SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) -- When the Rev. Ward Simpson heard that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth say the soldiers who fought at Wounded Knee would keep their medals, it caused a powerful reaction in him.

"My immediate visceral reaction was 'This shouldn't happen,'" Simpson said. Wounded Knee was not a battle; it was a massacre pure and simple. To honor that is just wrong," Simpson said. Simpson is the dean of the Episcopal Diocese in South Dakota.

Hegseth said in his September announcement that a panel under President Joe Biden concluded in a 2024 report that the soldiers keep their medals, but the then Secretary of Defense chose to ignore the conclusion and history. "He was more interested in being politically correct than historically correct," Hegseth said of the secretary.

Hegseth sa

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