By suzanne downing 
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the 20 U.S. Army soldiers who received the Medal of Honor for their role in the 1890 Wounded Knee incident will retain their awards, calling the matter “final” and “without hesitation.”
In a video posted to X, Hegseth referred to the event as the “Battle of Wounded Knee” and said the soldiers’ medals were rightly earned.
“We’re making it clear that they deserve those medals… We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did,” he said.
Hegseth’s announcement closes a chapter left unresolved by his predecessor, Lloyd Austin. In 2022, Congress required the Pentagon to review whether the Wounded Knee medals should be rescinded. Austin convened a five-member expert panel in July 2024, which delivered its findings that October. While the panel concluded the medals met the standards of the era and should be retained, Austin never finalized a decision. He walked away from the matter.
That inaction, Hegseth charged, reflected a preference for “political correctness” over historical clarity. By moving decisively, Hegseth reversed Austin’s posture of delay, and characterized his announcement as a corrective to what he described as “careless inaction.”
The Wounded Knee killings took place on Dec. 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry killed between 250 and 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children, many of whom were unarmed and had already surrendered their weapons. Historians widely regard the event as a massacre.
In its aftermath, 20 soldiers (some records cite 19) were awarded the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest distinction. No Lakota participants were recognized. A century later, in 1990, Congress issued a formal apology to Lakota descendants but stopped short of revoking the awards.
Hegseth’s decision fits into a broader set of actions that contradict the “woke” culture of the past administration. Earlier this year, he ordered the restoration of a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Suzanne Downing