Pentagon to review Medals of Honor awarded to 20 soldiers in Wounded Knee massacre – PJ Media

It was called “The Ghost Dance” and the US military at the time saw it as a threat to peace.

The dance was popular on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where about 1,500 Lakota tribesmen gathered at Wounded Knee Creek to dance and sing. The Army believed the Ghost Dance was a ritual that would bring back the buffalo. In reality, Native Americans believed that white settlers would disappear and that their ancestors would lead them to good hunting grounds. It was a millennial belief that dancing would stop white expansion.

On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry attempted to relocate Lakotan tribesmen to another reservation under the Dawes Act, which divided South Dakota into five reservations. One of the Lakota medicine men told the male warriors that their ghost dance shirts were bulletproof. As they attempted to disarm the tribesmen, a weapon accidentally discharged and the soldiers opened fire.

About 300 Native Americans were killed, including men, women and children. As a result of that action, 20 members of the US 7th Cavalry received the Medal of Honor.

Congress apologized for the massacre in 1990 but refused to revoke the medals. Now Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a special panel of experts to review the circumstances that led to the awarding of the Medals of Honor, after consultation with the White House and the Department of the Interior.

Congress recommended this step in the 2022 defense bill.

Associated Press:

Decorations were awarded to 20 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. The awards were given for a range of actions, including bravery, efforts to rescue fellow soldiers and actions to ‘drive out Sioux Indians’ who were hiding in a ravine.

Native American groups, advocates, South Dakota state legislators and some members of Congress have called for officials to revoke the awards. Congress apologized to the families of Wounded Knee victims in 1990 but did not revoke the medals.

“It’s never too late to do what’s right,” an anonymous senior defense official said in a statement Wednesday. “And that’s what the purpose of the review that the secretary has ordered is to make sure that we reevaluate each of these medals in a rigorous and individual way.”

Interestingly, Austin advises the experts on the investigation committee to examine the incident not from the perspective of 2024, but from the perspective of 1890.

Military times:

The panel reviewing the Medals of Honor will consist of five experts, including two from the Department of the Interior, Austin’s memo said. The panel is expected to submit a report to Austin by Oct. 15 with recommendations for each recipient, and Austin will then submit those recommendations to President Joe Biden.

In evaluating the awards, the panelists take into account the context of the time and use the 1890 military standards for awarding the Medal of Honor, rather than today’s standards.

During the ‘battle’, dozens of soldiers were wounded and killed by friendly fire, as artillery opened fire and the inexperienced cavalrymen fired their weapons indiscriminately.

General Nelson Miles called the massacre “the most appalling criminal military blunder and an appalling slaughter of women and children.”

A survivor of the massacre, Black Elk, was interviewed in 1931.

“As I look back now from this high hill of my old age,” Black Elk recalled, “I can still see the slaughtered women and children, piled and strewn all over the crooked canyon, as plainly as when I saw them with eyes that were yet young. And I can see that something else died in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. The dream of a people died there.”

The dream died, along with hundreds of others that did not serve it.