Biden-Era Military Panelists: Massacring Indians Doesn’t Disqualify Soldiers from Medal of Honor

It’s not just Trump/Hegseth white-supremacist revisionism that’s affirming the medal-worthiness of the Seventh Cavalry’s 1890 massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee. As South Dakota Searchlight reported last fall, the Biden-era Department of Defense review panel voted 3–2 to let those 1890 killers keep their Medals of Honor.

Now South Dakota Searchlight publishes that previously buried review, showing that the three military members of the panel focused on the individual blades of soldier grass to outvote the two civilian panelists who saw the big prairie sea of colonialist murder and historical shame:

“While the actions of leadership were suspect, circumstances chaotic, and non-combatants tragically killed,” wrote the panel’s chairman, a retired Army lieutenant general, “three of the five panel members believe that individual soldiers distinguished themselves in action and found no disqualifying information.”

…The five-member panel included two retired Army veterans and one Army Medal of Honor recipient. Their names were redacted in most references in the report, but retired Lt. Gen. Thomas James’ name does appear in one portion of the document.

The panel also included two Department of the Interior officials: Robert T. Anderson and Wizipan Little Elk Garriott, whose names are not redacted in the report. Garriott, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, told Searchlight he was not asked if his name should be redacted, “and we all operated under the assumption that our names wouldn’t be redacted.” Garriott left the department when the Biden administration ended.

The report aligns with what Garriott previously told Searchlight shortly after Hegseth announced the medals will not be rescinded. Garriott said then that the panel’s majority military members focused narrowly on whether individual soldiers could be tied by evidence to specific misdeeds, rather than the broader question of whether any medals should be awarded for a massacre.

Interior Department panelist Robert Anderson’s written assessment in the report argued that “actions do not occur in a context separate from the actions of the whole.” He wrote that the Army’s actions at Wounded Knee were not honorable and that awarding medals to any soldier who took part in the massacre was unmerited, regardless of any individual soldier’s role.

Garriott wrote in the report that the massacre was “one of the most shameful moments in the nation’s history” and recommended rescinding the medals, apologizing to the Lakota nation and descendants, and creating another panel to work with Lakota people on healing.

“People living under the banner of peace — infants, children, women, and elders — were killed indiscriminately,” he wrote [Joshua Haiar, “Military Panelists Say Lack of ‘Disqualifying’ Evidence Justifies Wounded Knee Massacre Medals,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.05.07].

Even when Trump and Hegseth are gone, we will still have a lot of deep-seated history-blinkering racism to root out of our military and other institutions.