of Wounded Knee—an event many historians consider a massacre. “Celebrating war crimes is not patriotic. This decision undermines truth-telling, reconciliation, and the healing that Indian Country and the United States still need,” Larry Wright Jr., the Congress’s executive director, said in a statement issued on Saturday.

US President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, said in a video posted on X late Thursday that a review panel had recommended allowing the soldiers to keep their medals in a study completed last year, and that he had followed that recommendation. “We’re making it clear that they deserve those medals. This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate,” Hegseth said. The defense secretary criticized his predecessor for not making the same decision, claiming the former Pentagon chief was more concerned with being “politically correct than historically correct.”

The Battle of Wounded Knee—also known as the Wounded Knee Massacre—took place on December 29, 1890, in South Dakota, when US soldiers killed more than 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children. The events marked the end of the Indian Wars, during which Native Americans were coerced into ceding their lands and forced onto reservations. Lloyd Austin, defense secretary under President Joe Biden, had ordered a review of the military honors but did not issue a final decision before leaving office in January.

In 1990, Congress passed a resolution expressing “deep regret” for the tragedy. “It is proper and timely for the Congress of the United States of America to acknowledge … the historic significance of the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, to express its deep regret to the Sioux people, and in particular to the descendants of the victims and survivors, for this terrible tragedy,” the resolution stated. (Aljazeera)