For Wounded Knee descendants, the government’s decision on soldiers’ Medals of Honor leaves the painful legacy unsettled

By Lily Hautau, CNN

(CNN) — Survivors recalled arriving at the Wounded Knee camp three days after the fighting, finding a blizzard had buried the frozen bodies of Lakota men, women, children and infants in snow. They described horrific scenes: mothers still clutching their babies, others shot down as they fled. These were the people killed by US soldiers in December 1890 on the plains of South Dakota, in what was the final armed conflict of the Indian Wars.

The government largely hailed it as a victorious battle, saying it had stopped what it deemed a growing threat from the Lakota people. Twenty soldiers received Medals of Honor for their actions. At the time, some settlers even supported the killings; one local newspaper wrote that “safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians.”

One hundred years later, Congress expressed its “deep regret” to the descendants of the victims and survivors and formally acknowledged the battle as a massacre – a shift reinforced by some historians who argue the medals were awarded, in part, to “influence the public memory of the event.”

Now, a decision announced by the government in September to let those Medals of Honor stand has reopened old wounds and reignited deep divides among descendants over how this painful history should be remembered.

History of Wounded Knee

By 1890, a combination of drought across the West and economic hardship had left Native Americans increasingly dependent on the US government.

At that time, a new religious movement called The Ghost Dance, which involved a ceremonial ritual of dance and prayer, began taking hold in Native communities. It offered them hope, spiritual renewal and the promise that the nearly extinct, sacred bison would return. But government officials viewed the Ghost Dance as a threat to US Indian policy and believed these ceremonies indicated an uprising; national press coverage brought it more attention, and in mid-November, President Benjamin Harrison ordered troops to the region.

Just a few weeks later, the death of legendary Lakota chief Sitting Bull during his arrest prompted another band of Lakota, the Miniconjou, to flee.

They were eventually intercepted by the Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment and forced to camp at Wounded Knee Creek amid the largest US military deployment at the time since the Civil War. There, as 470 soldiers tried to disarm the camp, a gunshot – its source unknown – sparked chaos, resulting in the deaths of at least 25 US soldiers and an estimated 200-300 Lakota.

Leaving Medals of Honor in place reopened old wounds

For Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney and activist whose ancestor was killed at Wounded Knee, the recent announcement not to rescind those Medals of Honor was another act of erasure: “Why do they want to peel the scab off of a wound that we barely began to heal?”

Former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of the Wounded Knee medals during the Biden administration after a consultation with the White House and the Department of the Interior, leaving it up to a review panel to decide whether the medals are rescinded. In September, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the panel had decided not to revoke them and that Austin never made a final decision on it. That ultimately left it up to Hegseth, who said the medals will stand.

Chase Iron Eyes says his family’s lineage was nearly wiped out at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, the day of the massacre. He lost his great-great-grandfather Iron Eyes, who was killed alongside the leader of the Miniconjou Lakota, Chief Spotted Elk, also called Big Foot.

He recalls the difficulty of piecing together his family’s story because the “oral umbilical cord was cut by the boarding school,” referring to the hundreds of institutions that, since the 19th century, forcibly stripped Native children from their families and culture in the name of assimilation.

“We’ve fought long and hard for our young people … to tell the truth about who we are as Native people for us to feel happy and dignified with who we are.”

Context and consequence

The Medal of Honor awarded to the 20 troops at Wounded Knee was the only military decoration available to US Army soldiers at the time, retired US Army major and historian Dwight S. Mears explains.

Established in 1862 for the Army, the Medal of Honor was granted for “gallantry in action and other soldier-like qualities.” By 1889, regulations stated it could be awarded “by the President, to officers or enlisted men who have distinguished themselves in action.”

But in response to concerns the medal had been awarded in cases where it wasn’t warranted, Congress in 1916 ordered the Army to create a board of retired generals to review all the Army Medals of Honor awarded since the Civil War.

“It became clear that the Medal of Honor of the early twentieth century was different from the Medal of Honor of the Civil War,” the Congressional Medal of Honor Society writes.

The board reviewed 2,625 medals and ultimately rescinded 911 of them, primarily because the basis for awarding them was considered “suspect” or the actions were deemed not “valorous,” according to the Society.

But the medals awarded to soldiers at Wounded Knee remained.

The fight to ‘remove the stain’

Retired Col. Samuel Russell, whose ancestor served at Wounded Knee, said the medals represent rightful military recognition and he believes the medals should stand.

His great-great-grandfather, Brig. Gen. Samuel M. Whitside, was a major in the 7th Cavalry who helped capture Spotted Elk’s band and escort them to Wounded Knee Creek, he writes on his blog.

In 2019, some members of Congress introduced the Remove the Stain Act, seeking to revoke the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers for Wounded Knee.

“We cannot be a country that celebrates and rewards horrifying acts of violence against Native people,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who introduced it in the Senate, along with Sen. Jeff Merkley.

But the bill had a few shortfalls, Mears wrote. It incorrectly cited the requirements for earning the Medal of Honor, using later, more stringent standards. The bill also proposed rescinding all Medals of Honor awarded at Wounded Knee, rather than reviewing each case individually.

There were also complications verifying that all 20 medals mentioned in the Remove the Stain Act “actually were awarded for conduct at Wounded Knee,” Mears said.

The act did not pass in 2019, and Warren and Merkley reintroduced it in 2021 and May 2025. But each time, it has run into problems, mostly because of a separation of powers issue, Mears says: Because the president awarded the medals, Congress cannot unilaterally revoke them. Any decision must come from the military.

In a 2019 plea to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Russell urged lawmakers to let the Remove the Stain Act die in committee, arguing that rescinding the medals “would set a precedent for all future generations of Americans to rescind any medal from any conflict.” In the letter, he says it would do what has never been done – “consult the perspective of the opponent of our U.S. Soldiers in a particular conflict to determine if medals should be rescinded.”

Seven degrees of separation

For another descendant, the legacy of Wounded Knee ignited a lifelong search for healing.

Brad Upton is the great-great-grandson of Col. James W. Forsyth, who commanded the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee and pushed for the Medals of Honor to be awarded to his troops. When Upton was 16, his great-uncle showed him a diary containing photos of frozen Lakota corpses from the massacre: “I knew it was immediately wrong. I felt that in my gut.”

Upton later turned to Buddhism and began seeking forgiveness for his ancestor’s actions. Through meetings with Lakota elders, Upton found a path to reconciliation.

In 2024, he joined Lakota descendants on the Cheyenne River Lakota Reservation to unveil artifacts from Wounded Knee – including baby moccasins, bassinettes and women’s dresses – that had been returned from the Founders Museum in Barre, Massachusetts. “It’s very difficult to put language on that,” he said of the experience, adding, “In addition to a massacre, it was a holocaust.”

What’s next

Russell said he would like Hegseth to publicly release the findings of the medal review panel because transparency “would serve the national interest.” In a letter that he shared with CNN, Russell wrote to Hegseth that if the panel found the medals merited, it should “officially reaffirm that these Medals of Honor were duly awarded.”

Upton said he believes “forgiveness starts with accountability.” He visits the Lakota tribe often in South Dakota, maintaining friendships, and recalls elder Basil Brave Heart telling him once, “You’re carrying your ancestors’ shadow. It’s not yours to carry.”

Ultimately, for Chase Iron Eyes, he said he believes in reconciliation: “When we tell the truth to each other about the nature of our relationship with one another as a collective, as Americans, then we can begin to humanize each other.”

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