Panelist says focus on soldier conduct undermined Wounded Knee medals review

A former Department of the Interior official told South Dakota Searchlight that the panel reviewing Medals of Honor awarded for the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre focused too narrowly on individual conduct instead of whether medals should exist for a massacre. Wizipan Little Elk Garriott, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and former principal deputy assistant secretary for Indian affairs, said that Department of Defense representatives dominated the review panel and ignored accounts from Lakota survivors. “They were looking for evidence that individuals committed war crimes, essentially,” Garriott was quoted as saying. “The broader question — that this was a massacre in which women and children were killed and therefore not deserving of medals — was simply not part of the conversation.”

Garriott said the panel voted 3-2 against rescinding the medals, with Defense officials in the majority. Former Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited the panel’s unreleased report last week in affirming that the medals will not be revoked. Garriott said the decision “chose not to make right a historical wrong.”