Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an unusual speech last month to top brass — ordering nearly 800 admirals and generals to Quantico, Virginia — in which he railed against “woke” ideology and hyped the recently rebranded Department of War.
His 45-minute monologue is now mandatory literature for all Defense personnel. According to a leaked memo, staff must read the official transcript or watch the entire recording as well as review policy changes before the end of October.
In a social media video posted in September, Hegseth also weighed in on a long-simmering controversy involving the Battle of Wounded Knee, where hundreds of Lakotas were killed by the U.S. Army.
Many consider that conflict a massacre and have called for the soldiers to be stripped of their Medals of Honor. Hegseth dismissed the idea of revoking the medals as political correctness run amok. Meanwhile, it was a painful message for tribes throughout the country.
‘We will never forget what they did’
Despite what his statements implied, there was no action for Hegseth to undo, because the Biden administration already decided against revoking the medals.
A panel made up of five appointees between the Defense and Interior departments examined the merits of revocation — an idea initiated by former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
In a split decision, the three Defense appointees sitting on the panel sided with letting the 19 Army soldiers from 7th Cavalry keep the nation’s highest military award — while the pair of Interior agency delegates dissented.
Under my direction, the soldiers who fought at the Battle of Wounded Knee will keep their medals.
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) September 25, 2025
This decision is final. Their place in history is settled. pic.twitter.com/klQlB6MZ6l
Although bipartisan efforts in Congress to rescind those Medals of Honor go back decades — most recently with the failed Remove the Stain Act, first introduced in 2019 — only a U.S. president has the legal authority, beyond the Pentagon itself, to do so.
So now, Hegseth is simply doubling down on the Biden administration’s decision, while perhaps looking to score political points in the process.
“This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate,” said Hegseth. “We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did.”
A battle or a massacre?
In what would be the final chapter of the Army’s century-long “Indian Wars” campaign, as many as 300 Lakotas were killed at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota — while at least 25 U.S. soldiers died.
A rifle shot rang out when troops tried disarming a surrendering encampment on Dec. 29, 1890. In that confusion, the mass slaughter of mostly unarmed men, women and children ensued.
Artillery shells rained down upon Lakotas hiding in ravines around Wounded Knee Creek while Hotchkiss mountain guns mowed them down, firing hundreds of rounds in minutes.
When news finally spread, military leaders asked for a formal investigation in the days that followed. While some officials blamed the Lakotas, Army Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles penned in private: “I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee.”
To this day, there is still no official death count.
‘America’s original attitude towards the so-called frontier’
Hegseth’s comments came a few weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order, rebranding his agency as the Department of War. But only Congress can officially approve that renaming.
For Trump, the name change has a lot to do with keeping score and winning wars.
“We won the first World War, we won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between,” said Trump in the Oval Office, “and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense.”
He also thinks it sends a signal of victory.
“This is something we thought long and hard about. We’ve been talking about it for months, Pete and I,” said Trump on Sept. 5, adding “I think it’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”
From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza, the same dynamics of Wounded Knee — of civilians being killed by conquering military forces — continue to play out all around the globe, according to David Martinez, founder and director of ASU’s Institute for Transborder Indigenous Nations.
“And I would go further and say that what you see in contemporary American foreign policy was forged in America’s battles with Indian people,” added Martinez, who is Akimel O’odham.
“Wherever you see America invading, sending troops, trying to intimidate, all that comes from America’s original attitude towards the so-called frontier,” he explained, “which was regarded as wild, which was regarded as dangerous, which was regarded as full of savages.”
From the Utes across modern-day Utah and Colorado to the Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico, the Army fought more than a dozen conflicts predating federal recognition of tribal governments beginning in 1790. This so-called campaign concluded in the aftermath of Wounded Knee by January 1891.
“The history of Indian-U.S. relations is full of conflict,” said Martinez. “So when descendants of the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre say that it’s not just them — that’s true. There’s not a tribe anywhere in North America that did not experience deep historic trauma as a result of American westward expansion.”
‘Look it up, but he’s not going to’
Even the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal agency now given the responsibility to “enhance the quality of life” for tribes and “improve the trust assets” like land and water, emerged in 1824 from within the original War Department.
That occurred amid the era of Manifest Destiny — a 19th century ideology that sought to justify U.S. expansion across North America while pushing tribes out of the way. Two centuries later, Martinez suggests it’s fitting that Trump has restored the Defense Department’s old moniker.
“Well, for me, the Department of War is the true name, because, from my point of view as an Indigenous person, the objective in America’s conquest of Indian Country was to make Indian Country like America,” said Martinez. “It did so at the expense of Indian land and people. And so the reservation system that we see around us today, which includes my people, Akimel O’odham, is a product of war.”
Lakota attorney Chase Iron Eyes calls the reservations prison camps.
“There are those of us who never perceived an end [to] war,” added Iron Eyes. “If you look at what the reservation system is, it’s not peace, prosperity and privilege for Native people, it’s a little open-air prison camp.”
For Iron Eyes, who runs the nonprofit Lakota People’s Law Project, Wounded Knee is deeply personal. “As the great-great grandson of people who were killed at Wounded Knee, nobody in their right mind takes pride in the slaughtering of non-combatants.”
“All is fair in love and war, and yes, some soldiers lost their lives in that fracas, but if you review the records, a majority of them are women and children,” he added. “It hurts your feelings. It makes you think what spurred this? So for Hegseth to say something like this, it appears to be like what a provocateur does.”
Marlis Afraid of Hawk grew up hearing horror stories from her grandfather, Richard, who was only 13 when he survived Wounded Knee. The 68-year-old Oglala Lakota elder insists Hegseth is wrong, saying “he’s in denial” about past atrocities that were carried out by the U.S. military.
“Look it up, but he’s not going to. They cannot sweep it under the rug, because it’s history,” said Afraid of Hawk. “There are other massacres. Wounded Knee is not the only one.”
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