1. United States
2. Colo.
3. Letter

It’s long past time for Congress to stop celebrating genocide. You work for the people — and we demand that you pass the Remove the Stain Act (S. 1915 / H.R. 3609) to revoke the Medals of Honor awarded to the U.S. soldiers who carried out the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Over 250 Lakota men, women, and children were slaughtered that day. Many were shot while fleeing. Some were executed after surrendering. The victims were unarmed. The perpetrators were rewarded with the nation’s highest military honor — a grotesque insult to Indigenous peoples and to the meaning of “honor” itself. More than a century later, those medals still stand as government-sanctioned approval of ethnic cleansing. The Pentagon refuses to act, but Congress can and must. The Defense Department’s decision to preserve those awards is not “final.” You have the power to correct this injustice — and every day you don’t is a day the United States continues to glorify the murder of Native people. This isn’t a matter of “revisiting history.” It’s about ending the celebration of atrocity. Keeping these medals on the books tells Indigenous nations, and all of us, that genocide is forgivable if it’s done in uniform. It’s not. We demand that you: • Publicly support and co-sponsor the Remove the Stain Act immediately. • Pressure leadership to bring it to a vote and refuse to let it die in committee. • Condemn the Pentagon’s stance and affirm that the U.S. will no longer decorate massacre as valor. Silence and delay are complicity. Congress can either honor the victims of Wounded Knee or continue honoring their killers. The choice is yours — and the people are watching.