Posted on 09/29/2025 12:54:48 PM PDT by Miami Rebel
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Congress has rescinded more than 900 Medals of Honor since a law passed in 1916 created a board of retired military officers to review previous awards.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. .... “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......
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Morgan Freeman is a great actor. A moral philosopher? Not so much.
When do we stop “talking about” anti-semitism? Would silence on it make it go away? Is not talking about issues the best way to make them disappear?
On the one hand we’re supposed to remember and celebrate our history. On the other hand, we’re supposed to forget (or at least be quiet about) those parts that make us squeamish.
(By the way, even if we disagree on the blame, at least there’s some collective memory of the depredations we inflicted on native Americans. On the other hand, NO American school child....and very few adults....has ever been taught of the fact that after winning the Spanish-American War, we embarked on a three year Philippine-American War which killed hundreds of thousands, most by cholera and famine, but many from summary executions and various atrocities. Like the native Americans, the Filipinos were considered “savages.”)
One doesn’t have to ignore the viciousness of various tribes to acknowledge that we, the enlightened bearers of the torch of civilization, descended into barbarism ourselves.
Both sides did awful and violent actions. However, the US Government was to project benevolence yet in North Georgia and South Dakota, as examples,the government projected totalitarian murderous greed that would make Stalin proud because of gold, mammon as Christ would call that. South Dakota is filled with illegal settlements including Rapid City.
Both sides did awful and violent actions. However, the US Government was to project benevolence yet in North Georgia and South Dakota, as examples,the government projected totalitarian murderous greed that would make Stalin proud because of gold, mammon as Christ would call that. South Dakota is filled with illegal settlements including Rapid City.
I’m from South Dakota and the “battle” of Wounded Knee is a sad part of our history. I do not know if these soldiers deserved the honor for their actions, but this opens old wounds in the Lakota community. For the 250th year of our republic we as a people should seek reconciliation with the Native People who I our past have been often wronged by our government. One way might be a monument in Washington to recognize those Native People who fought with honor in our wars such as the code talkers or to name a Navy warship after one of the great war chiefs.
Many people I know had relatives slaughtered that day.
They are not happy.
My thought is they should have let sleeping dogs lie
On occasion, yes. But collectively the West tries not to do so, which distinguishes it from others who never even try.
Get a copy of the book “for a few acres of snow“, by Robert Leckie (the marine of Guadalcanal, “helmet for my pillow“, and about 40 other history books).
He dispels any myths about the “noble red man” going back to the French and Indian war and before. They were human beings, just like us, and just like us. They had all of the same faults and failures and virtues and emotions that we have.
Our country was expanding; they were in the way. It’s the way it was back then, and nothing anyone says now or does now will change that.
As usual, it’s more leftist bullshit designed to separate and cause conflict.
Indians served honorably in World War II; a very famous American Indian Marine helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima.
They are part of us, part of our history, and as much American as we are, and the past should be left where it is… In the past, and we learn from it, both what not to do, and what to do to make things better.
I feel the same way about this as I feel about the renaming of Army posts, tearing down civil war statues and reparations: We should not try to tear down the past or pay for past transgressions to please some present group of supposed victims, none of them were there.
We were all wounded at Wounded Knee: Redbone
Re “ None of them were there”
And none of us were there either.
It’s like the blacks screaming about reparations… Several hundred thousand union soldiers died To free their ancestors.
That’s their reparations, Right there. That debt was already paid, and nobody owes them Jack shit.
One should be a Southerner and listen to the wailing about Fort Pillow.
We played Cowboys and indians,and the Indians lost.🤔
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