When a nation chooses what to honor, it tells the world who it really is. Symbols matter of course, symbols like flags, statues, and medals. And sometimes the symbols we cling to are not signs of bravery, but scars of shame. This week, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Secretary of War, announced that the United States will not rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who took part in the massacre at Wounded Knee.
He has chosen, in effect, to sanctify slaughter.
The “Battle” of Wounded Knee
On December 29, 1890, the Seventh Cavalry surrounded a Lakota camp at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. What followed was not a “battle” in any honest sense of the word. It was a massacre. Estimates vary, but more than 250 Lakota were killed, most of them women and children. Only about 25 U.S. soldiers died, many from friendly fire in the chaos that erupted once the shooting began.
The soldiers had been ordered to disarm the Lakota. During the tense confrontation, a scuffle broke out. A shot rang out (no one knows from where) and the cavalry opened fire with rifles and Hotchkiss guns. The Lakota were cut down as they tried to flee.
Infants were found dead in their mothers’ arms. U.S soldiers then hunted down those who tried to escape. Historian Dee Brown, in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, left no doubt: this was not combat, but extermination.
In the days after this blatant slaughter, twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military decoration. For their “bravery.” One medal went to a man who helped operate the Hotchkiss gun that mowed down dozens of innocents in a handful of seconds. Another went to a soldier who later bragged about killing women and children.
A Century of Disgust
For decades, Native American activists, historians, and veterans have called for these medals to be rescinded. In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians formally petitioned Congress. In 2019, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the “Remove the Stain Act,” which would have stripped the medals. Survivors’ descendants have marched, lobbied, and pleaded for the government to stop glorifying genocide.
The Medal of Honor is supposed to recognize “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.” Nothing about mowing down unarmed women and children meets that description. If anything, the medals at Wounded Knee cheapen every other soldier who has truly earned one.
Hegseth’s Callous Choice
And yet, Pete Hegseth has announced that the medals will remain. His reasoning is as hollow as the empty graves left on the prairie. He insists that “history cannot be erased,” that the soldiers “served with honor,” and that “judging the past by today’s standards” is unfair. This is the familiar dodge of every apologist for every atrocity.
Hey Pete, you pinhead, no one is asking to erase history, we are asking to tell that history honestly.
History cannot be erased, but it can be lied about. Hegseth would prefer the lie: that Wounded Knee was a “battle,” that the United States military was noble, that the slaughter of children was somehow bravery. By keeping the medals in place, he chooses myth over truth, glory over justice, cowardice over courage.
What We Honor, We Have Become
Every medal left on the books for Wounded Knee is a medal pinned not just on the chest of a long-dead cavalryman, but on the conscience of America. It says we honor extermination. It says we decorate massacre.
Removing the medals would not erase history, it would finally recognize it. It would tell the descendants of the Lakota that America is capable of remorse. It would say that courage means more than pulling a trigger on the helpless.
Pete Hegseth, our low-class Secretary of War, has chosen the opposite. He has chosen to praise unabashed slaughter.
Hegseth prefers pinning ribbons on butchers instead of confronting truth. He calls it “honor.” I call it cowardice.
A real soldier knows the difference between courage and killing children. A real leader would rather lose a myth than keep a lie.
Hegseth chose the lie.