The Defense Department still hasn’t released the 2024 report commissioned by Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that Trump’s Secretary Pete Hegseth says supports his decision to celebrate the butchers of the Wounded Knee Massacre. But a member of that committee from South Dakota has spoken up and said Austin’s five-member panel did split in favor of letting the Seventh Cavalry killers keep their Medals of Honor:
Wizipan Little Elk Garriott, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, told South Dakota Searchlight this week that he served on the review panel. He was the Department of the Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for Indian affairs at the time, and was one of the department’s two panel members.
He said the other three members of the panel represented the Department of Defense.
“They were looking for evidence that individuals committed war crimes, essentially,” Garriott said. “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 Department of Defense representatives on the review panel prevented consideration of records containing eyewitness accounts from Lakota massacre survivors, ignored the illegality of soldiers trespassing in an area reserved by treaty for Indigenous tribes, and failed to apply the same standards of valor used for Medals of Honor awarded in other engagements.
“The military members just kept saying, ‘Show me evidence that so-and-so killed an innocent person,’” Garriott said.
He thought that approach ignored a larger truth.
“You can be brave while being part of a group committing a heinous act,” he said. “That does not mean you should get a medal for it” [Joshua Haiar, “Focus on Individual Conduct Instead of Massacre Doomed Wounded Knee Medals Review, Panelist Says,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.10.03].
Real bravery at Wounded Knee would have entailed telling Colonel Forsyth that the Lakota people were unarmed and refusing to fire a shot. But even under the Biden Administration, we couldn’t count on the Defense Department to choose standing on the right side of history over covering its errors with false honor.
Not in the least bit surprised relevant and important fats were not allowed to be entered into the discussion. Too messy for the wasicu honor.
It’s an honor to be dishonored by this dishonorable group in Washington.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/10/01/hegseths-decision-wounded-knee-medals-sparks-outrage-native-american-communities.html
Inneresting read.
Following their line of thinking that you need to prove individual responsibility for the massacre of women and children is like saying that because no researcher, historian, writer or any person has ever been able to produce even one piece of signed by Adolf Hitler documentation directing the holocaust Final Solution it didn’t really happen, so nobody is responsible. Ridiculous.