Hegseth says Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a video Thursday evening that 20 soldiers who received the Medal of Honor for actions at Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their awards. The decision, he said in the social-media post, followed a review ordered in 2024 by his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, after a 2022 defense bill recommendation.

The Wounded Knee episode occurred on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek as the U.S. Army sought to disarm Native American fighters who had already surrendered. Historians describe a brutal confrontation in which an estimated 250 Lakota Sioux, including women and children, were killed during the campaign against the tribe. The 20 soldiers from the 7th Cavalry were awarded the Medal of Honor for actions cited in their citations, including bravery under fire, efforts to rescue fellow troops and attempts to dislodge Sioux fighters believed to be concealed in a ravine. The military’s heraldic traditions include the 7th Cavalry’s coat of arms, which bears the head of a Native American chief to commemorate Indian campaigns. In 1990, Congress apologized to the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee but did not revoke the medals.

According to Hegseth, the review panel convened by Austin concluded that the soldiers should rightfully keep their medals from the actions at Wounded Knee, a finding the defense secretary recommended be accepted. An official in the defense secretary’s office could not say whether the panel’s formal report would be made public. The episode comes amid broader political friction over how the United States remembers and presents its history, with the administration pursuing several actions tied to debates over historical memory.

Separately, the broader political climate includes a March executive order from President Donald Trump titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which has criticized efforts to reinterpret American history. Since then, Hegseth has pursued measures that critics say subvert the recommendations of a Congressionally mandated commission that examined Confederate names and references in the military. He has moved to revert the names of several Army bases back to their original, Confederate-linked names, though in some cases he has honored different figures. He also restored a 1914 Confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery that had been removed earlier. In September, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point confirmed that a painting of Gen. Robert E. Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform was back on display in the school’s library after being removed in 2022; the portrait features a Black man leading Lee’s horse in the background.

The Wounded Knee decision highlights the ongoing national debate over how to contextualize and memorialize actions by the U.S. military in moments of profound conflict with Indigenous peoples and other communities, and how those histories should be reflected in current policy and public spaces.