THE MASSACRE AT WOUNDED KNEE

In 1890, US troops killed more than 250 Lakota, at a location that remains the focus of resistance and dark controversy

- WORDS CLIVE WEBB

The Lakota once spoke of the Moon of the Popping Trees, when the winter air filled with sharp cracks as frost split the bark of cottonwoods along the rivers of the Northern Plains. But in December 1890 another sound shattered the stillness: the sharp report of US soldiers' rifles as they fired on a Lakota encampment near Wounded Knee Creek. Officials referred to the incident as a battle. More commonly, it became known as a massacre. By the time the shooting stopped, between 250 and 300 Lakota, many of them women and children, lay dead.

More than a century later, the US government has stirred fresh controversy by reaffirming the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers for their role at Wounded Knee. Nineteen men received them, still the most contested in the decoration's history. “We're making it clear that they deserve those medals,” declared US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in September 2025. “This decision is now final, and their place in our nation's history is no longer up for debate.”

Yet debate is precisely what the decision led to. Native American leaders, human rights advocates and historians denounced it, arguing that the medals celebrate a military action that was little more than a mass killing. “Celebrating war crimes is not patriotic,” asserted Larry Wright Jr of the National Congress of American Indians, which had long campaigned for the medals to be rescinded. “This decision undermines truth-telling, reconciliation and the healing that Indian Country and the United States still need.”

The controversy is not new. In 1990, the US Congress passed a resolution expressing “deep regret” about Wounded Knee. President Joe Biden's administration launched a review of the Medals of Honor in 2022 but took no action. Donald Trump appointee Hegseth may have hoped to finally resolve the matter but only reopened old wounds.