SoundofToday/Wikipedia
The State Emblems Redesign Commission on Dec. 19 selected a flag design submitted by Andrew Prekker of Luverne as the new Minnesota flag. More than 2,000 designs were originally submitted for consideration, and the finalization process sparked comments across the nation.
We first wrote about the move to redesign the state flag and seal in the Nov/Dec issue, posted below.
What makes for good flag design?
It comes down to five principles, according to the North American Vexillological Association (a “vexillologist” being someone who studies flags): Keep it simple, use meaningful symbolism, stick with two or three basic colors (and contrast them well), don’t include lettering or seals, and be distinctive but not too “out there.”
According to the same association, Minnesota’s flag is among the worst in the United States and Canada. But that’s no secret. For several decades, the state flag has inspired a conversation about bad taste, both aesthetic and ethical.
“From a distance, it’s indistinguishable from about 20 other state flags,” says Rep. Mike Freiberg, D-Golden Valley, who sponsored the latest bill calling for a new flag. The bill passed in May, meaning Minnesota is set for a new design, and a new state seal, at the start of next year.
Adobe
Let’s start with the aesthetics. The flag is mostly blue, with the state seal smack in the center. The seal circumscribes a small, tightly complex illustration: A white farmer, who tills land in the foreground, glances over his shoulder at a spear-toting Native American riding by on horseback. Nearby, a rifle leans against a stump where someone has wedged a hatchet. Pine trees, a waterfall, and a sunset fill in the background. Festooning the seal and curling around lady’s slipper flowers, a ribbon advertises the state motto, “l’etoile du nord” (“the Star of the North,” for those who don’t speak French).
Minnesota adopted the original flag design in 1893. The state needed something to submit to a flag competition at the Chicago World’s Fair that year. Since then, the legislature has altered the design, but the seal has remained—and it’s going for a kind of romantic symbolism.
Adopted in 1861, the illustration spotlights the St. Anthony Falls, the state tree, and a representative of Indigenous heritage. Critics see the mid-ground Native figure—originally riding toward the sunset, then more southward in a 1983 redesign—as someone driven off his land, relegated to history. Their interpretation is correct. Mary Eastman, wife of the artist who illustrated the scene, wrote a poem urging the Native man to “give way,” as “symbols of [the white settler’s] course are here, / the rifle, axe, and plough.”
“I just don’t think it’s a design worth putting in an honorable place, like on the flag or on a seal or on official documents,” Freiberg says. In a hearing, he called the flag a “cluttered, genocidal mess” that people tend to hang upside down by accident.
At the same hearing, Kevin Jensvold, tribal chair of the Upper Sioux Community, invoked a tradition among Dakota bands to carry a wapaha, or “staff,” identifying themselves. “A flag represents a people, what they stand for,” he said, before relaying the story of an Upper Sioux Community youth who asked him why the rifle points toward the Native figure. “And so I will disagree with Rep. Freiberg, that 20 [state] flags are similar, because I don’t know how many of those flags show a gun pointed at an Indian.”
This is far from the first attempt to redo the flag. A legislative committee contemplated an “overhaul” as early as 1989, according to William Convery, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society. Ten bills on the topic have cropped up since 2000, and critics of the seal have, over time, homed in on the Native figure and the white settler.
As written in the law, the new designs should “accurately and respectfully reflect Minnesota’s shared history, resources, and diverse cultural communities.” No symbol, emblem, or likeness may single out any person or community.
A new commission shall meet weekly before submitting designs, for the flag and the seal, by Jan. 1. That gives its 13 voting members, who first met early September, “a relatively short period of time,” says David Kelliher, director of public policy and government relations at the Minnesota Historical Society, which provides office space and administrative support.
Who gets to serve on the commission? Gov. Tim Walz appointed three voting members of the general public: Shelley Buck, of the Prairie Island Indian Community Tribal Council; Anita Talsma Gaul, a state history teacher at Minnesota West Community and Technical College; and Michael Harralson, a deputy judge of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Councils representing African, Asian Pacific, Dakota, Latino, and Ojibwe interests appointed five others. Explore Minnesota Tourism and the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board each get a seat. Non-voting members include a majority and minority member of both the
House and Senate.
Together, they may tap experts and must solicit public opinion. That entails sorting through “dozens or hundreds or thousands of ideas that people might come up with,” Kelliher says. Public submissions were due by Oct. 30, and there are now 2,123 flag design submissions (a few of which are included here) and 398 seal design submissions.
Minnesotans have long had fun with this assignment. Reddit has circulated grassroots ideas emblazoned with tater tots and Target shopping carts. Some of the submissions are equally goofy or charming.
But probably the most popular (and actually serious) suggestion has been around since talks began. In 1989, flag expert Rev. William Becker, of Winona, and flag store owner Lee Herold, of Rochester, proposed the “North Star flag.” The design clears all five aesthetic directives: divided into blue and green by a wavy white line representing water (Minnesota’s Dakota namesake), with an upper-left star that, as a reference point, is both general and specific, harkening to the history of flag design as well as to the state motto. Many fly this flag in lieu of the official one.
“I believe it shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” Freiberg says, noting that other campaigns to redesign state flags have received bipartisan support. “I don’t think there’s anything sacrosanct or historically critical about the design.”
Still, he says, the DFL “trifecta” likely gave the bill the push it has long needed: a blue Senate, House, and governorship.
Before its passage, Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, told the KWLM radio station, “I see the history of the state [in the flag]; I don’t see racism,” noting the gun may simply symbolize hunting, an interpretation held on the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State website.
If lawmakers disapprove of the commission’s proposals, they have until May 11—the day Minnesota became a state—to pass a law rejecting them.
But if all goes to plan, Minnesota won’t stand alone. The idea to assemble a “task force” came from another state’s approach to a similarly cringe-inducing flag. “[The bill] was actually modeled after a bill in Mississippi, where they recently changed their flag, which previously included the Confederate flag in the corner,” Freiberg says. Mississippi’s flag now bears a magnolia. Utah’s new flag, meanwhile, sports mountains and a beehive. If Minnesota claims the North Star flag (and many of the submissions appear derivative of that design), it will honor sky-tinted lakes.
Freiberg says he would accept that version of a neutral, nature-loving banner. But, with the five principles in mind, he notes there’s a reason he’s not on the commission: “I have red-green color blindness, so I’m not a good person to come up with designs.”
