Senator Elizabeth Warren (D.MA) speaks at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing held September 28, 2021. Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images
A group of legislators is asking Biden for the revocation of Medals of Honor awarded to Wounded Knee soldiers.
Hundreds of Lakota unarmed people were killed in the Wounded Knee Massacre, December 1890.
The 16 Democrats and Senator Elizabeth Warren are leading the effort.
A group of legislators has asked President Joe Biden for the revocation of Medals of Honor awarded for the Wounded Knee Massacre in which US soldiers killed hundreds of Lakota civilians, including children and women, in 1890.
The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren led the delegation, sending Biden Tuesday a letter, claiming that his executive authority gives him the power to cancel the medals, The New York Times reported. The letter was signed by 16 Democrats as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (an Independent).
According to The Times, "The revocation of these 20 Medals of Honor will have a profound impact on the families and relatives of the victims," it said.
The Medal of Honor, the most prestigious and prestigious decoration that American soldiers can get, is for acts of valor.
On December 29, 1890, US forces attacked a group Lakotas near Wounded Knee Creek on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. When a shot was fired, the Lakota surrendered to the soldiers and were disarmed.
Hundreds of Lakota civilians were massacred, almost half of them children and women. Historical estimates place the death toll of Lakotas at 150-300, and possibly higher. It was one of America's most violent days and one of the last armed confrontations between the US government and Indigenous peoples on the Great Plains.
The Times reported that Warren introduced the first bill to the Senate in 2019 that would have the medals of 20 soldiers who were involved in the massacre revoked. As the bill was in limbo, Biden received a letter asking him to act.
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The South Dakota Senate unanimously supported in February a resolution requesting that the US Congress investigate the Medals of Honor given to soldiers who took part at Wounded Knee.
State Sen. According to the Associated Press, Troy Heinert was a Rosebud Sioux Tribe member at the time. This will allow us to begin a new history, which will acknowledge what we did wrong that day.
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