Friday, September 4, 2026

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Photo: An arch topped with a cross marks the entrance to the Wounded Knee Memorial and cemetery on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on June 30, 2024. (Makenzie Huber / South Dakota Searchlight)

Two South Dakota candidates for U.S. Senate have different views about the Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers at the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

South Dakota Searchlight’s Meghan O’Brien has more.

About 20 U.S. Army soldiers who were at the massacre received medals. They were part of a force who killed 200 or more Lakota people, including men, women and children.

The massacre happened near Wounded Knee Creek in southwest South Dakota.

The U.S. Department of Defense decided to retain the medals after a recent review.

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, is on a Senate committee that is seeking more information about that review.

He says descendants of massacre survivors want to know more about how the review was conducted. He wants to help them get that information.

Rounds has not supported past legislation to rescind the medals.

“What we’ve said is, let’s do the investigation, and then allow the military to actually make the determination, rather than having Congress get in the middle of it.”

Rounds is running to keep his seat in the Senate.

His only challenger is Brian Bengs, an independent. Bengs served 26 years in the U.S. military and taught at the NATO School in Germany and the U.S. Air Force Academy, including courses in the law of war.

“And I will say categorically: those medals are not earned. They are not deserved. They should not stand. Their continuing standing is a dishonor to the individuals who currently hold the Medal of Honor.”

Bengs will face Rounds on the November 3 ballot.

Ameerah Bad’r is the current artist-in-residence at Sitka National Historical Park. (Photo: Lauren Salemo / KCAW)

Sealaska Heritage Institute’s artist residency program hosts Indigenous artists at public spaces in Southeast Alaska throughout summer.

The residency, which expanded to Sitka, Alaska this year, provides the artists room to create and connect with their heritage where visitors can stop by to watch their work come together, as Lauren Salemo from KCAW reports.

Ameerah Bad’r (Tlingít Palestinian) is the current artist-in-residence at Sitka National Historical Park. Her work combines drawing, watercolor, and formline design, a traditional art style used by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest that incorporates curved lines and shapes.

Sitka’s flora will be her main subject.

“I’m working on a foxglove painting right now. I definitely want to draw the fireweed, paint the fireweed. It’s a little intimidating, though. It has a lot going on.”

A lot of her work has focused on flowers from the places she has traveled over the last few years. Bad’r says she finds it meditative to study plants’ delicate details.

“The work is kind of rooted in grieving and memory and the cycle of life. If you can truly be present with a flower and really look at it, you’re really getting to see something beautiful, but in the end, that flower is totally gonna die. But then after that, another flower is gonna come back.”

Bad’r is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She says she has been wanting to come to Southeast Alaska for a long time because of her family’s roots.

“It’s a gift to be able to come here and meet people and learn more about the culture, and see where I fit in here. And I’ve learned a little bit about my family lineage already.”

She says her time in Sitka has been peaceful, and that this won’t be her last trip here. Today is Bad’r’s last day at Sitka National Historical Park.