[News] The Lie We Keep Telling About Wounded Knee

[Anti-Imperialist News]

nativenewsonline.net
<https://nativenewsonline.net/opinion/the-lie-we-keep-telling-about-wounded-knee>
The Lie We Keep Telling About Wounded Knee
Levi Rickert
------------------------------

[image: The open grave at Wounded Knee in 1890. (Photo/File)]

The open grave at Wounded Knee in 1890. (Photo/File)
Details By Levi Rickert December 29, 2025

*Opinion.*Today marks the 135th anniversary of the Massacre of Wounded
Knee, which occurred during the wintry week between Christmas and New
Year’s in 1890.

Nine days before the massacre that left hundreds of Sioux men, women and
children dead, an obscure weekly newspaper in South Dakota published an
editorial following the death of Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull. In
the opinion piece, L. Frank Baum, publisher of the *Saturday Pioneer*,
wrote:

“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of
the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements
will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why
not annihilation? Their glory has fled.”

Early on the morning of Dec. 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek in South
Dakota, Sioux people who had been captured the previous afternoon by
members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment were surrendering their weapons. A
shot was fired. The cavalry then opened fire on unarmed Sioux elders, women
and children. While an exact account will never be known, historians
believe between 250 and 300 Sioux were killed that day.

Snow fell heavily that December week. The Sioux ancestors who were killed
were left on the frozen plains of the reservation until a burial party
arrived days later to place them in a mass grave.

After the killings, Baum again took to his newspaper’s editorial page. This
time, he wrote:

“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the
total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries
we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one
more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of
the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who
are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be
as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”

Ten years later, Baum published a children’s book titled *The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz*, which was later adapted into one of the most famous films of
all time. As a child, my siblings and I would make popcorn and watch the
movie during its annual television broadcasts. As an adult, after learning
of Baum’s virulent racism and calls for the extermination of Native people,
I stopped watching it. Baum’s family later apologized for his racist
editorials.

Baum did not single-handedly cause the genocide of Native Americans, but
his words contributed to it. His editorials
<https://diogenesii.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/baum.pdf> helped normalize
violence and extermination as acceptable policy. History matters. If you
know your history, you know your place in this world.

Unfortunately, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth doesn’t appear to
understand history.

On September 25, 2025, Hegseth announced
<https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/calvary-soldiers-who-massacred-hundreds-at-wounded-knee-get-to-keep-their-medals-of-honor>
that he would not rescind the Medals of Honor awarded to approximately 20
members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry for their actions at the 1890 Wounded Knee
massacre. He wasn’t preserving history. He was 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
of women, children and elders. And it remains one of the most painful,
unresolved wounds in American history.

The soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were not heroes that day.

In defending his decision, Hegseth has framed the debate around what he
calls “woke” politics and vowed to put an end to what he called “historical
revisionism.” But this is not revisionism. This is accountability.  This is
truth.

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. Tribal leaders, historians and descendants of survivors have
spent decades calling for the revocation of the medals — not as an erasure
of history, but as a correction of it.

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) released a statement
<https://www.ncai.org/news/ncai-statement-on-pentagon-decision-to-maintain-medals-for-soldiers-at-the-wounded-knee-massacre>
following Hegseth’s announcement that said “such despicable violence should
not have been lauded in the first place.”

“Honoring those involved in the Wounded Knee Massacre with the United
States’ highest military award is incompatible with the values the Medal of
Honor is meant to represent,” NCAI Executive Director Larry Wright Jr.
said. “Celebrating war crimes is not patriotic. This decision undermines
truth-telling, reconciliation, and the healing that Indian Country and the
United States still need.”

Earlier this month, Congress passed the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and
Sacred Site Act that was signed into law that protects 40 acres
<https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/wounded-knee-massacre-site-protection-bill-passes-congress>
of the Wounded Knee massacre site.

The law places the land in restricted-fee status, meaning it cannot be
sold, taxed, gifted or leased without approval from Congress and the Oglala
Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, which jointly purchased the land
<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/oglala-and-cheyenne-river-sioux-tribes-buy-land-near-wounded-knee-massacre-site>
three years ago.

Ironically, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who sponsored the Senate
version of the legislation, has never supported the Remove the Stain Act,
legislation that calls for revoking the medals given to the 7th Calvary
members who massacred innocent Sioux people 135 years ago, Even though the
Removed the Stain Act has been introduced in the Senate numerous times, it
has never made ii to the Senate floor for a vote. Sen. Rounds needs to
support this legislation.

As we have learned many times in recent years — from boarding school
acknowledgments to MMIP awareness campaigns — remembering a tragedy is not
the same as reckoning with it.

*Thayék gde nwéndëmen - We are all related.*
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About The Author


Levi "Calm Before the Storm" Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is
the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was
awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print/online category
by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory
board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be
reached at levi at nativenewsonline.net.
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