense and two appointed by the Department of the Interior. In a written report obtained recently by South Dakota Searchlight, the panel\u2019s Defense appointed chairman wrote, \u201cWhile the actions of leadership were suspect, circumstances chaotic, and non-combatants tragically killed, three of the five panel members believe that individual soldiers distinguished themselves in action and found no disqualifying information.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the Interior-appointed panelists, Wizipan Little Elk Garriott, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, told Searchlight that the Defense panelists \u201cwere looking for evidence that individuals committed war crimes, essentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe broader question \u2014 that this was a massacre in which women and children were killed and therefore not deserving of medals \u2014 was simply not part of the conversation,\u201d Garriott said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Purposeful yet indiscriminate killing\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wendell William Yellow Bull, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe whose great-grandfather survived the massacre, said Hegseth\u2019s use of the word \u201cbattle\u201d reflected a lack of understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t disarm people and then call it a battle,\u201d Yellow Bull said.<\/p>\n

Brad Upton, of Colorado, is a descendant of Col. James Forsyth, commander of the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee. Upton supports revocation of the medals and also sees a need for more education.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrific,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst of all, the U.S. government has never stopped calling it a battle. It was not a battle. It was a massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n

The location of the Wounded Knee Memorial and massacre site in southwestern South Dakota<\/strong><\/p>\n

The massacre occurred after decades of hostilities, during which the U.S. government agreed to an 1868 treaty recognizing Lakota authority over western South Dakota. Under pressure from reports of gold in that region\u2019s Black Hills, the government broke the treaty in the 1870s and eventually forced Lakota people onto smaller reservations.<\/p>\n

On the morning of Dec. 29, 1890, a band of about 370 Lakota people was camped near Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota while traveling to the Pine Ridge Reservation. The mix of men, women and children hoped to find safety there, according to historian Jerome Greene, author of \u201cAmerican Carnage: Wounded Knee, 1890.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 470 members of the Army\u2019s 7th Cavalry \u2014 the unit that had been wiped out by Native American warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 \u2014 intercepted and surrounded the Lakota band near Wounded Knee Creek.<\/p>\n

Soldiers attempted to disarm the camp, and although \u201ceyewitness accounts differ on particulars,\u201d Greene wrote, somehow a shot rang out. Chaotic shooting ensued.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever unpremeditated their actions may have been,\u201d Greene wrote of the soldiers, what happened at Wounded Knee \u201cevolved quickly into purposeful yet indiscriminate killing. It became a full-fledged massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n

As many as 200 and perhaps more Lakota people died during the massacre or afterward from their wounds, according to Greene. The Army left the bodies to freeze on the ground for several days and then worked with a contractor to bury many of them in a mass grave. Military casualties, including some from friendly fire, numbered 30 killed and another 36 wounded.<\/p>\n

Congress passed a resolution expressing \u201cdeep regret\u201d for the massacre in 1990, but the medals awarded to soldiers have never been rescinded.<\/p>\n

Options for future action<\/strong><\/p>\n

Catches said the apology from Congress is incomplete without rescinding the medals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to feel like there\u2019s any justice until that happens,\u201d Catches said. \u201cThere was nothing honorable about that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marlis Afraid of Hawk, a Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member, is the granddaughter of the late Richard Afraid of Hawk, who survived the massacre as a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to give up,\u201d she said. \u201cThere has to be another way, another avenue, to correct the wrong, what the United States government did, what the 7th Cavalry did to our relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

This 1930s image shows Marlis Afraid of Hawk\u2019s great-grandmother He Ska Win, aka White Mountain Woman, at left, with grandmother Mabel Afraid of Hawk, grandfather Richard Afraid of Hawk, and Mabel and Richard\u2019s two sons, Bert and Cain. Richard survived the Wounded Knee Massacre as a child. (Courtesy of Marlis Afraid of Hawk\/colorized by Stephan Curran)<\/p>\n

Dwight Mears, an Army veteran from Oregon with a doctorate in history, has written scholarly articles about the massacre. He said there are several possible ways to rescind the medals.<\/p>\n

The Defense Department maintains that the medals are awarded at the president\u2019s discretion. But in a polarized political environment, one administration could revoke a medal and another could restore it, Mears said, making presidential action potentially impermanent.<\/p>\n

Mears said Congress could pass legislation to revoke the medals, but that would conflict with laws vesting authority over the adjudication of the Medal of Honor in the executive branch, raising separation of-powers problems.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there have been numerous attempts in Congress over the years to rescind the medals. In the current Congress, there are bills from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii.<\/p>\n

South Dakota\u2019s all-Republican congressional delegation has not supported those efforts. But this week, Sen. Rounds highlighted the Armed Services Committee\u2019s call for more information on the medal review process, including it in his list of \u201cSouth Dakota victories\u201d in the committee\u2019s version of the National Defense Authorization Act.<\/p>\n

Rounds\u2019 office sent a statement from him in response to South Dakota Searchlight questions about the committee report. The statement described the Defense Department\u2019s decision to uphold the Wounded Knee medals as \u201cfinal,\u201d but added that \u201cmany people with a vested interest in this conflict may legitimately question what sources and materials the department used to come to that judgment. This provision would require a report and a briefing on these materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Dakota\u2019s delegation also supported a bill signed into law recently that protects the massacre site from being sold, taxed, gifted or leased without approval by Congress and the Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, which jointly purchased the land several years ago.<\/p>\n

Mears said Congress has additional options if it decides to pursue the medals issue further. It could propose a change in law giving Congress a veto over military valor awards. That\u2019s unlikely to pass, he said, because it would be unclear how two different branches of government could simultaneously wield the same authority to revoke medals.<\/p>\n

Mears said he believes Congress should order another review of the medals with mandated scholarly advice, more historical research and new guidelines for the review.<\/p>\n

He said Congress could also pass a law to codify procedures for medal revocation, which would place the process \u201con firmer footing so that subsequent administrations are unable to unilaterally restore revoked medals out of simple disagreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Efforts to summarily revoke all the medals have not worked, Mears pointed out. He said the best path forward is a careful, case-by-case review.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirtually all scholars agree that Wounded Knee was an atrocity and that medals should not have been awarded,\u201d Mears told South Dakota Searchlight in 2024. \u201cI can\u2019t find any Ph.D. claiming otherwise who\u2019s alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also warned that some medals could survive such a review for lack of specific, disqualifying evidence about an individual soldier. Mears said the bar for awarding a Medal of Honor was much lower at the time. Some of the medals for Wounded Knee were awarded on the basis of a brief note from a commanding officer, leaving little for a modern review panel to consider.<\/p>\n

South Dakota Searchlight\u2019s Seth Tupper contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Wounded Knee descendants vow to keep pressing for medal revocations as Senate committee seeks info<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/div>

Wounded Knee Sign located on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. (Photo Courtesy) For Violet Catches, the Defense Department\u2019s decision not to rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who were at the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre was a gut punch. \u201cI cried,\u201d said Catches, a descendant of survivors and <\/p>\n

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Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> July 2, 2026<\/p>\n

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