Thread by @FrancesMFDanger

CW: Native genocide

Today is the anniversary of the largest mass shooting in American history, Wounded Knee, a massacre on December 29, 1890 that has been relegated to history as a "battle". 🧵

#rememberWoundedKnee #WoundedKneeMassacre
#woundedknee

The Wounded Knee massacre saw 250-300 disarmed Lakota slaughtered. Half that number were women and children.

A father found his wife dead, shot through the breast that still had their 22 day old baby suckling it, filling the child's mouth with blood rather than mother's milk. The baby died a few days later.

The dead were unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave. Twenty US soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor, medals we've asked to be rescinded to no avail.

It is hard to battle when you're a mother holding your infant close to keep them warm. It's hard to battle when you've been disarmed, are outnumbered, and have been intentionally left freezing and starving in the snow. It's hard to battle when you didn't come to fight.

You will hear "Remember Wounded Knee" many times today but rememberance alone does not honor the lives lost that day.

You see, in order to remember Wounded Knee you'd have had to been told the story to forget. That is what it is to be Indigenous in America. Left to history like some sort of artifact, the true stories of the horrors not even garnering footnotes. Erased.

No, today we must not only remember we must recognize that the US government conducted a mass slaughter of Lakota men, women, and children. They were gunned down where they stood and those that tried to run were hunted down like animals.

Today we must say that Remembering Wounded Knee is not enough. Today we must hold to account the participants of this shameful act by telling this story so that everyone knows the truth and we can collectively mourn the loss of the innocents and innocence lost that day.

Today we will Honor Wounded Knee and those murdered there by making certain we are never erased again.