Protecting a Lie: Pete Hegseth's Massacre at Wounded Knee

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By Rich Wandschneider
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In 1971, when Alvin Josephy wrote about the “Custer Myth” for Life Magazine, he included a photo of the mass burial at Wounded Knee in 1890, committed by the next generation of Custer’s 7th Cavalry. In a recent issue of Native News Online, Levi Rickert wrote about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s decision to NOT rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to 20 members of that cavalry unit for their actions in the 1890 massacre.

Indians had lobbied long and hard for a truth telling of the event and rescinding the medals of honor. They’d made progress. In 1990, on the 100th anniversary of the massacre, Congress passed a resolution expressing “deep regret” to the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee. And there was hope that those Medals of Honor would go away.

With the Secretary of Defense’s decision, Rickert writes that Hegseth was not erasing woke politics and preserving real history, as he claimed, but “protecting a lie.”

“That lie — that what happened at Wounded Knee was a battle deserving of the nation’s highest military recognition — has been told for over 130 years. But Native Americans know the truth. It wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre. And it remains one of the most painful, unresolved wounds in American history.

https://www.postalley.org/2025/10/14/protecting-a-lie-pete-hegseths-massacre-at-wounded-knee/