Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has directed the Pentagon to review 20 Medals of Honor awarded for actions during the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, in which the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry opened fire on hundreds of Native Americans, including women and children, the Washington Post reports. The news follows requests from South Dakota state lawmakers and members of Congress, and over two decades of pressure from Native American groups. “The fact that the title of the event is ‘massacre’ would not seem to be the kind of thing you award medals for,” said South Dakota state Sen. Lee Schoenbeck (R), who helped oversee a state resolution earlier this year calling for an official inquiry into the awards. “It’s time to get it right.” More than 425 Medals of Honor were awarded for action during that campaign, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
On Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. Army soldiers killed an estimated 350 Lakota people in the southwest corner of South Dakota in what is now part of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Historians believe the event was preceded by a single shot stemming from a disagreement between the soldiers and Native American warriors they were attempting to disarm. “I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee,” Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, who was an Army commander during the American Indian Wars, wrote in a November 1891 letter. Miles wrote that women, small children and babies were among the dead.
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