Remember the Massacre at Wounded Knee

[Jopin Klobe]

7. Medal of Honor controversy ...

For this 1890 offensive, the army awarded twenty Medals of Honor, its highest commendation. Recently, in the governmental Nebraska State Historical Society's summer 1994 quarterly journal, Jerry Green construes that pre-1916 Medals of Honor were awarded more liberally; however, "the number of medals does seem disproportionate when compared to those awarded for other battles." Quantifying, he compares the three awarded for the Battle of Bear Paw Mountain's five-day siege, to the twenty awarded for this short and one-sided action.

Historian Will G. Robinson notes that, in contrast, only three Medals of Honor were awarded among the 64,000 South Dakotans who fought for four years of World War II.

Native American activists have urged the medals be withdrawn, as they say they were "medals of dishonor". According to Lakota tribesman William Thunder Hawk, "The Medal of Honor is meant to reward soldiers who act heroically. But at Wounded Knee, they didn't show heroism; they showed cruelty." In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning the Medals of Honor awards and called on the U.S. government to rescind them.

Some of the citations on the medals awarded to the troopers at Wounded Knee state that they went in pursuit of Lakota who were trying to escape or hide Another citation was for "conspicuous bravery in rounding up and bringing to the skirmish line a stampeded pack mule."
[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre|