Čaŋkpé Opí (Wounded Knee) Is In My DNA
There’s no honor in genocide, Pete.
The events that occurred on unceded Lakȟóta treaty land in what is now southwestern South Dakota on December 29, 1890, had a major impact on the country as a whole—but is something you probably never learned about in your American history classes.
“Unceded lands” refers to Indigenous territories never legally surrendered to a colonizing power by treaty or other agreement. “Unceded treaty lands” refers to Indigenous territories that a colonizing power legally acknowledged via treaty as being Indigenous land in perpetuity.
MAGA Republican President Donald Trump and his cronies are determined to keep the U.S. public ignorant. On March 27, Trump signed an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.
It effectively instructs all federal entities to remove the accomplishments of anyone who was not a White, cisgender, heteronormative, Christian man from their websites and scrub or reframe any references to racism, slavery, or genocide perpetrated in the United States.
Slavery was alternative employment and Indigenous genocide was westward expansion, right?
But December 29, 1890 is considered the date of the last great “battle” of the “Indian Wars” on the banks of Čaŋkpé Opí (Wounded Knee) creek, so it gets to stay in history books.
It just needs a little whitewashing first.
On September 25, Trump’s sycophantic Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media that the Medals of (dis)Honor awarded by the Army to soldiers who participated in that last “battle” would not be rescinded.
