Remove the Stain Act would remove the 20 Medals of Honor awarded for an 1890 massacre of Native Americans GovTrack.us Follow Jul 3, 2019 · 3 min read

Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA10)

Should the U.S. still count perpetrators of massacres among recipients of the nation’s highest military medal?

Context

On December 29, 1890, at least 146 Native Americans from the Sioux tribe were killed in a massacre committed by the U.S. Army.

In the nascent state of South Dakota, a group of Sioux advocated rejecting the customs of white people. The Army tried to arrest the tribal chief Sitting Bull and accidentally killed him in the process. With tensions high from the incident, a fight broke out two weeks later between a Sioux man and an Army member in the town of Wounded Knee, spiraling out of control and culminating in a brutal massacre of hundreds.

20 Medals of Honor — the nation’s highest military award — were awarded to members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry for actions stemming from the massacre. For context, the post-9/11 war on terror has produced a total of 23 Medals of Honor.

Congress passed a formal apology for the massacre in 1990 with no record of dissenting votes, but never formally rescinded the Medals of Honor.

What the bill does

The Remove The Stain Act would officially rescind those 20 Medals of Honor originally awarded for the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.

It was introduced in the House on June 25 as bill number H.R. 3467, by Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA10).

What supporters say

Supporters argue it’s never too late to right the wrongs of history, and that this case surely stands as a mistake in the history of the American military.

“The Medal of Honor is the highest award that can be presented to a member of the U.S. military for their service,” Rep. Heck said in a press release. “The slaughter of innocents is not an act of valor, and we must remove the stain of the Wounded Knee Massacre from the Medal of Honor’s prized legacy. We’re 129 years late, but we still can act.”

“It bothers me as a professional military person and as a historian and as a humanitarian,” Rep. Paul Cook (R-CA8), the bill’s lone Republican cosponsor, said in the same press release. “Not just the massacre and slaughter and all the horrible things that happened — but the continuation of a lie that is associated with the highest award we have for valor.”

What opponents say

Opponents counter that while the incident was certainly tragic and avoidable, that’s nonetheless an insufficient reason to strip American soldiers who fought valiantly in life-threatening conditions and in some cases died.

“The policies and decisions of the United States Government that led to the Army’s being at Wounded Knee in 1890 doubtless can be characterized as unjust, unwise, or worse,” Senate Armed Services Committee then-Chair Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wrote in 1996. “Nevertheless, a retrospective judgement that the Government’s policies and actions were dishonorable does not warrant rescinding the medals awarded to individual soldiers for bravery in a brief, fierce fight in which 25 soldiers were killed and 45 others wounded.”

“While a consensus on a Wounded Knee memorial proposal remains elusive, efforts to achieve such a consensus are continuing,” McCain added. “I support these efforts in the belief that establishing a well-conceived memorial to the victims of Wounded Knee is much preferable to attempting to strip long-dead soldiers of a medal which they might not merit under today’s standards.”

To this day, the site has not been designated a national monument by the U.S. National Parks Service.

Odds of passage

The bill has attracted five bipartisan House cosponsors: four Democrats and one Republican. South Dakota’s only House member, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD0), has not signed on as a cosponsor, although the massacre took place in his home state.

It awaits a potential vote in the House Armed Services Committee.

This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.

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