Coalition of Large Tribes Pushes Back on Sen. Tillis' Block on Wounded Knee Massacre Act

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By OJ and Barb Semans

November 26, 2024

Guest Opinion. As co-executive directors of Four Directions Native Vote, Barb and I write in recognition of Native American Heritage month, and with a reminder of the long, dark shadow of the Wounded Knee Massacre.  

We write on behalf of many: Calvin J. Spotted Elk, his daughter Lillienne Spotted Elk whose grandfather Chief Spotted Elk, later known as Chief BigFoot was murdered at Wounded Knee; Marlis Cetan Kokipa / Afraid of Hawk whose grandfather was Richard Cetan Kokipa/Afraid of Hawk was a survivor; Violet (Holy) Catches whose great-grandmother Mary, and her father, Daniel Blue Hair, and his mother survived the Massacre, but whose father, Nape Opi, didn’t; Dena Buffalo Waloke whose grandfather Ghost Horse was killed, along with his son, although his daughter, Alice Ghost Horse, survived the Massacre. Dena’s husband Sylvester Waloke's grandfather Red Eagle was also killed; Manny Iron Hawk, a direct descendant of Ghost Horse was also murdered along with his son, and so many others.

On December 29, 1890, unarmed men, women and children were massacred at Wounded Knee. In the words of General Nelson A. Miles, on whose orders the Seventh Cavalry pursued ailing Chief Spotted Elk and his people across the frozen Plains and Badlands, called his soldiers’ actions at Wounded Knee, “The most abominable criminal military blunder and a horrible massacre of women and children.” [DeMontravel, 1998, pp. 211–212].  Miles acknowledged, “Every day we hear of poor women, little girls and boys and children found dead and frozen to the ground, or crawling over the prairie, for a distance of one hundred miles north and south.” [p. 206].  Testifying before the Commission on Indian Affairs in 1920, Miles said he “regarded the whole affair as most unjustifiable and worthy of the severest condemnation.” [National Park Service].

Less than a year after the Massacre, General Miles wrote in a confidential letter dated November 20, 1891: “A wholesale massacre occurred and I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee. About two hundred women and children were killed and wounded with little children on their backs, and small children powder-burned by the men who killed them being so near as to burn the flesh and clothing with the powder of their guns and nursing babes with five bullet holes through them …” [Letter to Baird].

Nonetheless, 20 U.S. soldiers were awarded Medals of Honor for their murderous, terrorist actions at Wounded Knee. Medals of Honor are awarded in the name of Congress. For a decade, Four Directions has been pursuing legislation to remove the stain the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor visit on America.

Days ago, just before the 134th anniversary of the Massacre, on November 21, 2024, during debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) objected to consideration of the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act. He objected because he failed secure federal recognition for the state recognized Lumbee Tribe,  in his home state of North Carolina. As with many other bills that purport to help Indian Country, Tillis blocked it from proceeding, trying to force his colleagues to address his Lumbee recognition bill,  circumventing the Department of the Interior’s standard administrative tribal recognition process.

I do not believe Senator Tillis contacted the Lumbee Tribe prior to blocking the Wounded Knee legislation, but I would be interested in the Lumbee Tribal leadership’s stance on his actions. It is our descendants who are negatively affected by his actions. We believe the Lumbee Tribe needs to respond in support or opposition to Tillis’s use of their Tribe’s issue - at the expense of another Tribe – to meet his own political agenda. The Lumbee's silence is tacit support.

Senator Tillis, decided to dishonor the memories of hundreds of murdered and wounded Lakota for political leverage for the Lumbee recognition. We wonder if he is ignorant of history, or worse, cognizant of it and believes the Medals of Honor were deserved.  Either way, it was a horrible event to choose to make a point.

On January 15, 2020, then Vice President Biden answered the following question in writing, posed by Four Directions Native Vote:

Do you support the revocation of the Medals of Honor for the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre?

Yes. The Congressional Medal of Honor is our Nation’s highest award for gallantry in combat, in defense of our Nation’s highest ideals and principles. That this medal was awarded for the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Native Americans, including women and children, is abhorrent to those very ideals and lessens what the award represents in integrity and personal sacrifice for all others who have received it.

President Biden, please don’t let Senator Tillis’s insult to the Wounded Knee Descendants go unanswered.  Keep your promise: REMOVE THE MEDALS OF HONOR AWARDS FOR THE WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE.

OJ and Barb Semans are the co-founders of Four Directions, a Native American voter advocacy group, based on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. OJ serves as the executive director of the Coalition of Large Tribes (C.O.L.T.)